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I went through to the kitchen and pointedly didn’t look out into the hall. I didn’t need to see that again. I didn’t want to look at him.

I could still smell it.

But I ignored that. I had to.

His wallet was on the kitchen counter, where he’d dumped it after walking in the back door, like he always did. I pulled out his credit card and a handful of cash, shoving both in my pocket and leaving the now empty wallet on the counter.

My mind had never been this empty of thoughts.

It was like I knew that if I stopped, if I contemplated what was happening for even one second, I would fall apart.

I was going to completely lose my shit, and if I was honest with myself, I’d never done that before.

I didn’t know what losing my shit would look like, and it probably wasn’t the best time to find out.

I took a deep breath, used my sunglasses to push my hair off my face, and walked out the back door.

‘And then you picked me up.’

Brooke didn’t say anything, just stared at me, wide-eyed.

‘I picked you up?’

‘Yeah. On Third Avenue.’

‘Are you telling me,’ she said slowly, ‘that instead of calling the police and telling them about the dead body in your house, you got into my car and ran away?’

I thought I’d made that pretty clear.

‘Holy shit, Jessie,’ she said, putting her face in her hands.

‘You said you didn’t want to know,’ I reminded her. ‘We made a deal.’

‘I didn’t know what had happened!’

‘Yeah, that’s the point!’ I surged to my feet and threw my hands in the air. ‘You didn’t want to know, and I didn’t want to think about it.’

It took a moment, and then everything hit me like a brick smashing into my face. I dashed to the still-steamy bathroom to throw my guts up.

My knees hit the tiled floor with a sickening crunch, and my fingers clenched around the toilet seat as my stomach heaved.

I hadn’t let myself go back to the house – back to the Creep – because I’d known this would happen.

I’d known my body would betray me. And now the box was open, it was all coming out.

After a moment, Brooke came into the bathroom and carefully gathered my hair to the nape of my neck so I didn’t get puke on it.

She didn’t say anything, just rubbed my back in slow circles as I purged all the poison out of me. When I was done, she got a washcloth and cleaned my face of puke and tears and snot, then handed me my toothbrush and got me to scrub the sour taste from my mouth.

‘Come on,’ she murmured.

I let her lead me back into the bedroom and tuck me under the covers. I laid there shivering as she shut off the lights and bolted the door and pulled the curtains tightly closed. Then she got into bed behind me and held me close.

I wanted to protect her from all the ugliness that was still swirling inside me. It was too late for that now, though. The cat was out of the bag, and it wasn’t going back in. Whatever came next, I had to find a way of living with it.

I fell asleep with her fingers brushing gently through my hair.

It was early morning when I woke, but after the events of last night, I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again.

After my breakdown last night, I’d slept deeply for a few hours with Brooke safely next to me, then I’d woken up and only managed to get little snatches of sleep since.

I watched the sky lighten through a crack in the curtain while Brooke breathed slowly next to me, her eyelashes barely fluttering, so I knew she was fast asleep.

I didn’t want to wake her, and I really couldn’t lay still any longer, so I quietly slipped out of bed. I made a quick pit-stop in the bathroom to wash my face and tie up my hair, then found my jeans, pulled them on and took one of the key cards from the dresser.

I hesitated for a second, then grabbed Brooke’s hoodie out of her duffel bag. She’d barely worn it since we’d gotten past Idaho – it had been too warm. It gave me a layer of protection, though, while I was outside. With the hood up, it would be difficult for anyone to see my face.

At the last moment, I paused to scrawl a note on the pad of hotel paper on the desk:

Getting coffee. Be back soon.

The last thing I wanted was for Brooke to think I’d run away.

Ha.

Run away again .

It didn’t take me long to pick up our regular order from the Starbucks across the street, and when I let myself back into the room, Brooke was just stretching awake.

‘Hey,’ I said softly. ‘I went to get us coffee.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, reaching to take the cup from me. ‘How are you this morning?’

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘Really?’

I forced myself to consider that. ‘I’m worried about you.’

Brooke looked taken aback. ‘Me? Why?’

‘I feel like you think I’m lying. About what happened to the Creep. And maybe you’re thinking about calling the cops and turning me in.’

‘I don’t think that, and I’m not going to call the cops on you.’

Brooke put her hand on the bed, palm up, and I hesitated before laying mine on top. Her fingers curled around it, holding me tight.

‘What did he do to you, Jessie?’

I shook my head and took a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t rape. He wasn’t touching me like that.’

I didn’t know what to tell her. ‘Rape’ was a word I knew – it was a word I understood and could contextualize. But what the Creep had done?

Instead of words, I decided to show Brooke. I handed her my drink and she set it on the nightstand so I could get up on my knees and pull off her hoodie and my T-shirt.

‘Here,’ I said, pointing to the round burns on the inside of my biceps from where he’d put his cigarettes out on my arms. I stretched my hands out to her to show the tiny crisscrossing scars on my palms, my fingers, from being shoved to the floor dozens of times.

