“Yeah,” Rowan says. “I mean, she will be.”
“Where is she?” His voice echoes from the hallway outside my apartment door, and I pray Rowan doesn’t let him inside. I don’t want to know how he’ll look at me—With pity? With disgust? With anger? I don’t want to see any of it.
God, please just go away. I don’t want to see his face.
“She’s sleeping,” Rowan lies for me, and I bury my nose in the overstuffed pillow, wishing I could live inside it where no one would ever find me. “I’ll have her call you, okay?”
Adam’s voice asks, “Are you staying here tonight?”
“Yeah,” Rowan answers.
“Here’s her purse,” Joel says, almost too quietly for me to hear, and Rowan gasps.
“Oh my God, what happened to your hands?!”
“He shouldn’t have touched her,” he answers in a voice that gives me chills, dangerous and unapologetic.
I’m curious about his hands, but the door clicks closed. I pad to my cracked bedroom door, peeking out and seeing that Rowan has stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her. If I wasn’t so physically and emotionally exhausted, I might care enough to put my ear to the door and eavesdrop on the rest of their conversation. Instead, I climb into bed and pull the covers up to my neck, pretending that today was just a bad dream and that I didn’t invite Cody to put his hands all over me.
That I didn’t deserve what happened.
Chapter Eight
THE NEXT MORNING, the sound of my own pained groaning wakes me from a restless sleep. Every muscle in my body aches like it’s been run over while I slept, and when I put pressure on my hands to lift myself off the bed, I inhale a sharp gasp and fall back against the mattress. Tears sting my eyes when I lift my wrists in front of my face and see the angry red and purple bruising marring my olive skin.
“Dee?” Rowan calls from the other side of my closed door. “Are you alright?”
Last night, she tried to crawl in next to me because she thought I needed the comfort, but what I really needed was to be alone. I told her I wanted to sleep by myself, and she reluctantly left my room to sleep in her own bed. I’m not sure which was worse about last night—having Cody put his hands all over me or breaking down in the shower afterward like some kind of helpless victim.
Rowan jiggles the knob. “Dee, are you okay?”
I clear the gravel from my throat. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
A long moment of silence passes, and I know she’s still lingering behind the door. “I’m going to make breakfast. You want anything?”
She’s in for a surprise when she opens the fridge and finds nothing but expired butter and a jar full of pickle juice. “No,” I answer, “I’m going back to bed.” I hesitate and then add, “You should go back to Adam’s. I might be out for a while.”
Rowan’s voice is sad and careful when she says, “Dee . . . can I come in for a minute?”
I attempt to run my fingers through my hair in a nervous gesture, but end up hissing through my teeth when lightning pain reminds me of the bruising. “I’m tired, Ro. I’ll call you, okay?”
I think I hear her sigh against the crack in my door; then she says with stubborn insistence, “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
I ignore her when she knocks on the door later to offer me lunch. I ignore her when she recruits Leti to try to talk me out of my room. I ignore her when she whines, threatens, and tries to bribe me with strawberry pancakes and chocolate ice cream. And I fall asleep ignoring the near constant texts and calls I receive from Joel.
The next morning, his voice is the one that wakes me.
“Dee, open up.” His pounding on my door causes me to bolt upright, putting all of my weight on my bruised-to-hell wrists.
“Fuck!” I cradle my arms in my lap and grit my teeth.
“I’m not playing games, Dee! Peach says you haven’t eaten anything. I brought you IHOP and you’re going to come out here and eat it.”
“Go away,” I growl. Joel is the last person in the world I want to see right now. Making a fucking fool of myself wasn’t what I wanted to do to win his attention.
“Are you seriously going to sit in there feeling sorry for yourself?”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s not the girl I know!”
“YOU DON’T KNOW ME.”
“Last chance,” he says.
“Or what?” I challenge.
I hear muffled voices and then Joel saying, “Fuck yes I’m going to break this door down. What’s she going to do, starve herself?” Speaking to me, he threatens, “One.”
I glare at my closed door, not falling for his bullshit.
“Two.”
“Get bent, Joel!”
“Three.”