Page 18 of Veil of Death and Shadow (Order of Reapers #1)

18

MAREENA

Approximately Nine Years Ago, Three Years Before The Undoing

" S o," Sora bumped her hip against mine before dropping a five-pound bag of ice into the sink, "party started an hour ago. When is he coming?"

"Who?" I asked, playing dumb as I took a sip of her latest party drink. It tasted like lemonade mixed with rubbing alcohol and something distinctly herbal, and it was a true mark of our friendship that I managed to mask how bad the concoction was.

She scrunched up her nose. “That bad?”

“Um,” I said, searching for a description. Apparently, my masking wasn’t so great. “Strong.”

“Good.” She grinned, then slammed the bag down, breaking the ice up into smaller chips for her next batch. I'd be sticking with my classic vodka and soda for the rest of the night. "And what do you mean ‘who’? You know who. Your friend." I shot her a glare, but she shrugged it off. “What? It’s not every day that you bring home a friend unprovoked. Usually, I have to beg you to help me fill out these nights.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I glanced down at my phone, like I was checking the time, though I knew damn well what time it was, and that Levi said he'd be here around now. "I bring people over all the time."

We both knew that was a bald-faced lie, but it was the sort of thing you were supposed to say to an accusation like that.

She pinched my cheek with her freshly painted manicure. “Of course you do, pookie.”

A knock sounded at the door, and her mocking smile turned into a legitimate one. "Never mind, I’ll bet that’s him.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “So, he is real then."

The urge to roll my eyes was powerful, but I held strong. “Dick.”

She winked, then took to stirring her mixture in a bowl that was half the size that she was.

Jen, one of Sora’s friends from cosmetology school, opened the door. I could tell from Levi's smug expression, that she was giving him one of those appreciative, head-to-toe appraising sorts of looks.

Honestly, I didn’t blame her. Levi was the kind of hot you had to actively try not to notice. Part of me deeply wished he wasn’t.

"Hi, uh," he held up a bottle of something, "is Mareena here?"

"Go save that poor boy," Sora whisper-shouted, "before Jen runs him off."

Propelling myself with a deep chug of Sora's glorified jungle juice, I made my way back into the crowded living room. It wasn't crowded in the traditional sense one might think a party could get. There were only ten or so people here, mostly Sora's friends, though, at her insistence, I'd also invited two people from Mac’s Tavern.

When Levi’s gaze landed on me, his face stretched into a grin—one wide enough to showcase that damn dimple of his. I practically saw Jen swoon when it made its appearance. Again, a very understandable response. "Hey."

"Hey," I said back, ushering him in and away from Jen’s hungry stare that was not-so-discreetly lasered in on his ass, as he made his way into the cramped living room.

He glanced around, nodding at everyone as they ran through their names in the way people always did in these situations—as if Levi, or anyone really, could be expected to remember a dozen new names, let alone correctly attribute them to the right faces.

"I can take your coat," I said, holding my hand out as he tugged it from his long frame. "There's not much room, but we're keeping people's stuff in Sora’s bedroom for now."

We'd been living with Becca for more than six months, but it still felt so strange to think that Sora had her own room. That I had my own room. I'd taken ownership of the small office space. There was enough room for a full-sized bed and desk, and even a small bookshelf. No closet, but I made do with the one in the hallway just fine. My favorite part was the large sliding door that led to the small balcony and let in a gentle swath of the sunlight that was so rare this time of year.

As far as bedrooms went, they were pretty tight quarters, but compared to what we dealt with in Oleg’s studio, it felt like a damn penthouse suite in comparison.

"Can't believe I've actually been invited into the famous new apartment," Levi said, his voice low against my ear, so that only I could hear. "Honestly, I half expected you to text me the address of some nearby intersection before blindfolding me and walking here."

"Kinky,” I teased. “To be fair, I did consider going that route, but when I suggested it to Sora, she made the very good point that if we really wanted to keep the location a secret, we would need to murder you and then dispose of your body, which would make the entire tedious process far more work than it was worth."

Levi grunted and when I spun around to face him, the reason for it was immediately clear.

Sora had attached herself to him, her arms stretched around his waist in one of her signature hugs. The kind that made breathing a thing of the past.

For being so tiny, she had one hell of a grip.

