Twisted Vows

CHAPTER 7

Leah

The word stuck in my chest.

“I didn’t plan anything,” I said quietly. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I had been drinking too.”

My hands twisted together in front of me.

“We both were.”

Lizzie gave a sharp, broken laugh.

“Listen to her,” Lizzie said.

“I didn’t take advantage of him,” I said quickly. “We were together. We were talking. It just happened.”

My mother’s mouth tightened.

“You knew he was upset,” she said.

“Yes,” I whispered. “But I was too. I didn’t think...”

Lizzie moved before I could finish.

Her nails caught my cheek.

A sudden sting.

I gasped and stumbled back, one hand flying to my face.

“Lizzie,” my mother exclaimed.

She didn’t move to stop her.

Jacob’s voice cut in, low and tense.

“That’s enough,” he said.

Lizzie rounded on him, eyes wild.

“Don’t defend her.”

“I’m not,” Jacob said.

Flat.

Certain.

Already decided.

My stomach dropped.

“She knew what she was doing,” Jacob said.

His gaze moved toward me and then away again.

“She knew I wasn’t in my right mind.”

He had already told the story.

And now everyone was acting like his version was the only one.

I had seen this before.

Not from him.

From my mother.

Take the part that made me look guilty.

Leave out the rest.

My wanting him was real.

The rest, the library, the two hours, the way he had come to me and sat beside me and asked about my life, he left out.

I understood then why he would not really look at me.

Because if he looked at me, he might remember I was real.

The girl in his story was cold and calculating and waiting for her chance.

The girl standing four feet away from him had been shaking in a shower less than an hour ago, wearing the same dress because she had not thought past the next five seconds.

Looking at me would ruin the story.

So he didn’t look.

“That’s not true,” I said.

“You were sober enough to know where it would lead,” Jacob said. “I wasn’t.”

“That’s not...”

My voice broke.

“I didn’t...”

“You always wanted this,” Lizzie snapped. “You’ve always wanted what I have.”

I looked at her.

Her fury was so complete that for one terrible second, I almost believed her.

Almost let the version of me she described settle over me like something I had earned.

“That’s not true,” I whispered.

My father stepped forward.

“Enough,” he said.

He turned to me fully, his expression hard and resolved. I looked for the apology that had been there a moment ago.

It was gone.

“You crossed a line,” my father said.

“I didn’t mean...”

“Intent does not matter,” he said.

That one had no contraction.

That one was meant to land.

“What matters is what you did.”

He said it the way men said things they had decided were final.

I wondered if he believed it.

I wondered if he had thought about any of it. The house. The way they treated me. The way he let them.

Probably not.

Probably he had gotten dressed, come downstairs, and made himself into a wall.

Walls did not have to feel anything.

My mother nodded once.

“You can’t live here anymore,” she said.

Her voice did not shake.

This was not grief.

This was control.

And underneath it, something that had been waiting for an excuse.

The words did not register at first.

“I... what?”

“You need to pack your things,” my father said.

“This house isn’t a safe place right now.”

“For me?” I asked, confused.

“For Lizzie,” my mother said sharply. “You’ve done enough damage.”

“I didn’t force him,” I said, barely audible. “We were both there. We both chose...”

Jacob looked away.

Not because he did not hear me.

Because he did.

That small motion, that tiny turn of his face, felt like a door closing so quietly you almost missed it.

“And don’t expect support,” my father said. “You’re an adult. You made a choice. You’ll deal with the consequences.”

I waited.

For Jacob to say something.

For anyone to soften.

For my father’s face to crack back into the one that looked like apology.

Nothing came.

My throat was very tight.

I nodded.

“Okay.”

The word felt wrong.

Too small for what was happening.

But I had run out of other words, and the silence was worse.

I turned and walked back upstairs.

No one followed.

No one called after me.

I had thought, in a vague, future sort of way, about leaving this house. I had imagined it happening to another version of me. A version who finished her degree, had a job, had built enough of a life that leaving was a choice.

Not this version.

Not with my cheek burning and my hair still damp and my family standing downstairs deciding I was something dirty enough to remove.

Practical, I told myself.

Be practical.

In my room, I packed quietly.

Clothes first, because clothes required no decisions. Shoes. The textbooks I had already bought for a semester I was supposed to be starting in two weeks.

I did not sit down.

I did not look at myself in the mirror.

I moved on instinct, afraid that if I stopped, I would not start again.

The letter from UT Austin was already in my bag.

I checked anyway, touching the edge of the envelope like it might disappear if I trusted it too much.

Dear Ms. Lockhart, we are pleased to welcome you.

I had a scholarship. I would be okay. I would have to get a job too, probably. More hours than I had planned. Maybe two jobs. Maybe Olivia’s grandmother would know someone who needed help.

Maybe I could still do this.

Maybe.

There were things I left behind.

The lamp I had bought at a secondhand store with birthday money when I was fourteen, copper-shaded and slightly crooked, because I had wanted something in this room that was only mine.

A row of books I had read three times each.

A jar of dried flowers Olivia had given me last Christmas, chamomile and lavender and something purple whose name she could not remember, which was so perfectly Olivia that I had kept it on the windowsill because it made me think of her.

I left them.

I did not have space.

I did not have time.

And I was not going to stand there deciding what I could carry when I had not figured out how to carry myself.

I zipped the bag and stood in the room for one last moment.

This room had never been warm.

Not really.

But it was the only place in the house where I could close a door and breathe.

The only place in the Lockhart house where I could sit on the floor and read and not perform being acceptable.

The only place where no one watched me fail to be enough.

I picked up the bag.

I did not look back.

When I came downstairs, they were still there.

Still together.

Lizzie had stopped crying. She stood with her arms around my mother, and my mother’s hand was in her hair.

My mother touched Lizzie like it was nothing.

Like love was just there, easy and automatic.

That was the image that almost finished me.

I looked at my father one last time.

He was looking at his hands.

Jacob did not look at me.

Not once.

Not as I crossed the room. Not as I reached the door. Not as I opened it and stepped out into the morning air.

The door closed behind me.

It made almost no sound.

I stood on the front step with my bags at my feet, the Lockhart estate spread out behind me, beautiful and cold and never really mine.

Dallas kept moving.

The morning kept going.

I pulled out my phone with shaking hands and called Olivia.

She answered on the second ring, voice sleepy and rough.

“Lee?” Olivia said.

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

There was a tiny pause.

Then Olivia’s voice changed completely.

“Where are you?” she asked.

I looked back at the house.

The curtains were still.

The door was shut.

“Outside,” I whispered.

“Outside where?”

“My house.”

Another pause.

Shorter this time.

Sharper.

“I’m coming,” Olivia said.

I tried to say something.

Thank you, maybe.

Or I’m sorry.

Or I don’t know what happened.

Olivia did not give me the chance.

“Stay there,” she said. “Don’t go back inside. I mean it, Lee. Stay where I can find you.”

Then she hung up.

I stood there with the phone in my hand, my cheek burning, my bag at my feet, the whole house behind me.

I had not planned any of this.

But somehow, I was the only one paying for it.