Next questions.
What is your typical Saturday night?
I can’t say cleaning guns and planning our next heist, can I? That will send all eligible prospects running. I like to walk the beach at night. Does that count?
Fuck me, what am I doing?
If I’m bad at this, I’m going to be bad at the real thing.
Chapter Two
FINLEY
I do not need to be doing this. It’s wrong, but I need an escape. Anywhere is better than here. Even if it means staying locked in my room, away from my stepdad, away from my mom, just … away.
Life wasn’t always like this. There was a time when I didn’t need to protect myself. My dad was alive then, and my mom was a happy bank teller. We were the typical family, the billboard of what a family should be like. A dog, white picket fence, kisses on the cheek every morning as we walked out the door as they left for work and I left for school.
Laughter and smiles never last. Happiness fades.
Especially when someone dies.
My dad died in a random robbery one night on his way home from work. He stopped at the gas station down the road, nothing new. It was the one he always went to because he thought the cashier was nice, and he believed talking to someone who was kind at the end of a long day was a great way to have a better night.
He walked into the gas station and never came out. Two masked men had followed him, locked the doors, and shot everyone without hesitation, including the cashier. They stole all the scratch-off lottery tickets and cash in the register before fleeing.
My dad died alone, near the damn candy aisle, drowning in his own blood.
Life hasn’t been the same since. It’s been three years, and with each year that goes by, nothing changes. Time hasn’t made anything better. Life has gotten worse, especially with Trevor being here.
My new stepdad.
My mom lost her job has a bank teller and now works the streets with Trevor. He is her pimp. Yep, my mom is a whore. She doesn’t seem to care, though. She stopped caring about everything when Dad died, including me.
She doesn’t believe me when I tell her Trevor is a creep and likes to come into my room at night and watch me sleep. I feel his fingers against me, running down my arm or caressing my face. I’ll pretend to be asleep as the bed dips and his fingers brush through my hair. He becomes more daring every night.
Trevor scares the living hell out of me.
It’s why I need more than what life has given me so far. I need an outlet.
“Finley! Get your ass out here. It’s time for school. If you miss the bus, I’m not fucking taking you again. You hear me?” my mom yells from the living room. I’ll bet anything she’s smoking a cigarette, sitting there in her underwear with a fan blowing on her. We don’t have air conditioning since Trevor or my mother won’t get it fixed.
Who would have thought having a/c in the middle of summer was such an inconvenience?
I download the app on my phone and stuff it into my pocket. I swing my dark auburn hair over my shoulder as I lace my arm through the backpack strap.
“Now, Finley!”
I roll my eyes at my mom’s despair. If she would stop doing the drugs Trevor gives her for one damn minute, she’d remember my schedule.
I’m a senior in the last semester of school. I don’t have a first block class anymore. I have a ten o’clock math class and that’s it. Getting out of this house at seven-thirty is fine by me. The less time I have to spend here, the better.
I open my bedroom door and smack into Trevor’s chest. He’s shirtless, sweaty, and smelling of booze and cigarette smoke.
“Well, well, well, look at you, Finley,” Trevor mumbles around the cigarette he has in his mouth, and the ashes flicking off the burning ember float toward the ground. He takes a step forward, his chest almost touching mine. His dirty fingers run through my clean, freshly washed hair, and he hums. “So damn pretty. Looking at you, it’s hard to believe you’re only seventeen. With a body like that and the face of a model, you look like you’re twenty-five.”
I slap his hand away. “Looks can be deceiving then. I am only seventeen. Those are facts. You should remember that.” Sidestepping him, Trevor blocks me and raises his arm to lean against the doorway. I try to move to the other side, to break free, but he blocks me there too. I sigh with impatience. I hate dancing, especially with him.
“Maybe you shouldn’t look so pretty then. Isn’t it what you want? Attention? You’re wearing those skin-tight jeans and low-cut shirt to show your small tits. If you don’t want attention, maybe cover up.” His hand slides around my backside and squeezes. Tears brim my eyes when he jerks me flush against his body. “Wouldn’t want anything bad to happen, would we?” he taunts.
I shove at his chest and run down the hallway, away from his wandering hands. I don’t say goodbye to my mom. I open and slam the door behind me and run through the woods like I typically do so Trevor can’t watch me through the window.
Once I feel like I’m a good distance away, I sag against the tree and glance toward the sky. “It’s all okay. You’re going to be okay.” I hate crying. It shows how weak I am when it comes to protecting myself. I don’t know where else to go. Trevor is a creep, but until I turn eighteen, it’s the only place I can sleep and eat.
Until I’m an adult, what are my other choices?
I brush the tears away and reach for my phone in the back pocket of my jeans. Out of habit, I glance around to make sure no one