"You came," she squealed. "I'm Sora, though apparently we already met and spent half the night together a while back.” She glanced up at him with a devilish smirk. “Tequila really must have worked her magic that night—you don’t even look vaguely familiar."

"What now?" Rose, one of Sora's cosmetology friends, asked from the living room, her voice filled with indignation.

Levi's eyes bulged wide as they met mine, his discomfort palpable.

"Nothing nefarious," I shouted back. "We hung out, Sora blacked out on tequila, we parted ways."

"Thank you," Levi mouthed, awkwardly patting Sora on the top of her head like he wasn't quite sure what to make of her—almost like she was a feral animal that terrified him. It was, perhaps, the most normal reaction to someone like Sora I’d ever seen.

True to his word, Levi and I hadn't really spoken in months. Last time he was in town, I had a shift at Mac’s, and while he stopped by for dinner and to check in, it had been a particularly busy night, so we weren’t able to catch up much. This afternoon had been the first I’d heard from him since then, and I’d already committed to making an appearance at Sora’s get together.

Surprisingly, he wanted to come. Said he’d never been to a proper house party before, though I wasn’t sure what exactly made a house party a proper one.

At the time, I thought he was kidding, but judging by the clear discomfort etched into every line of his body, his expression devoid of its usual snark, I was inclined to believe he’d been telling the truth.

Where he’d appeared so smooth and composed while teaching me how to throw a punch, he seemed way less at ease around larger groups.

Made total sense now why I’d spotted him lurking alone at the bar both times I’d seen him in the wild. Maybe he hadn’t been kidding before—maybe he really was as much of a loner as I was.

Which meant that he was probably even less used to friends than I was—something I would have never guessed possible.

"Let's get you a drink, shall we?” I asked, making my way over to Sora's puke-green mixture.”

“Yes, please.”

I scooped him out a ladle’s worth, then doubled it. He'd need some liquid courage to survive the mental stamina of this group.

Sora had these party nights once a month, and I usually made excuses to avoid them at all costs, sometimes even begging Chase to schedule me on those nights so I’d have an easy out. When that didn’t work, I usually dipped out of the center of things after an obligatory hour or two and holed up in my room with a book until everyone took off.

Her friends were nice, but they were almost all extroverts, which meant that I was generally exhausted for days after they left.

Sora peeled herself from Levi's side and made her way back to the party where people were arguing rather animatedly about which game they should play next.

"Thanks." Levi held the questionable liquid to eye level, like he was trying to manufacture the courage to take a sip.

"It's best if you don't overthink it and just drink," I said, taking a giant gulp of mine and wincing openly now that Sora wasn't here to see. "She takes great pride in her concoctions, but they are?—"

"Not good,” he hissed, smacking his lips. "I didn't even know you could make alcohol taste like that."

"We all have our gifts. Be careful though—a few glasses of that will hit you out of nowhere. So," I studied him, my own growing buzz making it difficult to suppress the smile stretched across my face, or my general excitement that he was here, “how've you been?"

“Still alive.” He took another sip and shot me a smug look over the rim of his glass. "I guess that means your friendship hasn't killed me yet."

“Well,” I smirked, "the night is still young."

“Guess you and Sora will have to figure out how to dispose of my body anyway then.”

"Hey Mars." James, a guy who worked in the back at Mac's, walked into the kitchen. He had on a mustard-colored beanie that made his light brown hair curl around the brim. "Never Have I Ever or King's Cup? We can't decide."

Levi stiffened slightly at the nickname, his brows pinched in question as he shot me a teasing look and mouthed “Mars?” silently when James wasn’t looking.

James wasn't a friend, but he'd adopted Sora's nickname for me almost instantly, much to my chagrin. But we also connected so superficially, that I almost didn’t care. He started working at Mac’s a month ago, and we hooked up exactly once.

It was a decision I’d almost instantly come to regret, since judging by the appraising look he shot at Levi, the whole 'casual, one time, no strings attached,' stipulations I'd laid out beforehand obviously hadn't been as clear as I'd thought they were at the time.

Men seemed to take offense at my disinterest in second helpings—that, or they saw it as a challenge; like in setting my boundaries, I was inviting them to play some game I had no interest in watching, let alone participating in. Or like in saying ‘yes’ once, I owed them every subsequent time after.

