teeth together. Now it’s not fear that I taste in my mouth. It’s just blood. I must have bitten the inside of my cheek.
“Urrgghhh! ASSHOLE!” I yell the insult, even though he probably can’t hear me. Of all the dumb, shitty, cruel things he could do…
I oscillate wildly between anger and relief as I pace up and down in front of the door.
A minute passes.
I gouge my fingernails into the meat of my palms, digging so hard my hands begin to throb.
Another minute.
Another.
I’m going to fucking kill him. Dad won’t be so pally-pally with him when he finds out that he came up here and scared the shit out me like this.
Another minute.
Not that I can tell Dad. If I do, I’ll also have to tell him that I was here alone, and then he’ll never let me come again.
Another minute.
The engine revs to life outside. Light floods through the living room window, throwing everything into stark relief, shadows climbing the walls.
Shit.
I don’t even decide to do it. I act without thinking, throwing open the cabin door and storming barefoot out into the night. Alex is sitting in the driver’s seat of an old Camaro, his hands resting on the steering wheel. His eyes lock onto me as I charge toward him; he remains expressionless as I pitch up at the side of the car, raise my fist and smash it into the driver’s side window. Pain explodes through my hand, sharp and breathtaking, stars spangling, flaring in my vision.
“FUCK YOU, ALEX MORETTI!” I spin around, mud squelching up between my toes as I shake out my hand, walking away from the car. Fuck, that really, really hurts. I cradle my hand to my chest, holding it there, waiting for the pain to subside, but it only seems to get worse. The car door opens and closes again. Alex doesn’t say a word, which is almost the most infuriating part of all of this. He doesn’t even ask if I’m okay.
“You know,” I hiss. “You know what happened. You know…what they did. You know how fucking frightening it would be…for me to have someone roll up here…in the dark, when I was alone…”
I’m crying, and I don’t know if it’s because my hand hurts so much, or because I’m still reeling from the fear and the panic of what might have been about to happen to me. Soon, I’m sobbing, and I can’t control it. I’m straining for breath, fighting not to collapse. I can feel myself slipping, drowning, tumbling, descending into some broken kind of madness that I have never allowed myself to succumb to before. Not even after it happened. Not even when my friends turned on me, and I found myself shunned…
I am breaking.
I am splintering.
I am finally shattered into pieces.
Alex is right in front of me, then. He’s holding out his hands, dark eyes calm and steady. “Va bene. Va bene. Respira, Argento. Respira. Shhhh.”
I want to smash my fist into his face, just like I smashed it into the car window. Instead, when he takes a slow, obvious step toward me, I fall into his arms and bawl into his chest. His arms wrap around me tight, and for the first time since that night in Leon Wickman’s bathroom, I cry as I am held. The smell of laundry detergent, pine needles, and Alex roars inside my head as I suck in breath after breath. My hands are fisting his t-shirt, pulling hard at the fabric, but he doesn’t push me away. Not even when I let go and slam my balled-up fist against his chest. Or any of the other five or six times that I hit him as hard as I can.
“Shhhh. It’s okay. Breathe, Silver. Breathe. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t fucking have me. None of this has anything to do with him, and yet I can’t manage to shrug free of him. It hurts too fucking much. God, I knew it did, I knew it was there, eating away at me, but I’ve distanced myself so effectively from the pain that I had no idea how crippling it would be when it finally overcame me.
I lose myself for a long time, and Alex doesn't falter. He stands firm, crushing me to him, whispering to me in both English and Italian as the out of control emotion gradually begins to ebb. After what feels like a lifetime, a dull, numb kind of calm settles over me, and I begin