I narrowed my eyes, rereading the text over and over again.

I don’t even think I breathed.

She was alone? Until Christmas?

I closed my eyes, and let out a laugh.

And all of a sudden I was as thrilled as hell to wake up tomorrow.

Chapter 8

“Should I be afraid?” my mother asked as I walked back in from the garage carrying a small ax.

“Always,” I mumbled, passing her at the kitchen counter and heading up the stairs.

I’d decided to take matters into my own hands, instead of hiring someone, and chop off the smaller branches jutting into the house myself. The ax would do the job.

“Just don’t hurt yourself!” she shouted after me. “You were hard to make!” And I rolled my eyes at no one as I disappeared up the ladder leading into the attic.

She’d been halfway decent since getting sober. Once in a while she tried making jokes. Sometimes I laughed but not in front of her. There was still a lot of discomfort between us, a crack I had lost interest in repairing.

But we’d gotten into a routine. She kept herself level, and I did the same.

Crawling through the small window on our dark third floor, I maneuvered myself onto the tree and inched towards the trunk where the branches were thick enough to support my weight. I figured I’d sit on the inside and chop the extra growth off and then climb down to the ground when I was done. I needed to work top to bottom and eventually get to the branches at my window—the whole reason I’d started this job.

But as I raised the ax to start, I nearly dropped it.

“You think his treatment of me is foreplay?” I heard Tate’s aggravated shouting, and I halted.

What? Foreplay?

“Yes,” she continued, and I stopped what I was doing to listen, “it was foreplay when he told the whole school I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and everyone made farting noises as I walked down the hall freshman year.”

My eyes widened, and my pulse pounded in my neck. Was she talking about me?

“And yes.” She kept going, talking to someone I couldn’t see. “It was completely erotic the way he had the grocery store deliver a case of yeast infection cream to Math class sophomore year. But what really got me hot and ready to bend over for him was when he plastered brochures for genital wart treatments on my locker, which is completely outrageous for someone to have an STD without having sex!”

Oh, shit.

She was definitely talking about me.

Grabbing a branch above me, I pushed myself up onto my feet and climbed over to the other side, careful to stay out of the view of Tate’s open doors.

Another girl was talking, probably her friend K.C., and I caught something about fighting back.

I slid down another branch, starting to feel like a perv for snooping on their conversation. But hey, they were talking about me, and that made it my business.

“I’ve told you a hundred times, we were friends for years,” Tate spoke. “He went away for a few weeks the summer before freshman year, and when he came back, he was different. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

And my fists clenched.

K.C. didn’t need to know my shit. Tate had no right airing our business like that.

The familiar swirl of piss and vinegar churned in my gut, and I felt my body warm.

“We’re going to have an amazing year.” Tate’s voice was lower now and stronger than before. “I’m hoping Jared has forgotten all about me. If he has, then we can both peacefully ignore each other until graduation. If he hasn’t, then I’ll do what I think is best. I’ve got bigger things on my mind anyway. He and that asshat Madoc can poke and prod all they want. I’m done giving them my attention. They are not taking my senior year.”

I’m hoping Jared has forgotten all about me.

And I’d almost thrown my future away in my need for her?

I’m done giving them my attention.

She hated me. She’d hate me forever, and I was a stupid f**king prick for wanting her when we were fourteen.

No one wants us. I knew I didn’t want you. My father’s voice crept into my head.

I climbed back over to my window and crawled through, not caring if they saw me. Tossing the ax onto the floor, I walked over and switched on my iPod dock to Five Finger Death Punch’s Coming Down and grabbed my phone to text Madoc.

Party tonight? Mom’s leaving around 4. My mother escaped every Friday night to her boyfriend’s in Chicago. I still hadn’t met the guy, but she almost always stayed the entire weekend.

Hell, yeah, he texted not a minute later.

Drinks? I asked. Madoc’s dad had a liquor store—or close to—in his basement along with a wine cellar. The guy was hardly ever home, so we took what we wanted, and I supplied the food.

Got it. See you at 7.

I threw my phone on the bed, but it buzzed again.

Grabbing it again, I opened up a text from Jax.

Dad called again.

Son of a bitch.

My father was finding ways to get Jax’s number, and he knew he wasn’t supposed to be calling him. Abusing him was one of the reasons my father was in jail, after all.

I’ll handle it, I texted.

Looking at the clock, I saw it was only ten in the morning.

Just go today, I told myself. Get it over with for the week, and you won’t have to go tomorrow.

These trips to my father’s ate at my insides, and I dreaded them. There was no telling what he’d say to me from one week to the next. Last time, he’d told me, in graphic detail, about how he’d dropped my mother off at the abortion clinic one day to get rid of me. And then, how he’d let loose on her when she hadn’t gone through with it. I didn’t know if the story was true, but I tried to just let the insults, stories, and taunts fly past me. Most of the time they did. Sometimes they didn’t.