Page 47

“What the fuck?”
Sophia’s voice cuts through the room, ice-cold. My stomach drops. I whip my head around to find her standing in the doorway, a can of soda clutched in her trembling hand. Her face is stunned, eyes wide, and her mouth parted like she can’t believe what she’s seeing.
I scramble off him, my limbs clumsy as I nearly fall. “Soph, it’s not—”
“What the hell are you doing with my dad?”
“Soph, it’s not—I didn’t—” I stammer, useless, my hands shaking.
Adriano’s up too, reaching for her. “Sophia, wait—”
Adriano runs a hand down his face, muttering something under his breath, but Sophia doesn’t even look at him. Her fury is locked on me, burning hot and ruthless.
“It was a joke,” I try, but the excuse crumbles in my mouth. We both know what this was.
Sophia shakes her head, laughing, but there’s no humor in it. “A joke? You were all over him. So this is why you keep askingweird questions about him. Why you always managed to bring him up in every conversation we have.” She marches forward, shoving me back when I try to grab her arm. “Don’t you fucking touch me. You slut. Are you fucking serious, Penelope? My dad? What is wrong with you?” Her voice rises, tears glittering in her eyes. “I trusted you!”
“It was a dare, Soph!” I yell, desperate, but it sounds pathetic even to me. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Sorry?” she spits, cutting me off. “You were on his lap, Pen! What’s next, you gonna screw him on the couch while I’m gone?” She’s trembling now and I’ve never seen her this mad. This hurt. “No wonder your mom can’t even look at you. Why she’s slowly losing her mind because you fucked up your entire family to ride your neighbor’s dick a few times. Your dad died in a cell because of your shit, and now you’re slumming it up with mine?”
The words hit like a blade, slicing deep. She knows—fuck, she knows—about my dad, the neighbor’s son, the bloody mess that ended with him shanked in prison trying to defend me when he thought 24-year-old Austin was taking advantage of me. How his father had my father locked up for beating up his son until he knocked him out. How his rich father arranged for him to be stabbed in prison and left to bleed. How it affected my family when we heard. How we couldn’t do anything about it because we had no proof or money. How my mom got lost to dementia, blaming me with every silent stare.
Sophia’s never thrown it in my face, not once, until now. It’s a betrayal heavier than anything I’ve done tonight.
My blood turns to ice. My vision narrows to her face, twisted in disgust, in rage, in something that makes me want to curl in on myself and disappear. My father’s screams echo in my skull, the ones I never heard but still feel, trapped in that prison cell, bleeding out on the floor because I ruined him.
“You do not get to throw that in my face.” My voice shakes, my nails biting into my palms. I lunge forward, but Adriano steps between us, hands out. “I trusted you with that information. You were my best friend.”
She flinches, just barely, but the moment passes, and she steels herself. “Yeah. I was. Past tense.”
My breath stops.
Then she looks at him. “This is why you refused to tell me about my mother or let me see her because you want to have enough space to fuck girls half your age. Well, have it. I’ll give you guys the space you need.”
Adriano reaches for her.
Sophia shoves past him. “I’m done. You two deserve each other.” She snatches his car keys off the counter, the jangle loud in the tense air. “I’m out of here.”
“Sophia, wait!” Adriano grabs for her, but she’s too fast, slamming the door behind her. The engine roars outside, tires squealing as she peels out.
I stand there, breathless, my whole body trembling as Adriano tries to get another cab this late to chase after her.
My phone buzzes minutes later—her name flashing—but I’m too shaken, too pissed, and I let it ring out, the sound echoing in my skull. That’s the last time I hear her voice.
Hours later, I’m screaming her name into the pavement, her body twisted and broken, blood seeping into the cracks of the road with Adriano’s car totaled. Because of some drunk fuck who didn’t stop.
Her fingers twitch, just barely, like she’s trying to hold on.
She doesn’t.
She never had a chance.
I killed her. Not with my hands, but with my silence, with the call I ignored, with the car she took because I made her run. Andmaybe—maybe—with the way I looked at her that night, like she had already died in my eyes.
Adriano was the last person she saw before she got behind that wheel.
I was the last person she called.