Page 3 of Cold as Stone
I nod again, not trusting my voice.
The door clicks shut behind him, and I’m alone with the sound of my own chattering teeth and the hum of the lights. I catch sight of myself in the mirror above the sink and wince. I look exactly as bad as I thought—pale and pinched, my lips nearly blue, with dark circles under my eyes.
The shower is a godsend. I step under the spray fully clothed, letting the hot water pound against my skin until feeling starts to return to my extremities. It hurts at first, pins and needles shooting through my hands and feet, but gradually the warmth seeps deeper, loosening the knots in my muscles.
I peel off the sodden clothes and let them fall to the shower floor with a wet slap. The water runs pink for a moment where my feet were bleeding. I must have cut them on the rough pavement.
Damn. That’s gonna hurt tomorrow.
I let myself sink down onto the shower floor, arms wrapped around my knees. The hot water streams over my head, washing away the last of the panic and leaving behind something else, a hollow ache in my chest that I’m afraid to examine too closely.
I can’t go home. I don’t have money. I don’t have a plan. I don’t even have shoes.God. What am I doing?
I’m seventeen, half naked in my former best friend’s brother’s bathroom.
This is insane.
And yet… I don’t regret coming here. Not for a second, because for the first time all night, I feel safe.
I step out of the shower as there’s a soft knock on the door.
“I’m leaving some stuff by the door,” Lee calls through the wood. “Hoodie, sweats. They’ll drown you, but they’re dry.”
“Thank you,” I manage to croak out.
“Take your time.”
I wrap myself in a towel as I hear his footsteps retreat down the hall. When I open the door, I find the promised clothes folded neatly outside the door. The hoodie is massive, navy blue withStoneheart MCembroidered on the front in silver thread. It hangs to mid-thigh, the sleeves covering my hands completely. The sweatpants are equally oversized, soft gray cotton that I have to roll up three times at the ankles.
They smell like him—soap and smoke and something indefinably masculine. I bury my face in the fabric and breathe deeply.
You’re pathetic. You know that, right?
Shaking off my momentary insanity, I pad down the hallway, wincing as my feet protest.
The party has clearly wound down. The music is off, and most of the people I saw earlier are gone. Only a few remain, clustered around the kitchen island with bottles of beer and serious expressions. They look up when I appear in the doorway, and I freeze under their collective gaze.
Heat floods my cheeks at how I must look drowning in Lee’s oversized clothes. It’s embarrassing that they see me for who I am, a desperate girl with nowhere else to go.
I force myself to lift my chin, meeting each stare head-on. Whatever judgment they’re passing, whatever assumptionsthey’re making—I won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me cower. This shame isn’t mine to carry.
Or so I tell myself.
Lee sits on the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him. When he sees me, he straightens, and something in his expression shifts.
“Come here,” he says, his voice low and steady.
I do, my bare feet silent on the hardwood floor. The other men watch but don’t speak, and I can feel them cataloging every detail. And I know exactly what they see.
They see my mother.
Everyone in this town does. She’s loud when she drinks, and she always drinks. She falls in and out of bars and men’s beds with the same careless grace she once used on stage in the high school musicals she never quite recovered from.
She used to be beautiful. Now she’s just a warning. A whispered “poor thing” at the grocery store. A snicker behind a hand. The kind of woman who forgets to show up to parent-teacher conferences but always remembers karaoke night at the bar.
And me?
I’m the one left picking up the bottles and cooking the eggs and dodging the guys who hang around too long in the kitchen.
