Chapter 2

Emily's POV

My father spun around so fast I heard his neck crack. We stared at each other. Him crouched by the cabinet, eyes wide with shock. Me standing one foot away with a kitchen knife gripped in my hand.

For one frozen second, neither of us moved.

Then his face changed. The surprise melted away and his eyes narrowed. His mouth twisted into something ugly and dangerous.

"Well, well, well." His voice was soft, almost gentle. "Look at you. My little girl, all grown up."

He stood up slowly, deliberately. Like he had all the time in the world.

"You gonna stab me, Emily? You got the guts to actually do it?" He took a step toward me. "Because I don't think you do. I think you're just like your mother. All talk, no spine."

The knife was shaking in my hand. When had it started shaking?

"You know what I do to people who pull knives on me?" Another step closer. "You want to find out?"

My hand was shaking so hard now I could barely hold on to the handle.

He smiled, and it was the cruelest thing I'd ever seen. "Give me the knife, Emily."

"Put it down!" My mother was in the doorway, sobbing. "Emily, please! Put it down! He'll hurt you! Please, baby, please!"

I looked at her. At her bleeding face. At her terrified eyes.

She wasn't scared of what he would do to me. She was scared of what I would do to him. Scared that her daughter would become a murderer. Scared that I would throw away my future, my scholarship, my one chance to escape this hell.

The knife clattered to the floor.

My father bent down and picked it up. He held it up to the light, examining it like it was something precious. "That's what I thought," he said, pointing the blade at me casually. "Useless. Just like your mother."

Then he turned back to the cabinet, dismissing me completely. Like I was nothing. Like I'd never been a threat at all.

My mother grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the kitchen. She pulled me down the hallway and into my bedroom, slamming the door behind us. Her hands came up to grip my face, her eyes searching mine desperately.

"What were you thinking?" she whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks and mixing with the blood. "Emily, what were you thinking? You could have ruined your life! You have a scholarship! You have a future! You can't—"

"I was trying to save you!" The words exploded out of me. "I was trying to save you!"

"I don't need saving!" she shouted back. "I need you to be safe! I need you to go to college and get out of here and never come back!"

"He's going to kill you!"

"Then let him!"

The words hung in the air between us. She clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes going wide with horror at what she'd just said.

"I didn't mean—" she started.

"Yes, you did," I said quietly.

I pulled away from her and sat down on my bed. I stared at the wall, at the familiar cracks in the paint that I'd memorized over eighteen years.

She stood there for a long moment. Then she sat down next to me and put her arm around my shoulders. "We'll get through this," she whispered. "It'll be okay. We just have to be patient. It'll get better. I promise it'll get better."

Lies. All lies.

It would never get better. Not on its own. Not until one of us was dead.

From the kitchen came the sound of my father singing, drunk and off-key and happy. Like he hadn't just beaten his wife bloody. Like he hadn't just watched his daughter point a knife at him.

I closed my eyes and let my mother hold me. Let her rock me like I was a little kid. Let her tell me her pretty lies about tomorrow being better.

But in the darkness behind my closed eyelids, a thought took shape. Cold and clear and terrifying.

I couldn't kill him myself. But what if someone else did it? What if I could make it happen without ever touching him?

I pushed the thought away. Not yet. I wasn't ready to think about what that meant. What I might have to become. Mom was right about one thing. I had a future. I wasn't going to throw that away just because I couldn't hold on a little longer. Five more months. That's all I had to survive.

My mother's breathing eventually evened out. She fell asleep sitting up, her head resting against my shoulder. I carefully eased her down onto my bed and covered her with my thin blanket.

I wasn't going back to sleep. There was no point. Closing my eyes would just rewind the last hour on a loop.

I pulled my backpack out from under the bed and started going through it mechanically. Calculus textbook. Physics homework. A thin folder with the college’s crest on the front—the scholarship award letter. Everything had to stay perfect.

The clock on my nightstand read 4:47 AM. School started at 8:15, and the nearest subway station was a fifteen-minute walk from our apartment. The ride itself took about an hour. But I hated rush hour—hated being packed into a train car full of strangers, hated people pressing against me from every side. If I left by 5:30, I could get on an empty train and find a seat by myself.

I changed into jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, wincing as the fabric brushed against the bruise blooming on my hip. Long sleeves, always long sleeves. Even in summer. I'd gotten good at making excuses—I'm cold, I burn easily, I just like how they look.

At 5:25, I slipped out of the apartment as quietly as I could. My father was passed out on the couch, snoring. An empty vodka bottle lay on the floor next to him.

The morning air was cold and damp. I started walking toward the subway station.

The streets were still mostly empty at this hour. A few delivery trucks rumbled past. A homeless man slept in the doorway of a closed liquor store. I kept my head down and walked fast.

The subway platform was nearly deserted when I got there. Just me and an old woman with three shopping bags. The train pulled in two minutes later, almost empty. I found a seat in the corner and pressed my forehead against the cold window.

By the time I got to school, it was only 6:45. The cafeteria had just opened for breakfast. I headed straight there—not because I was hungry, but because students who qualified for free lunch also got free breakfast. I'd qualified since freshman year, when the school counselor had noticed I never ate and pulled me aside to fill out the paperwork.

The cafeteria lady gave me a sympathetic smile as she handed me a tray. Rubbery scrambled eggs, two pieces of toast, a small carton of milk, and an apple. It wasn't much, but it was food I didn't have to steal from our empty kitchen.

I found a table in the far corner and ate slowly, making it last. The cafeteria gradually filled up with other early arrivals—mostly athletes coming from morning practice, a few overachievers studying for tests.

At 7:30, I threw away my trash and headed to the bathroom. My hip was still throbbing and I was definitely limping. I stood in front of the grimy mirror and assessed the damage.

The cut on my palm from the glass wasn't too bad. I'd kept my hand in my pocket all morning and nobody had noticed. But there was a bruise forming on my cheekbone that I hadn't seen earlier. Dark purple, impossible to miss. Probably from when I'd hit the floor.

I pulled my hair forward, trying to cover it. It would have to do.

First period was AP Calculus. I slid into my usual seat in the back corner and pulled out my homework. If I kept my head down, if I didn't make eye contact with anyone, maybe I could get through the day without—

"Emily."

I looked up. Ethan White was standing next to my desk, his letterman jacket slung over one shoulder. Ethan was everything I wasn't—popular, athletic, from a nice middle-class family in the suburbs.

He was the starting quarterback, with a full ride to State this fall, and for some inexplicable reason, he'd decided I was worth pursuing.