Women, however, usually took me at my word. For example, I'd also hooked up with Sora's friend Rose once, a very long time ago, but unlike James, she hadn't tried changing my mind after. Nor had she made shit weird between us when we shared space at parties like this one.

"Neither," I said. "I have a study group in the morning before my shift, so I'm not trying to get entirely shit faced tonight."

"Don’t be so responsible. Come on." James shifted closer to me—oblivious to Levi’s stare which had swiftly turned from teasing to a full-on deadly—his hand brushing up against my arm, as if he meant to grab it. The gesture was probably intended to come off as flirty, but it just made my skin crawl. "It'll be fun."

When he curled his hand around mine, I flinched, putting some much needed distance between us again.

“I said I’m good,” I snapped, then instantly tried to ease the annoyance out of my tone with a half-smile. James was clingy, but I also had to see him semi-frequently at work, so I didn’t want to make things more uncomfortable than they had to be. That said, I mentally pushed casual hookups with colleagues under the bad lessons learned list that I kept an unofficial tally for in my head. “You guys go ahead without me; I need a breather from all the socializing."

"Right.” James’s eyes slid to Levi then back to me, his jaw tight, but he thankfully bit back the retort very obviously brewing on his tongue. “Suit yourself."

He grabbed another drink and nodded at us once before rejoining the party.

I needed to let Sora know in the morning that he was officially on the not-invited-back list. I didn’t need that kind of energy in our space.

As soon as James disappeared, Levi leaned forward, ready to comment.

"Don't," I said, though there was no edge to my voice.

Levi gasped in faux shock. "I didn't say anything."

"Mhm," I grinned into my cup, "let's keep it that way."

He studied me for a second, the tension in his body slipping away like sand through fingers. “So, house parties, huh?”

I winced, realizing I’d effectively bulldozed Levi from playing whatever game the group landed on. “Shit, I didn’t mean to shut that down. We can go join in on their game if you want. Generally, they can be pretty fun if you’re in the right headspace for them.”

“Nah,” he said. “I’ll hang back with you, if that’s okay. I don’t think big crowds are really my thing.”

His gaze traveled over the kitchen, mentally clocking every design choice with a soft nod.

Sora would be pleased. She’d put a lot of work into making this apartment feel like a home. Becca, our roommate, was hardly around, and had pretty much used the place as a landing pad to crash in when she wasn’t at work or with her boyfriend.

“Mine either. Sora mostly hosts these as a stand-in for how she imagines college parties would be if we lived on campus somewhere.” I shrugged. “She doesn’t want us to miss out on any quintessential age-appropriate experiences.” I glanced up at him. “Her words, not mine.”

It was something she took very seriously. There was a four-page list in one of her old journals that tracked different experiences and events that Rina had either made passing mention of when they were younger, or else random things Sora imagined her sister would have loved if she was still here with us.

Rina had always been the most adventurous and outgoing of the three of us. Back then, Sora was quieter, kept mostly to herself. Sometimes that meant she got swallowed up by her sister’s shadow. But after Rina’s death, it was like she’d taken on some of her traits and transformed them into something that made more sense for her—a way to honor her memory, like she was still with us.

We tried to tackle at least one thing on her list a month. The frat-house style game night sort of stuck though, and while it wasn’t my favorite way to kill an evening, I liked doing what I could to help Sora feel closer to Rina.

I nodded at the bottle hanging at Levi’s side. “What’d you bring?”

“Wine.”

I let out a low whistle. “Fancy.”

Not exactly the illegal beverage that came to mind for a party hosted by eighteen-year-olds, anyway.

“Not really.” He held it up, studying it. The bottle was dark, the label an almost comically loud range of colorful cartoon dog faces. “I know nothing about wine. I always just go with the coolest label. And this one had dogs.”

“I like dogs,” I said.

“I know.”

“Well, we can either go join the party and share your dog wine,” I shot him a look, “or we can ditch them entirely and hoard the whole thing for ourselves while we sit on the balcony and people watch like a pair of curmudgeonly gargoyles.”

“The latter sounds like my ideal house party, actually.”

“Mine, too.”

I glanced at the bottle. Twist off. Perfect.

