Chapter 9: The Silent Ride Home
The only sound in Rylee’s sedan was the labored rumble of the engine and the rhythmic click of the turn signal. Lexi stared out the passenger window, watching the darkened houses blur into a streak of porch lights and shadows. Her cheek was pressed against the cool glass. Every few moments, a full-body shiver would run through her, a tremor entirely separate from the cold.
In the backseat, Bree’s hand moved in slow, uncertain circles on Lexi’s shoulder. “You’re okay,” Bree whispered, for the tenth time. The words were hollow, a plea more than a statement.
Lexi didn’t answer. She focused on the crack in the windshield, a spiderweb emanating from the lower left corner. She traced its branches with her eyes, over and over.
Rylee’s knuckles were bone-white on the steering wheel. He hadn’t spoken since he’d found her. He’d just shouldered through the party crowd, his face set in a grim mask Bree had never seen, wrapped his jacket around her shaking shoulders, and guided her out, a steady hand on her elbow. His usual easy smile was gone, replaced by a tight line of fury and something else—a deep, unsettling shame.
“I shouldn’t have called him,” Rylee said suddenly, the words sharp in the silence. He didn’t look at her. He stared straight ahead at the empty road. “That’s on me. I thought… fuck, I don’t know what I thought.”
“It’s not your fault,” Lexi heard herself say. Her voice sounded thin, borrowed. “I told you. Nothing happened. I was drunk. It was my fault.”
“Stop saying that!” Bree’s voice cracked. She took a shaky breath, softening. “Lex, you were crying. Your dress was all twisted. He ran out of there like the damn house was on fire. That’s not ‘nothing.’”
Lexi closed her eyes. The memory was a physical pressure behind her ribs: the hard door against her back, the burning stretch, the taste of his anger and her own fear like copper on her tongue. The stunned horror on his face afterward. I’m a monster.
She saw it every time she blinked.
“He’s just… he’s got a lot going on,” Rylee muttered, but the defense sounded weak, even to him. “His stepdad… his mom… he’s carrying all this shit.”
“So that makes it okay?” Bree shot back, her protective anger flaring. “Because he’s got a bad home life, he gets to manhandle our friend?”
“No,” Rylee said, his jaw clenching. “No, it doesn’t.” He finally glanced at Lexi, his eyes filled with a pained apology. “I’m sorry, Lexi. Seriously. I brought you there. I called him. This is on me.”
She shook her head slowly, her hair sticking to the window. The numbness was receding, leaving a raw, scraped-clean feeling in its wake. She felt filthy. She wanted a shower so hot it would scald her skin away. She wanted to sleep for a year.
“Just take me home,” she said.
When Rylee pulled up to her house, the windows were dark except for the soft glow of the porch light. David’s car was gone. The emptiness of the big house yawned before her, a new kind of dread.
“You want me to come in?” Bree asked, already undoing her seatbelt. “I can stay. We can watch trash TV. Eat ice cream. My mom won’t care.”
Lexi forced a smile. It felt like cracking plaster. “I’m okay. Really. Just tired.”
Bree didn’t look convinced, but she nodded, pulling Lexi into a careful hug. “Text me. The second you feel anything. I don’t care if it’s 4 a.m.”
Rylee got out and came around to open her door. He looked younger under the streetlight, the weight of the night heavy on his shoulders. “Ace… he’s not a bad guy,” he said quietly, helplessly. “He’s my brother. But what he did… I’ll talk to him. He won’t come near you again. I’ll make sure of it.”
Lexi just nodded, unable to meet his eyes. She didn’t want promises. She wanted to forget the feel of his hands. She wanted the phantom ache between her legs to disappear.
The house was a tomb. She locked the door behind her, leaning against it for a long moment. The silence was absolute. She walked through the dark living room, her heels loud on the hardwood. In the kitchen, a note was stuck to the fridge under a magnet.
Lex – Had to run out. Got caught up. There’s money for pizza if you’re hungry. Don’t wait up. – Dad
Caught up.
She knew where he was. Next door. In Dede’s lavender-scented darkness. A fresh, different type of hurt bloomed in her chest, dull and familiar. She crumpled the note and dropped it in the sink.
