Page 156 of Ruin My Life
Motionless.
Staring at nothing.
One arm is outstretched, her hand reaching for the equally discoloured space beside her—like she’s still trying to hold on to something that isn’t there anymore.
Tears streak silently down her cheeks, vanishing into her hair.
She doesn’t even notice me. Not until I kneel beside her and brush my knuckle gently across her cheek.
She blinks away her trance.
“How did you find me?” she croaks, her voice hoarse—whether from crying or silence, I can’t tell. Maybe both.
“I looked everywhere for you, little rose,” I murmur. “I haven’t stopped since you disappeared on me. Again.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispers. Her eyes stay fixed on the ceiling. “They’ll find you.”
“Which means they’ll findyou,” I say quietly. “And I’m not losing you a third time today.”
She finally turns her head to look at me.
Her eyes are red, swollen, watery. Her cheeks streaked with salt and grief and the kind of pain you don’t come back from clean.
She knows she’s not safe here.
But she doesn’t care.
Because being in this house—it isn’t about safety. It’s about memory. About death.
About everything that was stolen from her.
She came back to the grave in hopes she might be buried with her family.
“This was where it happened,” she whispers, her voice paper-thin.
“I know,” I murmur. I guessed the moment I saw the blood on the floorboards.
I brush a few strands of hair from her damp cheek.
She looks so small like this. So vulnerable. Like a child who lost everything, grew from it, but still hasn’t found a place to set down her grief.
Her gaze drifts toward the couch. To the edge of a knit blanket crumpled on the carpet. “It was my first night home for summer vacation,” she whispers. “Amie and I were fighting over that blanket while our parents washed dishes together.”
She swallows hard. Her eyes go distant—hollow and unreachable. I can see that night flicker behind her lashes, like a film reel she’s watched too many times but can’t bring herself to turn off.
“Someone knocked. I remember thinking,‘Who’d show up so late at night?’while my dad went to answer it.”
She stiffens.
“It was them. Alexander. And whoever he was working with.”
I reach for her hand and coax her upright, then shift behind her and draw her into my lap. She doesn’t resist. Her spine settles against my chest. Her heartbeat thunders beneath her ribs.
“One of them shot my dad in the doorway,” she murmurs. “My mom tried to get us out—she only made it to the back of the couch before they shot her too.”
Her voice thins, waterlogged with memory. I wrap my arms around her tighter, like if I hold her right, I can make her bulletproof.
“I tried to get Amie to run,” she breathes. “But she was frozen. And when we saw them—those masks... part of me already knew we weren’t going to make it out.”
