Saint

32

I hold my head high as I hurry from the auditorium. I need to get the fuck out of here.

“Let’s see the track marks, meth slut!”

“Did you overdose and kill your baby?”

“Trailer trash bitch!”

“I wish you’d have died in that fire.”

The taunts of my fellow students chase me out in the cool evening air. I can’t let them see how shaken I am. I can’t let them think I’m weak. Moving forward, I ignore their jeers and cruel words as best I can, though I can feel tears burning the backs of my eyes, trickling down my numb face, falling to my flushed chest.

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

This is the second most awful night of my life. The first was the night of the accident. The night of the fire that killed James. He shouldn’t have been there that night. He shouldn’t have gone ru

“Mal, wait…”

I trip over my own feet and stumble forward in shock at the voice hitting me from behind.

Slowly, I turn and meet Saint’s blue gaze. I can’t believe the balls on him. The fucking nerve to approach me now, after what he just did to me.

I don’t think. Instinct takes over completely as my feet swallow the distance between us and I bring my hand back.

The sound of the slap is like a thunderclap and everyone around us, everyone who’s leaving the assembly, goes silent. Saint’s head jerks to the side with the force of my hit, and he looks momentarily stu

“Let me—” he starts after several beats, but I slap him again, this time harder.

Fuck letting him do anything. Saint and I are done.

“If you come near me again, I’ll kill you. I will end you,” I scream, uncaring of the crowd gathering around us. “I mean that, Saint. I will kill you, so you and your psycho bitch just stay the fuck away from me until I—” The breath I draw in burns my lungs, but I manage to stand upright and finish, “until I leave.”

Before he can gather his wits and respond, I turn and storm away to my dorm.

He doesn’t follow.

By the time I get to my room, my phone is blowing up. Texts with pictures of my burned down house, photos of my hospital records, and nasty messages telling me I should die. A small, manic part of me is almost impressed with how quickly the students of Angelview not only found pictures of my destroyed home, but all my personal information as well. The only text that isn’t cruel comes from Loni, asking me to please open my door so she can check on me, but I’m too ashamed to answer her. Too embarrassed of the real me being exposed to someone who’s done nothing but defend me.

I throw my phone on my bed and begin to pace. My brain is ru

Why would Saint do this to me? Laurel, I completely understand, but him?

I thought we were past all this, but Liam was right about him all along. He found what made me bleed, then slit my throat to drain it from me.

It’s no use. I can’t think straight. I drop down onto my bed and put my head in my hands. There’s too much noise in my mind—so much fucking noise—and I can barely see straight.

I decide to go to my safe haven.

Maybe if I swim long enough, I’ll stop feeling so powerless and out of control. I push to my feet and grab a spare swimsuit, as my school one is wet and soaking in the locker room laundry. As I step out of my room, I look around to make sure the hallway is empty before I make my way through the building and back outside. I stick to the shadows as I head to the rec center, avoiding anyone I come upon, though thankfully it’s not a lot.

There are still remnants of the swim meet around the pool when I arrive. Ba

For a moment, I try to pretend it’s a few hours earlier. Before the assembly, when everything seemed to be going right for me after years of everything going wrong.

Before Dylan appeared, and shattered my world.

Before Saint ripped my heart out and broke my soul.

I push myself, swimming harder and faster despite my body being tired from the meet. I don’t care, though. I need to exhaust myself. Need to force myself into oblivion. As I cut through the water, I focus on my strokes and my breathing. My exercise soon turns into a mediation as I go back and forth, back and forth across the pool.

It’s only when I’m in danger of cramping up and drowning that I finally stop. Resting my arms on the side of the pool, I let my legs dangle in the water as I catch my breath.

I feel better, somewhat. Calmer, at least. My head’s a little clearer, though my heart is in agony.

I suppose I should’ve expected this. Try as I might, a part of me always knew I couldn’t run from the past forever. My secrets weren’t going to stay buried, no matter how deep I dug the hole.

For the first time in months, I let myself think back on that night. It had started easily enough. I’d been at home by myself, reading and trying desperately to get over the terrible nausea my pregnancy was causing me. Je

I remember telling myself how it’d only be a little while before I was free of her. I was turning eighteen in a year, and the moment that happened, I was gone. In the meantime, though, I kept my head down and focused on school, avoiding Je

Sometimes, though, she made that impossible. Like with what she was doing in the basement. I knew what was happening down there, but I never tried to stop it because I had nowhere else to go.

My phone had rung. Je

“Mallory! Fuck, are you at the house?” she’d asked hurriedly.

“Yeah,” I’d replied with a frown. “Why?”

“The cops are on their way!”

My blood had turned to ice. I wasn’t naïve enough to think I’d get out of a police raid scot-free, even though my mother’s drugs had nothing to do with me.

“What do I do?”

“Destroy the evidence,” she’d snapped. “I’m still an hour away, but you need to get rid of everything!”

“How?” The basement was full of shit. No way would I be able to get everything out on my own.

“I don’t know!” she’d cried. “Just fucking do it, you idiot! If they find that shit I’m going away. For good.”

She’d hung up after that, and in my panic, I’d set the house on fire. After collecting the few things that I wanted to keep that were precious to me, I’d poured kerosene all over the place. Then, I grabbed one of Je