First message
The world just kind of... stopped. I was cutting through the parking lot to meet the guys, and I saw her—leaned up against a beat-up sedan. And for a second, that same old, hot anger flared up in my chest, who's she with now? But then I saw his face. It was her dad, the one I’d only ever seen in a framed photo at the stupid 8th-grade parent breakfast. His hand was on her arm, not like a dad’s, but possessive, wrong, his fingers digging in too tight, and the look on her face… it wasn't pleasure or secrets. It was pure, frozen terror. And in that one, gut-punch second, my brain finally connected the dots I was too much of a stupid bastard to see before. The smell wasn't from some guy she wanted. It was from him. And the word I’d been calling her, the one I thought was just a cruel joke, wasn't a label I’d put on her. It was a confession I’d been screaming about the monster standing right in front of me, and I felt the sick rise in my throat, my own vicious voice echoing in my head until I wanted to puke.