Chapter One

FALLOUT

“Tell me about Hunter.”

I sat up on the plush tan couch in Dr. Schwartz’s office and tried to catch my breath. The spasming muscles in my chest fought back bitterly.

Hunter. The mention of his name was enough to drive me to the edge of a panic attack.

“Lorrie? Would you like something?”

I shook my head and lay back down. The room was painted in creamy off-white and lit by lamps that glowed in soothing tones. Every decorative choice had been made with the goal of calming patients down. Patients like me.

The only exception to this rule was the ticking made by the clock on Dr. Schwartz’s stained ash desk, in front of which she was seated. By my guess she was about a yard from where my feet were on the couch.

That ticking sound I could do without. Its steadiness made me nervous.

My thoughts raced anxiously as I thought about how to answer her. I’d just told her about everything that had happened in the days before I left Studsen. My face felt warm. The intensity of reliving all of that after days of lying numb in bed and trying not to feel anything was exhausting.

Now she was asking about Hunter. How should I answer that? He made me feel the best I’d ever felt. And the worst. It didn’t really matter what I thought about him at this point. I was probably never going to see him again.

“Lorrie?” Dr. Schwartz asked, after a little while. “Can you tell me more about Hunter? You can start anywhere.”

I took a deep breath again, the tension in my chest fighting back. Moisture started welling up in my eyes to my frustration. It would be messy if I cried. That morning I’d gotten a little enthusiastic with my makeup in anticipation of actually leaving the house for the first time since I’d returned to Indiana. It probably hadn’t been the best idea to make myself up right before going to my therapist.

“Can I have a tissue?” I said, my voice quivering.

She handed me a tissue and I dabbed at my eyes, trying to get a hold of myself. My ribs seized against every attempt to fill my lungs. I’d been numb all week, but it was hard to hold back the emotions now.

Reality was settling in. I had left him beaten and broken. Hunter was out of my life and no one was going to save me from this nightmare.

“He keeps his apartment very clean,” I said finally. “And he smells good.”

The clock ticked and my heart beat erratically. Dr. Schwartz sat listening. After a few more deep breaths and who knows how many ticks of the clock on her desk, I continued. “He took me to his apartment after he saved me when I fell in a lake,” I said in a small voice. “That’s how we met. His place was so neat and tidy. It wasn’t what I expected when I first saw him.”

I almost smiled lying on the couch and thinking about that first day. I’d scurried across campus with his trash bag because I couldn’t find a place to throw it out. My hands had been absolutely freezing by the time I got back to my dorm and threw it away. When I got back to my dorm room, I realized the sweatshirt I stole from him smelled wonderful. I lounged around in it for the rest of the day and hadn’t even taken it off to sleep that night. That was so long ago.

Dr. Schwartz nodded encouragement. “What did you expect when you went to Hunter’s apartment?” she asked. “Picture him for me on that day. What does he look like?”

“He looks like a bad boy . . .” I started. Tears again threatened to burst through, and I took a minute to calm myself. “But he’s . . .” I tried to get more out, but every time I started to form a word I came close to crying. My entire body felt like a dam ready to burst.

“I knew things would get messed up between us,” I croaked finally. “That’s why I tried to hold back.”

My therapist looked at me over her horn-rimmed glasses and her face screwed up at my last statement. She wrote something on her pad and nodded to herself.

I watched her for a moment, hoping this would be one of the rare times she said something, but she sat back in her chair and continued to gaze at me patiently. She had straight, graying hair that stopped just above her shoulders and was wearing her usual business suit, this time in herringbone.

After a while I realized she wasn’t going to tell me what she had nodded about. I didn’t feel like volunteering any more about Hunter, and so we sat there in silence for a couple minutes, each second marked out by the interminable clock on her desk.

The crushing numbness of the last few days began to return, along with my confusion. Every time I thought about what happened with Hunter, I hit a wall. We probably should have never gotten involved. Either I should have been stronger and stayed away, or I should have admitted my feelings for him sooner. What had happened had been a disaster.

It was exhausting to talk about it. The only other person I had told about what had happened was Daniela.

“Let’s back up,” my therapist said, breaking the silence. “Tell me about your semester. How was it for you being back at school?”

I took a deep breath, a little more freely this time. “I don’t know,” I said. “Hard, I guess. Classes were going okay but not great before the letter. I was drawing a lot. All I wanted was to be a normal student for one semester without any breakdowns.”

Another silence followed, punctuated only by the clock. When I first started seeing Dr. Schwartz, silences like these made me feel awkward, but by this point I accepted them. She was just being patient and making sure I had nothing else to say. This wasn’t a conversation. It was therapy.

“You’ve talked about getting back to normal before,” she said. “Do you think you would have had a normal semester if you hadn’t met Hunter?”

I flinched inwardly at his name. “Maybe. I guess I’ll never know.”

She waited.

“I would have gotten the letter from Marco either way,” I said quietly, half to myself. “I don’t know. That would have been bad with or without Hunter. Marco’s going to haunt me forever, I think.”

There was another pause. The clock ticked as I got more and more frustrated with everything that had happened. A terrible crushing sensation pressed against my chest and it was getting difficult to breathe.

“Seriously, what the hell?” I cried. “Who has to deal with someone ruining their life like this? It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Why would he write me a letter?”

I clenched my jaw bitterly. Every time I thought about Marco it got me worked up.

“What did Hunter do after you got the letter from your stepfather?” Dr. Schwartz asked.

I pressed my knees together and bit my lip. “Nothing. He never found out.”

“Oh. Did you hide it from him?”

I shook my head. “We didn’t really talk for a few days. I have no idea why he didn’t contact me.”

I bit my tongue before saying any more. The way things had happened in my last few days at Arrowhart made me upset and confused. Dr. Schwartz didn’t say anything, so I changed the subject back to Marco. “I just don’t understand why he’s out to ruin my life,” I said. “How can you be normal when someone killed your mom, basically killed your dad, and then holds it over you like some kind of psychopath? And I’ll never know why he did it.”

Another minute was punctuated by the steady clock. My pulse raced faster and faster.