I used to have dreams.
Big ones. Stupid ones. Ones that used to keep me up at night in the best way. I wanted to be an author—wanted to write stories that made people feel less alone. Words that wrapped around someone’s ribs and held them tight like they mattered.
Now I’m eighteen with a garbage bag full of my life, walking the streets like a ghost, like every dream I ever had is just another thing my mother stuffed in a bag and threw to the curb.
My shoulders shake as a sob rips out of me, raw and ugly. I wipe at my face, but the tears keep coming, spilling down my cheeks in hot streaks.
God, what am I supposed to do now?
I drag myself up the walkway, my breath hitching as I reach Willow’s front door. My knuckles curl tight, and before I even think about it I am knocking on the door shakily.
“Tommy!” I choke out, my voice splintering as the harsh scratch of unshed tears building in the back of my throat. “It’s me Jasmine.”
I wait a minute before knocking again, my knuckles burning at how hard my fist is pounding into the door. “Tommy, open the door!Please!”
No one answers, but I don’t stop. I slam my fists against the wood until my skin stings, until my bones rattle from the impact. Tears blur my vision, drip hot off my chin, but I don’t care. I can’t care. I need somewhere to be. Tommy once told me I could call him Dad. Once told me I was like a daughter to him, and now when I need him, he’s not here.
“Tommy! Dad,please!” I cry again, hitting the door harder. “I don’t have anywhere else to go!”
The silence is deafening, and the ball of dread in my chest grows like a budding hurricane, but I refuse to stop. I keep banging until the entire door frame shakes, until my shoulders ache, until the wild, desperate sob crawling out of my throat sounds more like an animal than a girl.
The porch light above me flickers, casting me in flashes of sickly yellow, and it feels like the whole universe is mocking me. I squeeze my eyes shut, slamming my fists against the door again and again, each hit dulling the pain in my chest for a second, but not enough.
“Please!” My voice breaks. Tears flood my cheeks as I drag in shallow, shaky breaths.
This was my last shot. My final hope.
This house, this man, this family that once felt like my second home.
I press my forehead to the door, my chest heaving, the tears falling freely now. “Please,” I whisper, hoarse and broken. “Don’t leave me too.”
I slide down to my knees on the porch, tears streaking my cheeks, my chest hollow and aching like there’s a hole carved clean through me.
“Willow?” a voice smooth with an accent that curls off his tongue like smoke. Italian, unmistakably, startles me, and I turn around to see a man.
He’s in a pressed black jacket, dark slacks, like he doesn’t belong on this side of town, and I know if you hear an Italian accent in this town, it could only mean danger. His gaze sweeps me slowly, like he’s checking a list in his mind and I tick too many boxes.
Willow.
The name scrapes across my raw throat.
For a heartbeat, I nearly corrected him. I nearly say,No. You’ve got the wrong girl.
But the slow click of his gun makes my mouth slam shut as flashes of Willow’s smiles invade my mind. I dry swallow, what would a man like him want with a sweetheart like Willow, a girl who would never hurt a fly. Maybe this is why she ran, maybe if I take the fall, Willow will come home. I could be the one who saves her, for the first time I could pay her back for all the meals, sleepovers and safe spaces.
I can stop this man from chasing a girl with her whole life ahead of her, and he can take me instead, the girl with nothing.
No home. No future. No family.
A girl with a garbage bag stuffed full of broken dreams and no one left to care if she vanishes? No one but Willow, and she has three crazy guys who will help her mourn me. A dad who would memorialize me. I could take this bullet and be done with this failure of a life, come back rich, and pretty with the world at my feet.
I swallow sharply as I start to stand, my eyes trained on the shine of his penny loafers. This is my one chance to do something good—my last, defiant act of grace. A sacrifice that might, just maybe, buy me a sliver of redemption. Maybe this is my only shot at heaven, my only escape from the hell I’ve been dragging behind me all these years.
My chest rises and falls, tight as a drum.
“Yes,” I say, forcing the word past the lump in my throat. “I’m Willow.”
His eyes narrow slightly, like he’s satisfied with the answer, like the final puzzle piece just fell into place.