I didn’t think we actually owned a bottle opener, now that I thought about it.

I grabbed a few blankets from the hallway closet and nodded for him to follow me through my room to the balcony—and then instantly regretted that I hadn’t bothered cleaning in here. My room was usually off limits at these things—Sora always made sure I had a place to escape to in case I needed one—so it hadn’t even registered.

He took in the room, his eyes tracing every inch of it, as if he was trying to catalogue everything, filing away each tiny detail.

My cheeks heated under his appraisal, and I fought the urge to justify my haphazardly selected posters and precariously arranged stacks of books. There was a particularly spicy novel opened on my nightstand and I desperately hoped that he didn’t catch the title.

I slid the balcony door open and waited for him to pass through, the frigid air like a balm to any lingering vestiges of embarrassment.

The chill went from welcome to downright wintery in a matter of seconds though, and I curled myself up in one of the blankets before handing the second to Levi and claiming one corner of the wicker couch.

We’d gotten the couch used for our favorite price—free—in some neighborhood group, but it had definitely seen better days.

I held my breath when Levi sat down, hoping like hell it didn’t collapse under our collective weight. The wicker creaked and groaned, but after a few seconds, it silenced its protest beneath us.

“I like your place.” Levi twisted the cap off the colorful dog wine and offered the first sip to me, while he settled his blanket over his legs.

Shit. I’d forgotten to grab glasses.

When I glanced at him, I expected to see the lie in his eyes, but all I saw was earnest approval. He hadn’t directly mentioned it, but sometimes you could just look at someone and know that they were used to wealth. Or at least moderate comfort. Levi had that vibe.

And while I adored the home that Sora and I created here—it truly was shaping up to be everything we’d dreamt of—it was far from glamorous. Most of our things were mismatched, used to the point that they were on their last legs—well-loved as Sora liked to frame it. Neither of us came with much, so the place was also pretty barren. Becca’s previous roommates had taken their things, and they’d clearly been the ones in charge of most of the shared furnishings. But every week, it seemed like Sora would find something special to add—like she was collecting little puzzle pieces throughout the city in a scavenger hunt only she could complete.

“It feels like a good home,” he added, threading his fingers through the small holes in the crocheted blanket. Sora picked it up for three bucks at a thrift store last week. She couldn’t bear the thought of some, likely dead, old woman’s hard work sitting on a shelf and collecting dust, not getting the love it deserved. And neither of us would ever be getting hand-made items from a doting grandmother, so by her logic, we were the perfect adopters.

“Yeah, I guess it is.” It was definitely on its way to becoming one, anyway. I felt more at ease here, more stable than I had in as long as I could remember. Like for once, I could come up for air and let my lungs take their fill of it.

For the first time in a long time, Sora and I could exist as loudly as we wanted. No one was going to find us and toss us back into a system that had already failed us too many times. We had jobs, we were figuring out what we wanted out of life, and we were no longer dressing up as Oleg’s dead mother while he lived out his quirky fantasies.

Still, as good as things were, I couldn’t ever quite shake the hollow ache in my chest. Sometimes I felt it so sharply, it was like it existed entirely separate from me, the way it clawed and screamed at night, and I had no way to ease its pain.

“What’s your home like?” I asked, pushing the fleeting thought down.

Levi took a long sip of the wine, his stare locked on the small dish Sora set out on our balcony. It was for the crows. She was determined to befriend one of the city’s many murders—so far to no success.

“Honestly, I don’t know that I really have one anymore,” he said, whispering the words into the night, as if speaking them out loud manifested them into truth. “Or if I ever really did.”

There was such a quiet sadness in his tone that it was almost hard to look at him—like if I did, I might find it etched into his skin, a bleeding, festering wound.

“Home doesn’t have to be a place,” I said, echoing a conversation that came back to me as if in a dream, one we’d had many months ago, sitting along the canal.

“No,” he glanced down at his lap, his mouth hooking into a soft grin, “it doesn’t.”

“What have you been up to?” I asked, suddenly impossibly curious about what his life looked like when he wasn’t here, in these strange, isolated moments with me.

“A lot.” He shrugged. “Work has been—I don’t know—just a lot, honestly. I feel like we’ve been trying to build a dam with nothing but a few twigs—less, even. With nothing but some strands of hair.”

