LISA

Her screams fill my ears, my empty chest, my lungs, until they finally rest somewhere inside me that I wasn't quite sure could be reached anymore.

A place only she can access, and always will.

"What are you doing here?" Kai jumps to his feet and moves between me and the small bed like some fucking white knight designated to protect her . . . from me?

She's still screaming; why is she screaming?

"Jennie, please . . ." I'm not sure what I'm asking for, but her screams turn to coughs, and her coughs turn to sobs, and her sobs turn to choking sounds that I simply can't handle. I take a cautious step toward her, and she finally catches her breath.

Her haunted eyes still rest on me, burning a hole into me that only she can fill.

"Jen, do you want her here?" Kai asks.

It's taking every ounce of my self-control to ignore that he's here in the first place, and he's really pushing it.

"Get her some water!" I tell her mum. She ignores me.

Then, unbelievably, Jennie's head moves swiftly back and forth, denying me. That triggers her makeshift protector to raise his hand to me and grow bold. "She doesn't want you here."

"She doesn't know what she wants! Look at her!" I throw my hands in the air and immediately feel Rebecca's manicured nails digging into my arm.

She's lost her shit if she thinks I'm going anywhere. Doesn't she know by now that she can't keep me away from Jennie? Only I can keep myself away from her—a stupid fucking idea that I can't seem to hold to.

Kai leans in toward me a little. "She doesn't want to see you and you would be best to leave."

I don't give a fuck that the kid has seemed to grow in size and muscle mass since the last time I've seen him. He's nothing to me. He will soon learn why people don't bother to even attempt to come between Jennie and me. They know better, and he will, too.

"I'm not leaving." I turn to Jennie. She's still coughing, and no one seems to care. "Someone get her some goddamn water!" I yell in the small room, and the noise echoes from wall to wall.

Jennie whimpers and pulls her knees to her chest.

I know she's in pain, and I know that I shouldn't be here, but I also know that her mum and Kai will never be able to truly be there for her. I know Jennie better than the two of them combined, and I've never seen her this way, so surely neither of them will have a clue what to do with her while she's in this state.

"I'll call the police if you don't leave, Lisa," Rebecca says, low and threatening, from behind me. "I don't know what you did this time, but I'm sick of it, and you have no place here. You never have, and you never will."

I ignore the two interlopers and take a seat on the edge of Jennie's childhood bed.

To my horror, she moves away again, this time scuttling back with her hands—until she hits the edge and falls hard to the floor. I'm on my feet in seconds to bring her into my arms, but the sounds she makes when my skin touches hers are even worse than the horrified screams that sounded from her minutes ago. I'm not sure what to do at first, but after endless seconds of this a broken scream of "Get off of me!" leaves her cracked lips and slices clear through my body. Her small hands pound at my chest and claw at my arms, trying to break my embrace. It's hard to try to comfort her this way with this cast on. I'm afraid it will hurt her, and that's the last thing I want.

As much as it kills me to see her so desperate to get away from me, I'm so fucking happy to see her react at all. The mute Jennie was the worst, and instead of yelling at me, like she is now, her mum should be thanking me that I brought her girl out of that phase in her grief.

"Get off!" Jennie screams again, and Kai begins to protest behind me.

Jennie's hand hits my solid cast, and she cries out again. "I hate you!"

Her words burn me, but I still hold her flailing body in my arms.

Kai'd deep voice breaks through Jennie's screams: "You're making things worse!"

Then she goes mute again . . . and does the worst thing she could do to my heart. Her hands break free of my hug—it's harder than hell to hold her with one hand—and she reaches for Kai.

Jennie reaches for Kai to help her, because she can't stand the sight of me. I let go of her immediately, and she rushes into his arms. One of his arms hooks around her waist, and one rests at the base of her neck, pulling her head to his chest. Fury wrestles with sense, and I'm fighting my hardest to stay calm, watching his hands on her. If I touch him, she will hate me even more. If I don't, I'll be driven crazy watching this.

