“Hello, Amber.” My father sounded tired and distant, like the lines that stretched from Chicago to Philadelphia weren’t long enough to transmit him completely. “How are you doing out there?”
“Just got settled,” I said. “Stopped over at Vincent’s place in the city for a few days, and now I’m in a nice house in the suburbs.”
“I hear you’re safe, though.”
“Supposedly.”
“Good. That’s good.” I could hear all the unspoken things in his tone, the apologies, the begging, and I wished I could hang up. “Ah, well, I just wanted to check on you—”
“I want to come home.” I said the words with as much force as I could muster. I wanted him to face it for once. “You know I don’t want to be here.”
“Honey, after what happened—”
“I don’t want to be here.”
“It’s safer there for you right now.” He let out a breath. “Hang around, recuperate, get your strength back.”
“My strength is back,” I said, which was true, or at least as much as my strength was ever going to come back had already returned. “I’m tired of hiding. I want to come home.”
“I know you do, honey, and I swear it’ll be soon. Things are gonna quiet down now, any day, and then I’ll get you on the first flight. I’ll get you another job and things will be okay.”
I clenched my jaw as a jolt of frustration ran through me. I hadn’t thought about my old job in a while—a job that I’d gotten on my own merit, without my father’s help. It wasn’t fancy, just some assistant job in a big marketing firm that specialized in tech companies, but it was a real gig, and I was getting ready to move out of my dad’s place and support myself for once.
And then the accident happened, and all that went to hell.
“I don’t want you to get me anything,” I said. “I just want to come home.”
“Soon, soon.” There was noise in the background at his end. “Okay, honey, I gotta go. You’ll be okay? I’ll call you later.”
“Dad—”
He hung up.
I sighed and turned off the phone. I wandered into the house and found Janine back in the kitchen. She took the phone with a smile then opened the refrigerator. “Are you hungry?” she asked.
“No, thanks, I’m okay. I think I’ll take a bath.”
“What a lovely idea. Do you want anything for it?”
I shook my head. “Thanks, though.” I hesitated then waved and left, heading back up into my room.
I didn’t run into Ren, which I was thankful about. I thought about him as I ran the bath water, my room door shut and locked. I sank into the warm tub and closed my eyes, thinking about his big hands and his charming smile, and how badly I wanted to get the hell out of here. I was stuck in limbo, half-healed but still suffering, unable to move on with my life because of my father and all his bastard friends, and I hated them, hated them so much for what happened to me, and what happened to others like me all the time.
All those dead people, dead girls and boys and innocents, caught in the crossfire of their war.
I sank back into the tub, and I tried to forget for a few minutes.
3
Ren
At first, the job wasn’t so bad. I hung around that big house, watched TV when I felt like it, bothered Amber when I got bored, and kept out of Mona’s way as much as I could. Things were quiet for a while, but after a few days it started to get real old, real quick.
Amber wasn’t happy. That got pretty obvious by the fiftieth time she told me to go fuck off. Not that I minded if she told me to go to hell, to be totally honest—I sort of liked that she pushed back against me. The girl had spirit, she was a goddamn handful, but I could tell something hung over her. I kept thinking about those fresh-looking scars on her body, so like the bullet wound scars I’d seen on countless other guys, and had a couple myself, but that made no sense. I couldn’t imagine what a girl like her would be doing with bullet scars.
One night, Mona decided to head into the city. Amber watched her go like a sad puppy, and I knew she wanted to go with her, if only to escape the house for a little while. I lingered back in the kitchen as she stomped over to the couch and flopped down, preparing for another scintillating evening of reality TV, three glasses of wine, and sleep before ten.
“Let’s go do something,” I said before she could lift the remote.
Her face popped up over the back of the couch like a prairie dog. Her eyes looked skeptical. “What do you mean, do something?”