Page 84 of Jerk

Her shoulders drop before she swings another leg over the windowsill. “You’ll get over it. You always do.”

I’m aware I can push her to her death right here and now. But instead, I watch her climb down the wall like she's fucking Tomb Raider. Then she disappears into the darkness of our yard.

Standing in the empty room, I'm left with the smell of her. The smell of us. It only makes my insides burn, my stomach ache, and my head throb. And before I know it, my fist goes through the wall.

Ringing hits my ears, the air around me thickening into a suffocating smog.

My eyes move from the fresh hole to my fist covered in pasty white drywall. It shakes, I pocket it, Hannah’s actions swirling in my head.

I head to the glass of liquor on the bar just as the doorbell chimes from downstairs. The burn of the gin settles in my chest as I work through equations in my mind.

That's what this was all about? Getting my phone?

I don't even know what she wants on there. She's the one with the heavy-hitting document.

“I’m so sorry to bother you, Miss Nam.” Hannah's voice comes through the walls, my body freezing. It's muffled, but I still hear every word. “I know I’m the last person you want to see, but I have something youneedto see.”

It hits me.

I know what she’s after.

Slamming down my glass, I grab a robe off my bathroom hook and rush downstairs.

“Don’t listen to her!” I call, hopping down the main staircase.

“Ryung?” My mother’s at the door, her head turning to me as the lines in her forehead crease. “What's going on?"

Hannah shoves my phone in my mother’s face. “He knows what happened to your husband."

My mother reaches for the phone before I get there, lowering the glasses on her face.

It’s too fucking late.

I can see the footage from behind her, Krystal hovering over my father with a bloody candlestick in her grasp.

My mother’s hand comes to her mouth as her eyes shift to Hannah. So do mine.

What the fuck has she done?

TWENTY-EIGHT

HANNAH

“Krystal!”

The tone in Michelle’s voice brings my shoulders to my ears as her son’s phone clatters to the floor.

Rye stares at me in a way I’ve never seen before. Eyes into slits, they judge, they burn. It’s like he’s holding a knife and I’m the only thing on the table to stab into.

“Hannah, you should leave,” Michelle says, her voice shaking as she turns to me. “You should leave, now.”

My chest fills with dread, a clarity coming to me that wasn’t there before.

“I-I’m sorry, I just wanted to—” Ryung storms to me, cutting off my words before he grabs my arm. His grip is tighter than it’s ever been, my skin burning as he turns me around and pushes me through the threshold. I still feel him between my legs, I still feel his body on me, but this motion is different. It’s cold. It’s harsh. “Rye, wait, I only did this because?—”

“You did this for you,” he says, gritting his teeth as he speaks. “Foryou, Hannah. You can’t handle being out of control. You can’t handle batting for anyone but yourself. I know what happened to you at school. I know what Krystal did. That upthere? It was all so you can get ahead. All so you canreallyfuck me outside of that dirty little cunt, and congratulations, Hannah. You did. You fucked us all.”

“Mom?” Krystal’s voice comes from behind him. “Mom!”