Page 2

CHAPTER

ONE

REMI

Stupid fucking skank should go ahead and off herself.

What a waste of a scholarship. Give it to someone who isn’t fucked in the head.

Sympathy for her? What about THEM!? She ruined THEIR LIVES!!!

“How many times have you checked your phone today?” Dr. Ravi asks me, her tone gentle. I almost wish she’d scream it at me. Then I could tell her the truth.

That I’m a weak bitch.

“Not many,” I lie in answer, my tone flat. I lean back in my chair, popping my gum, my chewed, black-painted fingers clenched tight around the phone in the pocket of my hoodie. Despite my lie, I can see the messages in my head. It’s funny, the ones with all caps are the easiest ones to swallow.

The other comments, those delivered with a sort of calculating coldness, they make my spine stiffen, my throat close up. And the ones with the appropriate grammar, for some reason, those get to me, although I’d never admit it out loud.

If someone can’t bother using correct spelling when they attack people in cyberspace, it’s easier to dismiss them. It’s the rational person behind the keyboard that really guts me.

Dr. Ravi’s brown eyes, a few shades darker than mine, soften as she leans back in her office chair, picking up a pen and tapping it against a notepad. Today, she hasn’t scrawled anything down. I don’t feel much better about that.

“Just over a year, huh?” she asks softly, letting the phone thing go.

For a second, that night flashes in my mind, the box of memories I keep buried in a basement in my brain opening up. But I force it all back inside that box.

And I run far the fuck away from it.

“Yep, just over a year,” I agree with Dr. Ravi.

My second year at Ely U starts on Monday, and even though over three hundred and sixty-five days have passed since that night, I’m not sure I’m any better.

At least I found a way to stop feeling numb.

Shifting in the leather chair, I absentmindedly run my fingers up the sleeve of my hoodie, just grazing my wrist. I feel the split skin, and some sick satisfaction in knowing Dr. Ravi has no idea what I do in the dark.

“Are you still keeping away from horror?” she asks, bursting through my smugness.

I run my tongue over my dry lips to buy time. For a second, I’m running through the woods again. I was drunk. It was dark. Hot. Cortland was so close to me, laughing, nudging me with his shoulder.

I felt so alive. So safe with him.

Until I didn’t.

“Yeah,” I answer truthfully. “I don’t even know what’s out anymore.” I shrug, glance down at my white Chucks, see one of my laces is untied.

I remember how he tried to yank them off of me that night in the woods.

They were tied too tight, though, and when he was fumbling around with them, they only knotted tighter. He gave up, in the end. My jeans were around my ankles and he shoved my underwear to the side.

The shoes didn’t really matter at that point.

The box of memories threatens to burst again.

“Did you say no?” the detectives asked me. “Because Chase McGowan says you said yes.”

Heat rushes to my cheeks with that thought. It wasn’t even, technically, a lie. I had said yes. Before the woods. As a joke. Trying to fit in.

“Would you let us all fuck you, Remi?” Chase had asked me at that table as we took shot after shot.

I hitched up one shoulder, glanced at Cortland directly across from me.

My heart had fluttered in my chest. I was a virgin and he knew it.

I wasn’t supposed to think about fucking.

My stepdad would kill me. But he was out of town.

That night, I was free. Free, and buzzing from a few too many drinks.

“Yeah,” I’d answered Chase, eyes on Cortland.

His had narrowed with my answer. “Sure.”

Everyone but him had laughed. Storm. Brinklin. Chase.

But Cortland’s jealousy made him even more possessive. It felt kind of like love.

I sit up straighter, trying to blink the memory away. Of that night, and all the ones after. The next morning.

My stepdad, Silas, waiting by the door with a Scotch in hand.

I skip over that in my mind. The glass. The call. All of it.

Charges were filed. Due process forged ahead.

Not long after, it was all dismissed. “You may not have said yes, but there’s just not sufficient evidence that a crime was committed.”