I couldn’t imagine private security fitting into the metaphor, but I supposed it could be a life-or-death kind of field in some situations.

“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing that he wouldn’t or couldn’t say much more about work. “That sounds miserable.”

He nodded, then turned to me. “What about you? Did I hear you mention a study group or something?”

“Yep.” I took a deep breath, trying to quell the strange mixture of anxiety and excitement the prospect conjured in my gut. “I’m going back to school. Enrolled in a class at the community college up north last month.”

“That’s amazing. Are you liking it?”

“It’s nice, yeah.” It had been years since I’d been in a classroom, so I was still getting used to the feel of it again. “I can only afford to take one class a quarter—between tuition prices and making sure I still keep all my shifts at Mac’s, you know? So it’ll be years before I can get a degree or anything particularly useful, but yeah, I’m excited about it.”

Loud shouts echoed inside, and I had a feeling the group had moved on to a more animated game.

Levi chuckled, then shook his head. “So, what kind of party games do you usually play at these things anyway? That guy mentioned a few.”

“Never Have I Ever?” I asked, surprised, but then I realized that if he didn’t really go to any parties, most social games were probably also equally unfamiliar. “It’s usually a game people play to get to know each other better, but when there’s drinking involved it tends to warp into a game designed to get people to reveal more intimate histories. Usually about their sex lives and stuff. Sort of like the dark and twisted cousin of two truths and a lie.” When he furrowed his brows, I continued. “Someone says two true things about themself, and one lie, and the other people have to try and guess what the lie is. It's a common ice breaker, I think, in classes and stuff? People act like it’s fun, but it’s always seemed like an unnecessarily anxiety-inducing way to get to know people better.”

“I see,” he said, a devious glint in his eyes, “though I can’t say it’s entirely shocking that a game intended to draw connections between strangers would be uncomfortable for you.”

“What?” I scrunched my face in exaggerated hurt. “I can be fun. Not to mention that alerting the room that the people closest to you have a tendency of dropping dead can be a super effective way at severing connections too, not just forging them.”

“Touche.” He grinned. “Let’s play one.”

“You want to go back in?” Though the thought of returning to the chaos emanating from our living room was about as desirable right now as going to the dentist.

“No, here. Just us.”

Something about the way he said ‘just us’, or maybe the way his eyes snagged on mine, had my stomach tightening—whether because of the wine or something else, I couldn’t be sure. “Okay. Which game?”

He slid his teeth over his bottom lip, considering. “I don’t really have any interest in lies, or causing you unnecessary anxiety in trying to suss them out, but we could do two truths?”

I took another sip of the wine, the bitter notes getting stuck on the back of my tongue. “How about one?”

“Negotiations.” He smirked. “You’ve a bit of a need to maintain control over every situation, don’t you?” He exhaled, dramatically. “But I suppose that’s a suitable amendment for a diet friendship. Two truths each might be extending beyond our limits. So our game can be one each—a truth for a truth.” He narrowed his eyes, studying me. “But I want a good one, not something anybody else knows.”

“Sora knows pretty much everything about me,” I said.

“Sora doesn’t count. I want something only Sora knows about you. Not something you tell just anybody.”

“Deal.” I burrowed into my blanket, watching the soft trickle of rain wash over the street. “But you’re going first.”

“How generous.” He grabbed the bottle from me and took a drink, my focus suddenly latched onto the press of his lips to the rim where mine had been just moments ago.

I blinked, shoving the thought away. “Make it good.”

He looked out over the balcony, watching as an elderly couple crossed the street below us, collecting his thoughts for a moment. “I brushed it off before, a few months ago when it came up—but sometimes,” he took a deep breath, an uncharacteristic vulnerability lining his expression, “sometimes I think that I’m deeply jealous of my brother. Of the life he gets to lead. He doesn’t even appreciate it. But then also,” his voice softened, until it was just a whisper competing with the rain, “sometimes I wish that I grew up with him, that things were different. That we were close, like brothers are supposed to be. That there was some way to erase all the anger between us and start over. I think,” he shrugged, then took another sip, “I think I might have liked being a brother, maybe even been good at it—in different circumstances.”

