Page 44 of What Goes Around

“Get. Out.”

For a moment, I wondered if he’d try something.

Lunge at me. Knock the phone out of my hand. Call my bluff.

But fear got there first.

I saw it in the way his jaw tightened, in the quick flick of his eyes to the phone, to the girl, back to me.

He grabbed his shirt.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” he muttered, already backing toward the door. “You’re twisting—”

“Get out,” I said.

That was all it took.

He shoved past me, muttering under his breath, and stormed down the hall.

I shut the door behind him and locked it.

Then I dragged the dresser from the far wall and wedged it under the doorknob, muscles shaking from adrenaline. Wood scraped loudly across the floor, but I didn’t care.

No one else was stepping foot in here tonight.

Only then did I turn to the girl.

Amy.

The name surfaced from my memories.

She didn’t stir when I called her name or touched her shoulder. Not even when I shook her harder.

I checked her pulse. Steady. Strong. Her skin was flushed but not cold or clammy. Drugged, but alive.

I gathered her clothes from the floor and dressed her methodically. The way I once wished someone had done for me.

She murmured nonsense under her breath, eyes unfocused, head rolling weakly to the side.

Leaving her alone wasn’t an option. I didn’t know her address. Her friends. Whether she even had any nearby. And I remembered what happened to her in my first life. How no one had been there when she needed someone most.

So I stayed.

I turned on the small lamp on the desk and sat on the floor beside the bed, my back against the wall, knees pulled up. The bass from downstairs thumped like a distorted heartbeat. Occasionally someone yelled or laughed drunkenly in the hallway. But up here, in this room, it was just us.

I watched the slow rise and fall of her chest. And waited.

And, because I couldn't stop myself, my thoughts drifted to my past life and later to the girls I had been held with. How the light in their eyes vanished after each assault. How, by the end, they all had the same hollow, dead gaze. They were always so young.

It was nearly five in the morning when Amy finally regained consciousness.

Her eyes fluttered open, glassy but aware enough to understand she wasn’t where she should be.

She jerked, breath catching.

“Hey,” I said softly, leaning in. “Easy. You’re okay.”

Her gaze snapped to mine. “What… happened?”