Chapter 2

“Just don’t ask,” Amanda muttered, stumbling through Jenny’s front door at quarter past three. Her heels dangled from one hand, the other clutching the doorframe for balance. The stale scent of weed hung in the air.

Jenny didn’t move from the couch, just watched Amanda move away toward the bedroom. The springs of the mattress groaned under sudden weight. A thump, probably Amanda’s purse hitting the floor, then silence.

The morning light crept in through the frayed curtains, painting stripes across Amanda’s bare shoulder. Jenny leaned against the doorframe, coffee cooling in her hand, studying the marks, thin red lines like cracks in porcelain, darker bruises blooming along her ribs. One fingernail was split.

Jenny traced the rim of her coffee mug with her fingernail, watching Amanda’s bare chest rise and fall under the thin sheet. The bruises looked worse in daylight, blooming purple across her collarbone. She swallowed hard.

Amanda stirred, her fingers twitching against the crumpled sheets. Jenny watched as her knuckles whitened before relaxing again, and her breath hitched just slightly when she shifted onto her side. The sheet slipped lower, revealing a jagged scratch along her hipbone, still pink at the edges.

Jenny set the coffee mug down too hard on the nightstand. The sound made Amanda’s eyelids flutter, but she didn’t wake. Instead, her lips parted around a soft, ragged exhale, the kind that came after crying for too long. Jenny reached out, hesitated, then brushed a strand of hair from Amanda’s forehead.

Amanda’s eyelids fluttered again, this time staying half-open in that bleary, unseeing way of someone not quite awake. Jenny watched the way her pupils dilated.

Amanda suddenly jerked upright, sheets pooling around her waist. Her breath came in short, panicked bursts as she clutched the fabric over her chest.

“You’re safe,” Jenny said, louder than she meant to. Amanda’s fingers dug into the sheet, her knuckles going pale. Jenny noticed there was dirt under her nails, or maybe blood.

Amanda’s gaze darted to the window, then to the door, as if calculating escape routes before she even registered where she was. Her throat worked silently, the tendons standing out sharply beneath the bruises. When she finally spoke, her voice was raw, not from sleep, but from screaming. “Did I say anything last night?”

Jenny’s fingers twitched toward the abandoned coffee mug. The ceramic had left a damp ring on the nightstand, the liquid inside gone cold. “You didn’t say much of anything,” she admitted.

Amanda hunched her shoulders where she sat on the edge of the bed, her fingers worrying about the split in her nail. She then reached down and got her backpack and took out an envelope.

“Here is five grand. Ten percent.” Amanda said as she gave Jenny the envelope,

The math punched Jenny in the gut. Fifty thousand dollars. Vic had made fifty thousand dollars. The bruises, the split nail, the split lip, whatever else had happened in that room with the blackout curtains and the lock that clicked from the outside. Jenny’s teeth ground together.

Jenny’s fingers twitched toward the knife on her nightstand. The image of Vic’s smug face flickered behind her eyelids every time she blinked: his too-white smile, the gold chain glinting against his collarbone.

Amanda’s voice was barely a whisper. “Don’t.” Jenny hadn’t realized she’d been gripping the knife hard enough to turn her knuckles white. Amanda’s reflection appeared in the mirror behind her. She looked smaller than she remembered, shoulders hunched like a child expecting a blow. “He’s got people,” Amanda added, picking at the split in her nail again.

Jenny’s fingers stilled against the knife. The numbers spun in her head: five grand, plus the 1000 Vic already gave her, making $6,000. Plus she doesn’t know how much more she’ll get tonight. Enough to wipe out the medical bills for now. The thought sat heavily in her throat. “$6,000,” she repeated, voice flat.

Amanda nodded, her fingers twisting the frayed edge of the sheet. “Easy money.” The lie tasted like battery acid between them. She wouldn’t meet Jenny’s eyes, focusing instead on the dark crescent moons under her fingernails. “Vic said—”

“Vic said he’s got a buyer lined up tonight,” Amanda whispered, her voice cracking around the edges. She picked at the dried blood under her nail, rust-colored flakes scattering onto the bedsheet. “Some rich fuck who collects...” Her throat worked, but she couldn’t finish the sentence. The unspoken word, virgins, hung between them, sour and thick.

Jenny’s fingers curled around the handle of the knife in her hand. The steel was cold against her palm. She thought about the way Vic’s gold chain would snap if she yanked hard enough. “What time?” she asked.

Amanda’s voice cracked on “10pm,” her fingers tightening around the sheet until the fabric bunched in whitened fists. The digital clock on the nightstand read 4:37 PM. Five and a half hours. Jenny could see the numbers reflected in Amanda’s pupils, tiny red digits floating in black.