The deep sense of loneliness that always seemed to shroud Levi like a heavy cloak was almost suffocating to witness now. I felt it like an ache inside of my own chest.

I slid my legs closer to him, a fair compromise to the strange, suddenly intense desire I had to pull him to me in a bone-crushing hug. “What’s his name?”

“Eli.” He shot me a look from the corner of his eye. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s not perfect. Sometimes I don’t even understand why I want any sort of relationship with him at all. He’s arrogant as hell and can honestly be a bit of a dick. Completely full of himself. And he spends all his time constantly surrounded by his friends—all of them just as entitled and stubborn as he is. A bit obnoxious, really. But they’re all so incredibly close with each other. I just . . .” He shrugged. “The few times I’ve seen them or Eli, my knee-jerk reaction has always put me on the defensive. That, or I just turn into a complete asshole whenever I open my mouth. He wants to hate me, and I make it extremely easy for him to continue doing so. I’ve never really had something like what they have. I think, on some level, I’m just jealous—of Eli, and of them. They’re more his family than I will ever be.”

“Does he live close by?” I asked. “It’s not too late to try forging some kind of a relationship with him, if that’s what you really want. Maybe now that you’re both adults it will be easier?”

“Reasonably close, yeah.” He passed me the bottle. “There’s a lot of baggage there though.” When he shot me a flirty wink, I knew that the vulnerability of his confession was coming to an end. “For now, I think it’s best that I devote my efforts on one attempted friendship at a time. Which I guess makes you my test case.” He nudged his knee against mine. “Your turn, Mareena. Hit me with your soul-revealing truth.”

“Soul-revealing, eh? Way to make the game sound fun and inviting.”

I thought for a moment, but for some unidentifiable reason, my brain lasered in on the night that Rina died, the rest of my life blanking out of my memory as if it had never existed—my entire being suddenly condensed into that one night.

The one night I spent so much energy trying desperately to forget.

Some truths were better kept secrets. Not just for my sake, but for Levi’s, too.

Plus, Sora and I had sworn to never speak of the details of that night again. Doing so now felt like a betrayal. There was also the fact that I’d killed someone that night and, if I was being honest with myself, I didn’t want Levi to see me as a murderer. As resistant as I was to let him close, I also didn’t want him to disappear on me altogether either.

“That one.” He pressed his thumb between my brows, smoothing out the line there, his touch surprisingly warm and gentle. “That’s the one I want. The one that’s making you make that face.”

“I can’t tell you that one,” I said, the words automatic. “Some secrets are good, necessary, even.”

“Yeah, I get that.” His lips turned down slightly. “How about you tell me the parts of it that you can? The parts that you want to tell me?”

Muscle memory had me wanting to immediately resist, to pluck something else, something trivial, from my experiences. But there was also a part of me that wanted to tell him something deep below the surface, something coveted like this particular truth. To actually give the diet friendship a chance—to test the limits of my curse and dare to imagine a future where it was, indeed, broken. Where I could build connections beyond just myself and Sora.

So, instead of fully unpacking the events of that night, something I rarely allowed myself to do even alone, I streamlined and tucked them into something that could be shared—but still something no one but Sora and I knew.

“Um—” I started, not entirely sure where to go from there. It was kind of an odd feeling. I’d pushed that night down so far, and for so long, that I didn’t really know how to pull it back up to the surface, how to craft it into something I could give words to. “Sora and I were in the same foster home for a few months,” I said, finding my in. “Usually, when you hear the awful stories about foster care, it’s the parents you hear about.” I shook my head. “But Cheryl and Joe were pretty decent for the most part. They fed us, housed us, made sure we went to school and did our homework. I’d definitely been in less comfortable set ups over the years—as had Sora. Their son, however, was the problem—there was something sadistic about him, something not quite . . . right.”

A muscle in Levi’s jaw pulsed and his expression grew hard, but he didn’t say anything, his eyes silently urging me to continue at my own pace.

I ran through the details of the night in my mind, mining for what I could share.

Rina lived in that house with us too, and at first, she’d been fascinated by their son, Blake. She may have even had a bit of a crush for a little while.

Blake loved the attention even though he was a few years older, just shy of eighteen at the time, and shouldn’t have been thinking about her in that way. But he did, and where her interest had been brief and fleeting, nothing more than a school-girl crush, he’d quickly grown obsessed with her.

