Chapter One
LOLA
Sometimes I wondered if there was only one path each person’s life was meant to take. Did we have control over the decisions we made or were our choices laid out the moment we were conceived? If that was the case, then I was sure someone had gotten my path mixed up with someone else’s. Either that or this was my destiny. But we could change destiny.
At least I hoped we could.
My feet burned from the barely there sole of my shoes that had definitely seen better days. New shoes were on my very long list of things I needed but couldn’t afford right now. My life had become this merry-go-round that I couldn’t get off. Each time I stood, I’d take a step and fall, the ride refusing to let me go.
I’d learned a lot in my nineteen years of life. The most important lesson being to only rely on one person: myself. There was a time when that was different, but it was so long ago that I could barely remember it.
The streetlights blinked in the dark night, threatening to give up. I didn’t blame them, not in this neighborhood. I’d grown up in one of the houses here, right in line with all the others that needed extensive work on them but were left to rot. My front yard was just as overgrown and dilapidated as everyone else’s, and the stench on the streets became the cologne to my life. Most people called it a dump, but I’d simply called it home.
Welcome to Cresthill.
I stepped over the cracks in the sidewalk and lifted my head. The gray siding was scarcely hanging on the outside of the walls, having been beaten into submission with various activities throughout the years. My stepbrother, Emerson’s, favorite activity was knife throwing, and his preferred spot was anywhere he could find. It didn’t matter what I’d tried to do over the years to make this place a home, nothing ever worked. If it weren’t Emerson who ended up destroying it, then my stepmom or Dad would.
I sighed as I walked past the car that had sat in our small driveway for at least a decade, unmoved and planted in the earth as if it was always there. I balanced the ball of one foot on the bottom step and jumped onto the top step. It was second nature to miss the middle step now. The hole that had been made by someone’s head being smashed through it had been there for the last eighteen months. People should have learned years ago not to come after Emerson. He protected what was his with his life, or theirs.
The front door was open, only the screen door separating me from the house. I could smell the smoke from out here, and I was already dreading having to walk through the main room and past all of Emerson’s “friends.” I used the term loosely because they were nothing more than lackeys.
I pulled the screen door open, the squeak getting lost in the bass of the hip-hop music, and I stopped myself from rolling my eyes. Emerson was an emo through and through. He loved rock music almost as much as he loved the money he made from running his “business.” But apparently, that music didn’t go with his life now.
I stepped through the doorway and into the living room, the smoke from cigarettes and marijuana clearing a little and bringing me face-to-face with Emerson and his crew. The music channel blasted away on the large flat screen TV that was attached to the only wall left in the room. The sofas were nearly as old as me, threadbare and stained, and yet, we had the latest TV on the market. No, scratch that, Emerson had the latest TV.
The screen door banged shut behind me, announcing my presence, and they all looked up. Some days they’d all be so high they ignored me, but today was not one of those days. I could tell that the moment Emerson’s lips lifted into that grin I hated so much.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Emerson’s gruff voice announced, making sure all attention was on me—as if it wasn’t already. “Stayed out late, I see.”
I puffed out a breath and hooked some hair behind my ear that had fallen out of my ponytail. “I was working,” I told him, but I didn’t know why I even bothered. It was a waste of breath.
“Sure you were.” Emerson stood, trying to make himself look bigger than he actually was. Unfortunately, for him, he got his mom’s genes, and that also meant her height. He was a couple of inches taller than me at most, and I was only five foot four. Everyone around him may have towered over him, but that didn’t stop them looking up to him.
Emerson ran his hand through his shaggy, light-brown hair as he stepped closer to me. “Where you been all night, Lola?” He raised one of his brows, his hazel eyes focusing on me, a warning clear in their depths.
“I told you,” I said, trying to let my voice carry over the noise blasting from the TV. “I was at work.” I shook my head and moved through the room, ignoring everyone else, and headed into the kitchen. His footsteps followed me, but I ignored him and pulled open the refrigerator. The coldness that should have greeted me wasn’t there. “Shit.” I grabbed a bottle of warm water and slammed the door closed. “Why isn’t it cold?” I looked over at Emerson, where he was leaning against the doorframe.
“What?”
“The refrigerator, Emerson. Why isn’t it cold?”
His nostrils flared at me for using his name, but he shrugged it off as if I hadn’t said it. “Fuck if I know.”