“I can see that about ya,” he observes, and it makes a smile tilt up one corner of my mouth.
His eyes drop to my lips for a second before reconnectin’ with my gaze, and there’s a palpable heat that simmers up between us. I shake it off and look to find Alder’s eyes watching me in the rearview mirror again, and there’s no mistakin’ the fervor I see in his gaze. Heat trickles down my spine, and I breathe deeply through the longin’ his stare seems to be callin’ out of me.
I blink and look away. Whatever’s happenin’ is a little too intense for this early hour and with demons I’m just startin’ to get to know. I focus back on what we’re talkin’ about.
“Anyway, everythin’ was fine until my roommate, Mackenzie, and I went to a party one night. Some football players were chattin’ us up, and Mackenzie had doe eyes for Channing Phillips. He was very popular around campus, and she just kept lookin’ over at me like she couldn’t believe he was talkin’ to her.”
I sigh and look down at my hands. I pick at the already chipping nail polish that I just applied the day before, and prepare myself for the memories I wish weren’t now stitched into the fabric of who I am.
“We were drinkin’ and chattin’ and havin’ a good time, but at some point I looked back, and Mackenzie and Channing weren’t there anymore. I didn’t really think much of it, but when it got late and things were startin’ to wind down, I messaged her and didn’t hear back. It was unusual for her to go off like that and not let me know, but I told myself to relax, that she was probably off havin’ fun with a football star and to just rein in the mother hen in me.”
I shake my head as a weary exhale leaves my lips, and emotion prickles my eyes. The guys are so quiet and still, waitin’ on my every word.
“When Mackenzie came home the next evenin’, I was fumin’. I had been so worried about her, and all it took was one look to see that I had good reason to be. She ran right into the shower, and I followed after her. I saw...bite marks and bruises all over her body as she stripped out of her clothes. She was frantic as she got under the water, and she started scrubbin’ at her skin and sobbin’ so hard she could barely breathe. When she turned around and screamed at me to get out, I saw the initials C.P. carved into her lower stomach.”
I hear one of them suck in a breath, and I pause, breathin’ through the rush of emotions that slams through me like a tidal wave. Even though it’s been years since it happened, or since I even spoke to her, I try to blink back the images of my best friend cryin’ a soul-deep kind of cry as I begged her to get out of the shower and come with me to the police instead.
Like it was only yesterday, I recall cradlin’ her on the floor as she flatly told me the pieces she could remember of what happened. I tried to hold her together as she broke, cryin’ endlessly until we were both wrung out and hollow.
“I should’ve been watchin’ for her. Keepin’ an eye out for my friend, but I hadn’t, and now this awful thing had happened to her,” I say quietly, that old guilt still gnawin’ away at me. “I didn’t know what to do. I eventually convinced her to report what happened. But everythin’ that came after she did that was almost just as bad as what happened to her in the first place. There were brutal interviews and horrible gossip, glares, and accusations flung by strangers. I wish I could say there had been some kind of justice, but Mackenzie was told that her case wasn’t strong enough, and the prosecutor refused to pursue it.”
Flint and Alder both shake their heads in disgust, and anger fills up the car like breaths you can see when it’s cold outside.
“That bastard carved his initials into her like she was a tree, and they told her there just wasn’t enough evidence, that her case wasn’t strong because she had been drinkin’ and couldn’t recall if she said no. They said they could try for a lesser charge, but by then, Mackenzie was done. She’d been hurt and harassed and put through hell, and she just wanted to get as far away from everythin’ as she could.
“I had been holdin’ back my anger, tryin’ to be there for her every second of every day like I should’ve been that night, but then Mackenzie got in her car, rolled down her window and told me never to contact her again. That she was leavin’ me, this place, and everythin’ that happened behind her, and then she just drove away. And I…I snapped.”
I look out the window, sunshine wrappin’ itself around the houses and buildings that are flashin’ past the window as we drive by. I wonder—just like I’ve wondered so many times before—if Mackenzie is okay, if she’s healin’, if she’s happy now, but I respect her wishes to this day, and I stay away. It’s the least I can do for her. I know that I’m just a painful reminder of that time.
Droppin’ my hold on my necklace, I clear my throat, nervous for my next words to come out. “A week after Mackenzie left, they found Channing Phillips dead, a couple counties over. His initials had been carved all over his body, and his perfectly healthy heart had just stopped, according to the