When she rejected him, that—well, that was when everything started to change.

And it changed quickly.

Blake was used to getting whatever he wanted. He didn’t know how to process the word ‘no.’

He took the rejection out on Rina the best way he knew how, by fucking with the people she loved most—me and Sora.

His cruelty manifested in small ways at first. He’d lock one of us in the closet, or we’d wake up to find ourselves handcuffed to our beds, where he’d leave us for hours until his parents got home from work.

But after a month or two, his pranks got darker, more twisted.

“Things got bad,” I continued, glossing over the details. “At first his parents tried to ignore it. Whether they truly didn’t believe that he was capable of violence, or they just tried to convince themselves otherwise, I’m still not sure.” Parents always want to believe the best about their children—Cheryl and Joe were no different. But we were the ones who had to pay that price. “Eventually, though, things got bad enough that even they couldn’t pretend what was happening was okay. They sent him away for a while to stay with some extended family—hoping distance would make things better, that his obsession was just a temporary fixation that could be corrected through some distance and time. And in the meantime, they started looking into getting us set up with a different home.”

They obviously hadn’t explained that their son was the main reason for this sudden relocation, or they would have moved things along more quickly. Joe was running for a local office, and he blamed the intensity of his campaign on the need for a change—told them he and Cheryl could no longer provide the attention we needed. It was an unusually slow process because there wasn’t any urgency.

But he clearly underestimated the depths of Blake’s obsession with Rina. He must have casually mentioned that we were leaving to his son, because when Blake showed up that night, he was angrier than I’d ever seen him. Years later, and I could still remember with iron clarity, the bolt of fear that shot through me when I saw the look in his eyes. It was a darkness I’d never seen in another human before, a desire to inflict as much pain as possible.

Levi shifted slightly, until his leg was lined up against mine, the gentle warmth and pressure of him sinking into me.

I fidgeted with my nails and pressed them into the soft flesh of my palm, stopping when Levi clocked the movement, brows tipped in concern.

“Anxious habit,” I said. “Don’t even usually realize I’m doing it.”

He handed me the label he’d already peeled from the wine bottle. “I have those, too.”

I took the label and started peeling it into thin strips, as I let myself think about that night for the first time in a long time.

The first thing I remembered was waking to Sora’s screams. Joe was out, and Cheryl was an absurdly deep sleeper—aided, most nights, by a few pills.

When Rina and I tore from our rooms, we found Blake hovering over Sora in the hallway, a knife pressed against her abdomen, his eyes wild with rage. I could smell the alcohol on his breath, like it had perfumed the entire hall.

Rina screamed and ran towards him, using all her weight to pull his arm away from her sister, but he lashed out. He threw her into the corner of the wall, where it lined up with the banister, his knife lodging inside of her abdomen.

There was a soft cry to my right, and I found Cheryl there, standing in her bedroom doorway, her eyes wide with horror, frozen like her brain refused to process the scene in real time.

Blake yanked the blade from Rina’s stomach, and I ran over to her, blinking back tears as I held my hands against the wound. I tried to stem the bleeding like I always saw them do on TV, but there was so much blood. More than I’d ever seen. Her shirt and the floor beneath were coated in it, and when I looked down, I found that my arms and knees were too.

Panicked, Blake pressed his ear to her chest, then started yelling over and over to his mother that she was dead.

“Gone,” he’d yelled, “gone, gone, gone.” Like he was a petulant child who’d lost his favorite toy.

My ears rang, and I remembered feeling like I was there, but also not. Like I was watching the scene from outside of my body. I couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t make myself believe what had happened.

Sora crawled over to us, her scream reverberating through the hall, but it seemed so far away, like it was outside somehow.

I remembered thinking at the time that that was good, that maybe the neighbors would hear her and come, that maybe they’d help Rina—since Cheryl was absolutely useless. But Blake’s words kept circling my thoughts on repeat—she was gone, she was gone, she was gone.

Panicking, Blake grabbed Sora by the hair and tugged, his eyes wide with fear. He started mumbling about how he had to kill us all too, because we saw what he’d done.

Cheryl had tears running down her cheeks, her eyes locked on her son—but she didn’t move.

