Chapter 10
Danny’s voice caught in his throat.
After a long pause, a nurse wheeled in a cart and Danny gave me another shot of morphine.
He tried to sound upbeat. “You’re on my turf now. Can’t have you suffering on my watch, right?”
The nurse changed my sheets and Danny got called away.
When Riley came back, she’d brought clothes and toiletries-said she wasn’t going anywhere, was gonna stay right here with me.
She got some warm water to help clean me up.
“Stella, when I came back I saw Blake curled up on the bench outside your room. Looked pretty pathetic, honestly.”
1 froze for a second, then shrugged. “Whatever.”
After getting cleaned up, I turned on some reality show-this cooking competition thing.
But I couldn’t eat anything. Literally couldn’t keep anything down.
Right then, Blake knocked and walked in looking like absolute shit.
‘Stella, don’t disappear on me again. I’m taking time off work to stay here with you.”
Before I could tell him not to, Blake was already out the door.
Riley went quiet for forever. Finally she messed with my hair, her voice all soft. “Stella, you gotta beat this thing and get better. When you do, I’ll get us on one of those cooking shows, deal?”
And that spicy chicken joint near campus you were always talking about? We’re going and getting the hottest shit they have!”
knew I wasn’t getting better. That spicy chicken was never happening.
But I smiled and nodded. “Yeah, definitely.”
“d barely watched half an hour of TV and was finally getting drowsy when Sophia walked in with a fruit basket.
she was standing outside my room with bloodshot eyes.
Liley saw her and went ballistic. She grabbed the fruit basket and hurled it down the hall, yelling: “Sophia, how much more torture do you and your psycho nom want to put Stella through?”
‘She’s literally dying! What more could she possibly do to you? Just let her have some fucking peace!”
Sophia just stood there looking completely lost, head down, muttering “Sorry…” like a broken record.
I finally managed to get Riley out of there.
Sophia sat by my bed looking like she wanted to crawl into a hole.
“Stella, I had no clue Blake was your ex. I’m really sorry.”
I was quiet for a beat. “You didn’t do anything.”
Sophia’s smile was bitter as hell. “Stella, wanna know why Blake even started dating me?”
She didn’t wait for me to answer, just kept going.
“Blake and I actually met seven years ago, when you guys were still together. My mom got me fucked up on drugs and basically sold me to some karaoke bar to pay for her shit. When I woke up, the room smelled like sex and there were condoms all over the floor…”
Tears started pouring down her cheeks.
“I have no idea how many guys were in there…”
“I just wanted to die-like maybe if I killed myself, it would all stop hurting? But when I tried jumping off this building, Blake appeared out of nowhere. He grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go, even when I was thrashing around so hard he was basically falling off the roof too.”
“But he still held on. Told me that no matter how fucked up everything was, I had to stay alive. Said as long as I was breathing, things could get better.”
My vision got blurry and my voice cracked. “I’m sorry…”
All that horrible shit was supposed to be my life.
That day his arms were all scratched up, and I was the one who patched him up.
Sophia gave this fake laugh. “Whatever, it’s over now.”
But while she was saying it, her nails were digging into her skin so hard she was probably drawing blood.
“He was the first person who knew what happened and didn’t look at me like I was some broken piece of shit.”
“Next time I saw him was after my real parents took me back. I was telling him how amazing it was, and you know what he said?”