If the emptiness I felt that night, the morning after, and the weeks after that counted as evidence, they’d be behind bars.

But they’re not.

Don’t think about it.

“Well,” I sigh, desperate to talk about anything that isn’t that, “I don’t mean to cut this short but my roommate?—”

“Sloane?” Dr. Ravi prods, still tapping her pen against the notepad. She arches a brow, her dusty pink lips pulling into a soft smile. I know what she’s doing. Reminding me that she remembers me. That I’m not just another trauma walking into and out of her office.

I mean, I’ve been coming here since a few weeks after it happened.

Since Sloane attends EU, too, I’m not surprised she remembered.

Besides, Sloane is one of my only friends.

Best friends since middle school, when her family moved to Aben, my hometown, just ten minutes from here.

We were cheerleaders together at West River.

We both gave that up once we got to Ely.

Her, for more of a social life.

Me, because I was never really invested in the first place. My mom wanted me in it and after she passed, it was a nice distraction. A way to get out of my house. Put more distance between me and my stepdad.

My stomach twists into knots.

“Yeah, Sloane,” I say, taking one hand from my pocket and shoving a lock of orange hair behind my ear.

“How is she these days?” Dr. Ravi asks, dropping her pen and settling into her chair. A tactic she uses when she doesn’t want me to go so soon.

I sigh, running my hand down my jeans.

“She’s great,” I tell Dr. Ravi. “I stayed with her over the summer.” Worked at the only coffee shop in Aben. Saved it all, because aside from work, I rarely left the guest room the Stevens let me use.

“Get up to anything fun?” Dr. Ravi asks, as if she knows that I definitely did not.

I slept with a nightlight. Had nightmares. Woke up sweaty and sometimes, screaming. I’d gasp in the night, remembering their hands all over me. Them, inside of me. And that hollowness I felt in the aftermath.

Thinking that’s all I was good for. Being used.

“Nope,” I answer Dr. Ravi. “Not really.” I stand, tugging down my black hoodie, clenching my phone again. My palms are sweaty, and I know it’s going to be hot as hell on the ten-minute walk back to the dorm, but I made sure I couldn’t take this hoodie off.

I don’t even have a bra underneath it. It’s baggy enough that no one could know that by looking, but I know.

I grip my phone tighter.

And for a second, I’m looking for it again. Crawling on my hands and knees, in the dirt and bramble of the woods. I’m trying to find where it dropped, but everything seems to spin around me. I was numb from the pain then, numb from everything. Then he’s there, dangling my phone in front of my face.

“Looking for this, pretty baby?”

I grip my phone tighter. I don’t think I’ve been without it once since that night. Not for a second.

“I’m going to go,” I tell Dr. Ravi. “See you next week.” I turn to leave, not bothering to be dismissed.

I’ve started to dread these sessions.

I used to find them cathartic. This was a room I could escape to and cry in.

Now, it’s just a place I relive the trauma I want to forget.

“Remi?” Dr. Ravi calls softly as I get to her door.

I close my eyes tight, steeling myself. But I don’t have to say anything, because she keeps talking at my back.

“You have my number in your phone?”

I don’t like the way she asks that question. As if she thinks I’ll need to call her or something. We’ve discussed this. I’m not going to do that. Ever.

I turn to stare at her. She hasn’t brought this up in months. Not since the last time I broke down in her office and cried so hard my nose started to bleed.

Thinking about it makes my face burn.

“Why are you asking me that? You know I do.” And you know I’m not going to call you.

She bites her tongue, literally, her white teeth flashing as she does so with an open mouth. Then she drops her gaze, looking down at her empty notepad. “Just checking,” she says softly, and I know she’s lying.

My blood runs cold.

But I decide to ignore it.

There’s no way… just no way.

I shrug. “Cool, see you next week.” Then I turn and walk out, my head down, my fingers tight around my phone.

There’s no fucking way.