Lost Girls(76)

I was probably going to forgive her someday. It just wasn’t today.

The worst of them all was when Dylan showed up, standing in the doorway as if hesitant to come in. He looked even more gorgeous than before, despite the fact that there were dark circles under his eyes and his hands were trembling. I’d been thinking about him a lot, when I had coherent thoughts, and now that he was here I didn’t know if I could do what I needed to do.

“Hey,” he said from the doorway, like a creature of the night hoping to be invited in. He didn’t wait long enough to hear whether I wanted to see him or not. He made his way across the room, his eyes always on mine, his lips parted slightly like he wasn’t sure whether he should talk or take a chance on kissing me.

He settled for talking, which was the better choice.

“I’m really glad you’re okay,” he said as he sat on the edge of the chair, his fingers tugging at a small rip in the hem of his jacket. A long pause followed and I tried not to look in his eyes, at the person deep inside who had revealed so much of himself to me, the person I had fallen in love with when I wasn’t paying attention. Somewhere between that middle-school crush and finding out the truth about Phase Two, I had fallen for him. Deeply. Madly. And it was making it hard to breathe.

“I’m going through a detox program. It’s been pretty rough...” he admitted finally, his voice trailing off as he tucked his hands in his pockets to hide the tremors. “And I’m going to testify against the leader of the club, that guy with the Brooklyn accent. But I’ll still have a lot of community service to do, to get the car theft charges dropped. Your friend, Agent Bennet, is helping me and the other Ravens get everything straightened out.” His gaze flicked away, as if he couldn’t bear to look in my eyes. “I know you’re starting to remember things—”

“I remember you hooked up with Lauren.” I hated the bitterness in my voice, but for some reason, that betrayal had hurt the most.

He nodded, biting his lip. “Yeah, I figured you knew about that. Although, it wasn’t really a hookup. I didn’t, I mean, I couldn’t, even though we were broken up—” There was a guilty expression in his eyes that wouldn’t go away, something that bothered him a lot more than what had happened with Lauren. “Look, everything that happened to you is my fault, okay? I had no idea the people in those clubs were kidnapping people. If I did, I never would have asked you to join. I was the one who took you to Phase Two. I’m the reason you got involved in all of this. I trained you in the beginning and taught you wrestling moves. Then you started figuring out other moves and kicks on your own. At first, we always went to the Silver Level together—”

He was talking, but I was watching a movie in my head—us walking through the door, me not knowing anyone, but the energy and the thrill making it feel like a party where everyone was always high. You could taste it in the air, you could breathe it in, and then when you finally got up on that stage, oh, wow, there was nothing like it. Not even getting the lead role in Swan Lake had been like this.

“And then, we started going by ourselves, on different nights,” he continued. “That was when we started forming our own teams and when you cut your hair and when we both started wearing black clothes all the time. We both changed—”

I saw myself laughing, hanging out with Nicole, her suggesting I bleach my hair and me telling her to add pink to hers. I saw us standing at the edge of a stage, sweat beading on our foreheads, our fists pumping air as we chanted and screamed and cheered, both of us longing for the day when it would be us up on that platform.

“None of this would have happened, if I never, if I hadn’t—” Dylan paused, staring out the window, at the world outside that didn’t seem to care that we’d been burned and shattered and nearly destroyed. I knew what he was going to say and I knew they were the right words, but they were also the worst words ever created. His eyes were focused on me again, the boy inside as defeated as Nicole had been. “If I hadn’t fallen for you, none of this would have happened to you. I’m not good for you, Rachel.”

That was the horrible and beautiful truth. I hated it. And I hated him for making me admit it. I had planned on breaking up with him, asking that we take some time apart, so I could figure out who I really was and so he could give up Blue Thunder. But maybe that had never been an option. Maybe we had both been ripped and shredded too badly. I wiped away the tears that were forming in the corners of my eyes, I fought the trembling in my lips. I couldn’t show that I was weak, not now. I had to be brave and strong if I wanted to survive.

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

His words.

Right cross to my jaw.

Him walking out the door.

Me falling to the floor.

It was a knockout. The girl who had never been defeated, not once, was flat on her back on the mat, staring up at the ceiling, at the black skies and the bolts of pink lightning, she was listening to the earthquaking boom of thunder that temporarily turned the entire world blue. She was crying, glad she was alone, a lake of tears forming around her, a lake that would soon be deep enough to drown in.





Chapter Forty


It was the second Saturday after I was released from the hospital and we were on a mission. Zoe had borrowed her mom’s car and we were spending the day exorcising my demons, Molly in the backseat, me riding shotgun. Earlier, when the sun merely tickled the freeways with fingers of light, we had driven down to Orange County, then on to Compton, and finally back to Santa Madre.