10
Kevin
What the fucking fuck am I doing? Why do I have an eighteen-year-old girl in my bedroom? A young girl I took from therapy. What did I do? This place isn’t meant for a girl like her. Hell, I’m not safe for a girl like her.
I wipe my face with my hand. Panic squeezes my heart and forces it into a wild beat. I kind of kidnapped her last night. That was kidnapping, wasn’t it? It definitely was.
Trembling hands remind me it’s been too long since my last drink. I walk to the kitchen and search for rum. The bottles clank together as I move them around. Finding no rum, I settle for the unassuming bottle of vodka. I untwist the cap and chug it straight from the container. There’s no time for a glass. The liquor singes my throat and sets fire to my empty stomach.
“Jesus,” says a voice behind me.
I spill some of it down my shirt, and a caustic smell rises from the fabric.
“Judgmental?” I ask, pulling my shirt off and dabbing my chest to remove the potent liquid from my skin. I scoff and walk toward my bedroom.
Once I have on a dry shirt, I walk back to the kitchen and find Skye drinking vodka from a glass. I rush over and pull the glass away from her, holding it above her head and out of her reach.
“Oh no. We are not doing that,” I say.
“What? Drinking?” She purses her lips and reaches toward my extended arm.
“Yeah, no, you aren’t drinking. You’re eighteen.”
She waits until I lower the glass before reaching for it again, clawing at my shirt and raising up on the tips of her toes.
“You’re lame.” She scoffs as she takes a step back.
“And you’re underage,” I tell her before chugging her glass of vodka.
She narrows her eyes at me.
With the sunlight reaching through the window and lighting up the kitchen, I can finally assess the extent of her bruises. Bright and dark purples intermingle with yellowing hues on every inch of her minimally exposed skin. I can’t fathom how much more of her body holds signs of her pain.
“Do you want to call your parents to pick you up?” I ask.
She drops her gaze, showing the purpling of her cheek and the bump in the bridge of her nose—a prior fracture. What happened to this girl?
“Skye?”
She ignores me.
“Did one of your parents do this to you?”
She shakes her head. A tear bubbles up and balances on her lower lashes. It drops down her cheek.
“Is there somewhere else I can bring you? Grandparents? Friends?”
She shakes her head again. “My grandparents are dead, and my friends are non-existent.”
“Well, I can’t keep you, and I sure as shit can’t bring you home. Why don’t we go to the police station and file—”
Her gaze shoots up. “No! No! We can’t do that! We can’t talk to the police.”
The palpable panic in her voice infiltrates my gut and wedges beneath my diaphragm.
“Why the hell not?” I ask.
“Just please don’t. I’m begging you.” The words fly from her lips. She takes a sharp, shallow breath. “My dad’s the mayor . . .”
“The fucking mayor does this to you?” I raise my eyebrows as my jaw drops. “Even more of a reason to file a report.”
“Jesus Christ, Kevin. No. He’ll do whatever it takes to preserve his appearance.” She grabs my shirt. “Promise me you won’t say anything?” Desperation explodes from her eyes.
I can’t promise that. Can I? What a shit situation that I really don’t need to be in right now.
“I promise,” I tell her.
I said the same thing to Emily a couple of days ago. I haven’t thought about her since last night. Well, until now.
“I promise, but only until I figure out what the fuck to do with you. You need to call them, though. Let them know you’re safe before your damn father sends New York’s finest to come find you.”
She grabs her phone, dials her mother’s number, and puts it on speakerphone as she places it on the counter. The phone rings.
“Skye? Where the hell have you been?” her mother screeches into the phone.
“With a friend.”
“She doesn’t have any friends, hon,” a male voice says. “Let me talk to her.” He comes on the line with a booming voice. “Where the fuck are you, Skye?”
“I’m at a friend’s house. I’m staying here for a few days.”
The fuck she is. I am not harboring the barely legal daughter of the goddamn mayor.
“You know what?” the man on the phone says. “I don’t care what you do as long as you go to those therapy sessions. If you don’t, I’ll make sure what you did goes on your record. Do you hear me?”
“Yeah,” Skye says with a flush of embarrassment coloring her cheeks. She drops her gaze away from me.
“And please don’t forget to eat,” her mother adds.