I turned my hands over to show her the weird bump on the back of my knuckle from where he’d broken my finger, then wouldn’t let me go to the hospital to get it fixed.

I’d taped it up myself, following instructions online, with a homemade splint made out of popsicle sticks.

‘Jessie,’ Brooke said in a tiny voice.

I wasn’t done.

I pulled my jeans off to show her the marks on my legs, the thick burn from a hot mug of coffee thrown over the top of my bare thigh, my mangled toe from where he’d dropped a skillet on it.

‘And this is just what stuck,’ I said.

Too many of the marks, the burns, the cuts had healed into nothing. The daily whacks across the back of my head, the punches, the slaps. The words.

Fucking pathetic

Weird bitch

Ugly little rat

Dumb fucking piece of shit

Stupid waste of space

No one’s ever gonna want to fuck you

Not a single person likes you

Not even your own fucking mother

‘How did no one know?’ Brooke asked, clearly shaken up.

I shrugged. ‘I guess no one looked.’

‘Oh, Jessie,’ she sighed, her eyes full of pity, tears ready to spill.

It occurred to me then that I was sitting next to her in pretty much just my underwear, so I scrabbled for my clothes, suddenly self-conscious.

‘What was I supposed to say?’ I demanded as I zipped up my jeans. ‘My mom’s boyfriend is mean to me?’

I yanked my shirt back on, working myself up. ‘My mom’s boyfriend calls me names? It sounds pathetic, Brooke. Everyone would’ve just thought I was being a whiny kid. No one would’ve listened to me. No one ever listened to me,’ I finished, not sure if I was frustrated or angry or upset.

It wasn’t like the Creep went from nothing to breaking my finger overnight. He was charming at first, trying to win me over when he started dating my mom. I knew him from church, but most of the activities were segregated by gender, so I’d never really interacted with him much.

My mom thought he’d hung the goddamn moon.

I made an effort in the early days, mostly for my mom, because she always seemed to end up dating losers, and the Creep was nice to her. He bought her flowers and took her out to nice restaurants, and soon she was dizzy with love.

But once my mom fell for him, he made it clear to me behind her back that he didn’t want me around. I was a blot on their otherwise perfect relationship, something he needed to get rid of.

It started with words.

Stay out of the way

No one wants you around

Make some fucking friends, you loser

And then it escalated over the next couple of months to pinches, shoves, kicks, a backhand across my face when I didn’t move fast enough for his liking.

The first time I was too stunned to say anything back to him, or to my mom, certain that she wouldn’t believe her perfect boyfriend could do something like that.

The second time he really hurt me, and after that, I was terrified of him.

It only got worse from there.

‘So you never told anyone?’ Brooke asked, shocked.

It took me a second to gather my vicious, violent rage and contain it.

‘I was too scared to tell my mom, but I did tell the girls’ youth pastor at our church. She said …’

Brooke let me have a moment, then squeezed my hand. ‘What?’

‘She said it was a serious allegation. And that I should pray about it. And that I needed to think very carefully about what I wanted to happen next, because once I said something officially, I couldn’t take it back.’

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’

‘No,’ I said. I extracted my fingers from Brooke’s so I could reach for my coffee. I wasn’t thirsty, I was furious, and I needed something to do with my hands.

‘I told her I wanted to kill him. I wanted him to disappear, to die, to be out of my life forever. I told her, Brooke, that I wanted him dead, and now he’s dead.’

I watched as the realization dawned in her eyes.

‘Oh, shit.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Exactly. You see why I had to get out of there?’

‘ Fuck. ’ She sighed heavily. Then she took hold of my hand again and brushed a kiss across my knuckles. ‘You know, I didn’t sleep so well last night.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I had some good thinking time.’

‘What were you thinking about?’ I asked cautiously.

‘I thought that if he was hurting you, Jessie, then he could’ve been hurting others as well.’

That felt like a punch to the stomach. I hadn’t even thought about that. I hadn’t been able to think beyond myself, what was happening to me, and how I could escape.

‘Oh, God.’ I pulled my knees up and leaned forward to rest my head on them.

‘Please don’t puke again,’ Brooke said with a little laugh that I knew was an attempt to lighten the mood. She reached up to rub gently between my shoulders.

‘I won’t.’ I didn’t feel sick, I felt cold . ‘That bastard was hurting someone else.’

‘Maybe,’ Brooke said. ‘I don’t know. It’s a possibility. If he was hurting another kid, maybe that kid told someone, and that’s who killed him.’

It all clicked together in my head, suddenly making sense.

‘Yeah. I could see that.’

‘Was he ever, like, left alone with kids from your youth group?’

‘All the time.’ I turned my head to rest my cheek on my knees and look at her.

‘I’m glad someone else killed him,’ she said. ‘Before I could get my hands on him.’