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I reach out my hand to hold hers when I see her shoulders stiffen. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” She says, sighing. “I’ll be okay, I know I have to get it over with.”

“And maybe something you tell them can help with the case. You can give them details about that other girl that was in that cell with you. Willow?”

“Yeah, Willow,” She says. “I’ll do it.”

“Awesome,” I say, squeezing her hand. “I’m glad.”

“Now I get to show you the shithole apartment I lived in,” she says, laughing.

CHAPTER 11

OLIVIA

Wow. My apartment really is a shithole.

It’s worse than I remember. Probably in part because I’m coming from Jax’s stunning cliffside mansion, but more so because it’s absolutely trashed. It looks like it was ransacked.

“Holy shit,” I say, stepping into the apartment.

The door wasn’t even locked, not that I would expect my mom to lock up she had me kidnapped, but still, the whole living room is trashed and every single dish in the kitchen is smashed onto the floor.

“Stay close to me,” Jax says, softly, holding a hand out for me to stay behind him. “Let’s check the house for people first, okay?”

“Sure,” I say, wrapping my arms around myself as I follow him through our small apartment.

The curtains that Summer and I used to divide our one bedroom are all ripped and tossed on the floor. Our dresser drawers are all toppled over too.

I almost feel like crying. Everything I worked for, ever since I got Summer and I out of that god-forsaken trailer: gone. Or at the very least, a fucking mess.

“Fucking hell,” I hear Jax growl as he steps into the bathroom.

In our tiny bathroom, the mirror is a messy spiderweb of cracks from someone breaking it.

And written on that shattered mirror, in what looked to be my most expensive lipstick, are words.

I will ruin you.

I can practically hear my mom shrieking those words at us as we left her trailer yesterday.

“She must’ve come back here after yesterday,” I say softly. “It definitely looks like my mom’s handiwork.”

“Yeah,” he mutters under his breath.

“You know, it’s kinda funny,” I snort.

“What?” Jax asks, looking at me like I’ve gone insane.

“Look,” I say nodding to the sink below the mirror, where the toilet lid is currently resting. “Just imagine, my mom being just as fucking pissed as she was yesterday and taking the goddamn toilet lid and trying to throw it against the mirror to smash it.”

Jax crosses his arms and gets this contemplative look on his face like he’s genuinely trying to imagine the picture I’m painting for him.

“I mean, I don’t know if I’d call that funny,” He says, slowly.

I burst out into laughter, slumping against the wall. I cover my hands with my hands.

“This is one of those times where you’ve gotta laugh or else you’re gonna cry, you know?” I say, my voice thick with emotion.