Good.
Let them wonder.
Let them see that I’m not the girl who needed protecting anymore.
I’m the reason they’re still alive.
Behind me, I hear Axel’s voice, broken and small. “Lexi, please—”
I keep walking.
The warehouse door swings open and rain hits my face—cold and clean. The storm that’s been threatening all night has finally broken, water coming down in sheets.
Koa’s Charger is parked in the darkness, running.
Revan opens the back door. “Get in.”
I slide into the back seat, gun still in my hand. I should probably give it to someone, should probably let go of the weapon that just ended my father’s life.
But I don’t.
Atticus takes the passenger seat, Revan behind the wheel. Koa moves slower, pain evident in every step, but he makes it to the back seat beside me.
The doors close. The engine rumbles.
No one speaks.
Revan pulls out of the lot, headlights cutting through the rain. The windshield wipers beat a steady rhythm—back and forth, back and forth—and I watch the water stream across the glass in patterns that look almost beautiful.
We drive past the warehouse, past the scene of my father’s death, past the moment when everything changed.
In the rearview mirror, I catch Revan’s eyes on me. Watching. Assessing.
“What?” My voice is flat.
“Nothing.” But he doesn’t look away.
Beside me, Koa shifts. His arm brushes mine and I feel him wince. “You good?”
I turn to look at him—at this boy who’s been beaten and broken and is still here. I don’t reply because a part of me is good and the part that remembers all the shit these three put me through isn’t.
The rain keeps falling. The car keeps moving. And I sit in the back seat with a gun in my lap and my father’s blood under myfingernails, wondering when exactly I stopped being the victim and started being the villain.
Wondering if there’s even a difference anymore.
48
Lexi
The motel is the kind of place that doesn’t ask questions—peeling wallpaper, buzzing fluorescent lights, a clerk who takes cash and doesn’t make eye contact. Koa parks the Charger in the back lot where the security cameras have convenient blind spots, and we file inside like ghosts.
We’ve been driving for hours and hours. I have no idea where we are, except that it’s room 217. Two double beds with quilts that have seen better decades, a bathroom with questionable tile, and a TV mounted on the wall.
I stand by the window, pulling the thin curtain aside just enough to see the parking lot below. Rain still falls in sheets, turning the pavement into a mirror that reflects neon signs from the strip mall across the street. My hands are finally shaking now, adrenaline wearing off and leaving me hollow.
Behind me, I hear the rustle of movement—Revan checking the locks, Atticus collapsing into the chair by the door, Koalimping toward the bathroom. We’re all wounded in different ways. Visible and invisible. Bleeding and broken but somehow still alive.
Atticus turns on the TV and it cuts to breaking news, and a reporter’s voice fills the room.