“Where is your dad, Jenny?’

“He’s passed out in the garage,” Jenny said. “I just left him there.”

Jenny’s fingers tightened around the knife handle. “Amanda, I’m surprised you didn’t tell Vic you had practice sucking cock with my dad.” The words landed like a gut punch, ugly and deliberate.

Amanda flinched like she’d been struck, her shoulders curling inward. For a second, Jenny thought she might collapse again, might fold right back into that trembling mess from last night. But then Amanda’s chin lifted, just slightly, and when she spoke, her voice was steadier than Jenny expected. “Would’ve been redundant,” she said, picking at her split nail. “Vic already knew.”

The air in the room thickened like spilled syrup. Jenny’s grip on the knife handle didn’t waver, but something behind her ribs did, a sharp, sickening tilt. Amanda’s words hung between them, not quite an accusation, not quite a confession. Just a fact. Rust-colored flakes drifted from Amanda’s nail onto the sheet between them, tiny bloody snowflakes on white cotton.

Jenny set the knife down with deliberate slowness. The steel made a dull thunder against the nightstand. “What did Vic tell you?” The question came out flat, but her pulse hammered in her throat; she could feel it jumping under the bruise Vic’s thumb had left there last week.

“Enough to know we’re both broke as fuck,” she said, her voice cracking like dry kindling. She kept her eyes on the unraveling fabric, not looking up when Jenny’s breath hitched. “He knows your dad’s a drunk, and your mom’s in the crazy house. And my dad—” Her laugh was a sharp, ugly thing. “Well, his bookie probably owns his left kidney by now.”

Jenny’s fingers twitched toward her own throat, but she forced them still. The knife block creaked under her weight as she leaned against the counter.

Jenny’s breath caught, sharp and sudden, like she’d been gut-punched mid-inhale. The realization hit her in waves: “Vic is your daddy’s bookie?” The words ricocheted inside her skull. Amanda’s father owed Vic money. And Vic collected debts in flesh.

Jenny’s fingers went slack against the nightstand. Amanda wasn’t looking at her anymore; she was staring at the rust-colored flakes under her nails as if they held some kind of answer. The afternoon light caught the raw split in her cuticle, the inflamed edges pulsing faintly pink.

“That’s why you didn’t run.” Jenny’s voice sounded alien to her ears, flat and hollow, like a gunshot in an empty parking lot. She didn’t ask it as a question.

Amanda’s shoulders hitched, a tiny, aborted movement that might have been a shrug or the beginning of a sob. “Five grand a night,” she murmured. The sheet bunched in her fists as she finally lifted her gaze. Her pupils were blown wide, the irises almost swallowed by black. “Ten percent. You do the math.”

“You see, Jenny,” she said, “I have to do this.” The words landed between them with the weight of a body hitting concrete from five stories up.

Jenny watched the pulse jump in Amanda’s throat before she turned her face toward the window. The afternoon light caught the sweat-slick curve of her cheekbone, the way her lower lip trembled just once before she pressed them together into a bloodless line. Outside, a car backfired three blocks away. Amanda flinched like it was a gunshot.

Jenny exhaled through her nose. Her fingers uncurled from the knife handle one by one. “Fifty grand,” she said, voice low. “That’s what you’re worth to him.”

“No,” she said, her voice cracking like thin ice over black water. “It’s what my dad, and you, are worth.” She lifted her chin, and for the first time since she’d stumbled through Jenny’s door at 3 AM, her gaze held steady. “And you’re worth a hell of a lot more.”

Jenny’s knuckles went white against the countertop. The nightstand clock blinked to 4:38 PM, red numbers burning into her retinas.

Amanda stood abruptly, the sheet slipping from her bare shoulders as she crossed the three steps between them, too fast, like she might change her mind. Jenny barely had time to inhale before Amanda’s arms locked around her, fingers digging into the small of her back hard enough to bruise. The scent of stale weed filled Jenny’s nose as Amanda buried her face against her neck. They stood like that for half a ragged breath, two bodies pressed so close Jenny could feel Amanda’s ribs expand against hers.

Then Amanda tilted her head back, eyes flickering between Jenny’s lips and her pupils with a question Jenny answered by surging forward. The kiss wasn’t gentle; it was teeth and desperation, Amanda’s split lip reopening against Jenny’s mouth. Jenny gripped Amanda’s hips hard, and Amanda made a sound low in her throat.

The door creaked open with the slow, deliberate sound of someone trying not to be heard. Jenny didn’t need to turn; she knew the cadence of those footsteps, the way they always hesitated at the threshold like her father was deciding whether to cross it. It’s the reason she has a knife on the nightstand.