She was just going to stand there and let him do it again.

Anger, deep and relentless and unlike anything I’d ever felt before seared through me, iron hot. I ran over to him, punching and clawing at his face, fighting desperately to get Sora out of his grip, to turn his vengeance away from her.

He tried to fight me off with his free hand, the one still clutching his knife. The blade sliced along my arm, but it didn’t hurt. I couldn’t feel anything in that moment, only all-consuming fury. I didn’t think, I just acted. In one fluid movement I placed my hand over his, wrestling for control until I twisted the blade in the direction I wanted it to be planted.

Shocked, his grip freed Sora. His eyes locked on mine as he screamed, his rancid breath hot on my face. He wrapped his now-empty hand around my throat, his fingers tight and unrelenting while I fought to peel them away. As my vision clouded, I abandoned the attempt, instead driving the knife deeper into his stomach, until he finally let go.

From his mother’s perspective, my back to hers, we probably looked like we’d frozen—locked in an embrace, a temporary truce. Like he’d just lost his footing and stumbled down the stairs, the knife sinking into his stomach in the process, a twisted mirror to Rina’s wound.

I fell to my knees, my fingers tracing the remnants of his grip, my throat sore and scratchy as I sucked down air.

When I turned back to Cheryl, her mouth was gaping open, like she wanted to scream but no sound would come out.

To this day, I still wasn’t completely sure whether she’d seen everything, whether she knew the truth—that I was the one who’d slid that knife through his skin as if it was nothing more than butter. That I’d do it again and again without another thought.

Most likely not. Something told me that if she knew what I’d done, she wouldn’t have let us leave as easily as she had.

After a long, panicked moment she fumbled her way over to her son, shaking and silent as she checked for a pulse. Only when she heard a car turning up the driveway did she stir back to life. Face pale, eyes bloodshot, she turned back to us looking more haunted and broken than anything I’d ever seen.

She mouthed the word, “run,” and Sora and I only hesitated long enough to glance at Rina’s lifeless body, still and bloody on the floor, an image to gut us in our nightmares for years to come. But then we never looked back.

“One night, he attacked us,” I said, editing the night down, skipping over the parts I could never put words to.

That he’d attacked us far more than once.

That I’d fought back that night.

That Blake’s death was ultimately ruled a tragic accident—nothing more than an after-school special about the dangers of underaged drinking and drugs.

That there was never any mention of Rina’s death at all—a final attempt on Cheryl and Joe’s part to cover up for their son one last time. Why tarnish his name with murder, too, right?

That no one came looking for us. Either because no one noticed that we were missing in the chaos, or maybe they did but they didn’t want to use expensive resources trying to hunt us down, or because Cheryl and Joe hid our tracks for us. It was the only shard of protection they had left to offer after failing so miserably all those times we’d begged them to listen—after pretending for months not to see the bruises or cuts, the lost looks in our eyes.

That before that night, I’d spent weeks lying awake in their home, wishing for Blake’s death, for the death curse to be real, just this once—only for it to be granted two minutes too late.

That powerful people could get away with anything, could warp the world to fit whatever reality benefited them most. While the rest of us paid the price.

That Rina paid a price steeper than any of us.

Joe had even won his election, the town’s pity from his son’s death no doubt lifting him up in the polls. Last I’d read, he and Cheryl had started a church—no doubt to cleanse their hands of guilt. Rina would still be alive if they’d taken their son’s actions more seriously.

I stopped looking them up years ago, desperate to leave that entire life behind.

“We fought back,” I said, my mouth dry. I took another sip of the wine. “We made it out of the situation alive. But after that night, after that place, we didn’t want to get stuck in another shitty situation and we didn’t want to be split up. So, Sora and I ran.” It took everything to keep my voice even—the tendrils of barely-constrained anger tugging at the seams I’d sewn so tightly over the years. “We ended up in Seattle and we laid low until we aged out of the system and could take our lives back into our own hands. The night we met you, we were looking for our first real apartment. Starting fresh, finally.”

“What happened to the son?” Levi asked, his voice thick and stiffer than usual.

I gave him a small, sad smile, took another long swig of the wine, and then gave him the only truth that I would ever be able to offer where Blake was concerned. “He never hurt us again.”