Fuck—why did I come here in the first place? I should have stayed away, just like I had planned. Now that I'm here, I can't seem to force my feet out of this goddamn room, and her cries only trigger my need to keep her near. I can't fucking win for losing, and it's making me crazy.

"Make her go," Jennie sobs into Kai's chest.

The splintering pain of rejection seeps in, making me motionless for a few seconds. Kai turns to me, silently begging in the most civil way for me to leave the room. I hate that he's become her comfort; one of my biggest insecurities has slapped me in the face, but I can't think of it that way. I have to think of her. Only what's best for her. I back away clumsily, reaching and scrambling for the door handle. Once I'm outside the small room, I lean against the door to catch my breath. How did our life together spiral down so much in such a short time?

I find myself in Rebecca's kitchen filling a glass with water. It's awkward, since I only have one usable hand, and it takes longer to get the cup, fill it, and turn off the faucet, all the while the huffing woman behind me grating my nerves.

I turn to face her, waiting for her to tell me she called the police. When she just glares at me silently, I say, "I don't care about the trivial shit right

now. Go ahead and call the police, or do whatever you have to do, but I'm not leaving this shithole of a town until she talks to me." I take a drink from the glass and cross the small but immaculate kitchen to stand before her. Rebecca's voice is hard. "How did you get here? You were in Thailand."

"It's called a fucking plane, that's how."

She rolls her eyes. "Just because you fly across the world and show up before the sun comes up doesn't mean you have a place with her," she says, seething. "She made that clear—why won't you leave her? You're only hurting her, and I won't continue to stand around and allow it."

"I don't need your approval."

"She doesn't need you," Rebecca fires back, grabbing the glass from my hand as if it were a loaded gun. She slams it onto the counter and meets my eyes.

"I know you don't like me, but I love her. I make mistakes—way too fucking many of them—but, Rebecca, if you think I'm going to leave her with you after she saw what she saw, experienced what she experienced, then you're even crazier than I thought." I pick the glass back up just to spite her and take another drink.

"She will be fine," Rebecca remarks coolly. She pauses for a minute, and something inside her seems to crack. "People die, and she will get over it!"

She says it loudly. Too loudly: I hope that Jennie couldn't hear her mother's cold remark.

"You're serious? She's your fucking daughter, and he was your husband . . ." I trail off, remembering the two weren't actually legally married. "She's hurting, and you're being a heartless bitch, which is exactly why I won't leave her here with you. Jisoo shouldn't have let you come get her in the first place!"

Rebecca cocks her head back indignantly. "Let me? She's my daughter."

The glass in my hand shakes and the water laps over the side and onto the floor. "Maybe you should act like it, then, and try to be there for her!"

"Be there for her? Who's here for me?" Her emotionless voice cracks, and I'm shocked when the woman who I was convinced was made of stone crumbles and leans against the counter to keep herself from falling to the floor. Tears roll down her face, which is heavily made-up despite that it's only five in the morning. "I didn't see that man for years . . . He left us! He left me after making promise after promise of a good life!" Her hands swipe across the counter, knocking jars of utensils to the floor. "He lied— he lied to me—and he left Jennie and ruined my entire life! I could never even look at another man after Richard Kim, and he left us!" she screams.

When she grasps my shoulder and digs her head into my chest, sobbing and screaming, for a flash she looks so much like the girl I love that I can't bring myself to push her away. Not knowing what else to do, I wrap one arm around her and stay silent.

"I wished for this—I wished he would die," she admits through her tears. I can hear the shame in her voice. "I used to wait for him, I used to tell myself that he would come back for us. For years I did this, and now that he's dead, I can't even pretend anymore."

We stay this way for a long time, her crying into my chest, telling me in different ways with different words that she hates herself because she's glad that he's dead. I can't find words to comfort this woman, but for the first time since I met her, I can see the broken woman behind the mask.