Upstairs, under the scalding water of the shower, she scrubbed until her skin was pink and raw. She used her roughest loofah, trying to erase the feeling of him. It didn’t work. She could still smell him on her, a phantom scent of motor oil and rage. She leaned her forehead against the tiles, the water drowning her quiet, soundless tears.
Wrapped in a towel, she stood in front of her bedroom mirror. Her eyes were hollow. There was a faint, reddish mark on her neck where his mouth had been. She touched it. A bruise was forming.
On her nightstand, her sketchbook lay open. The last drawing was of Ace, a few hurried lines from weeks ago, capturing the stubborn set of his jaw as he worked under a car hood. She picked up the book, her hands steady now, cold. She tore out the page. Then she tore it again, and again, reducing the image to confetti. She let the pieces flutter into the trash can.
Ace’s grandmother’s house smelled of dust and old memories. He’d slammed the front door so hard the windows rattled, then stood in the dark hallway, breathing like he’d run miles.
His right hand throbbed. He looked down at it, flexing his fingers. The knuckles were split and bleeding from where he’d punched the dashboard of his Mustang on the drive home. It wasn’t enough. The pain was a buzzing distraction, not a cure.
He stalked into the kitchen, yanking the freezer open. He pulled out a half-empty bag of frozen peas and wrapped it in a dish towel, pressing it to his damaged hand. The cold was a shock. He welcomed it.
He slumped into a chair at the Formica table, the same one he’d sat at as a kid eating his grandma’s oatmeal. The ghost of her disapproval felt suffocating.
I’m a monster.
His own words echoed in the silent house. He saw Lexi’s face again, the tear tracks, the shattered look in her eyes right before he’d run. He’d turned her fear into a physical thing, something he could taste and feel. The violence of his own hunger sickened him.
He’d wanted to own her. To mark her. To prove to that preppy asshole, to himself, to the whole fucking world, that she was his. And in trying to prove it, he’d become exactly what everyone thought he was: trash. His stepfather’s voice slithered into his head: You’re just like me. All anger, no control.
His phone buzzed on the table. Rylee.
He didn’t pick it up. It buzzed again. And again. Then it started to ring. He knew what it would be. The condemnation in his best friend’s voice. The end of the only good thing he had left.
The ringing stopped. A text notification chimed.
Ace stared at the dark screen, the frozen peas numbing his hand. He thought of his little brother, Sam, who was scared of the dark. Of his sister, Mia, who collected smooth rocks and kept them in a coffee can under her bed. He brought them groceries every Sunday, a pathetic peace offering to a mother who was too beaten down to protect them. He was supposed to be their escape route. Their protector.
What kind of protector was he? He’d just tried to take what wasn’t his from a girl who’d done nothing but look at him like he was worth something. He’d ruined it. He’d ruined her.
He stood up abruptly, the chair screeching on the linoleum. He hurled the bag of peas at the wall. It burst in a shower of frozen green pellets.
He had to see her. He had to try to explain, to apologize, to get on his knees and beg. He was out the door and in his Mustang before the thought had fully formed, the engine roaring to life like the anger still coursing through his veins.
The whiskey in David’s glass caught the low light from Dede’s bedside lamp. He swirled it, watching the amber liquid cling to the sides. He was in his own bed now, in his own dark, silent bedroom. The scent of her was still on his skin.
He’d left her place an hour ago, slipping out while she slept, sated and smiling. The guilt was a low-grade hum in his blood, mixing with the lingering buzz of the alcohol and the sex. He’d texted Lexi. No response.
He got out of bed, pulling on a pair of sweats. He walked down the hall to her room. The door was closed. A sliver of light shone underneath. He raised his hand to knock, hesitated, then lowered it. What would he say? Hey, honey, sorry I wasn’t here, I was next door fucking the neighbor. Did you have fun at your party?
He pressed his forehead to the cool wood of her door. He could hear faint music inside. Something slow and sad. He remembered the look on her face that morning at breakfast, a distance in her eyes he didn’t know how to bridge. He was failing her. The weight of it was an anchor around his neck.
Back in his office, he stared at the blinking cursor on his blank document. The protagonist of his book stared back, a ghost of his own confusion. You can’t think your way out of a feeling, Dede had said. You have to act your way out.
He didn’t want to act. He wanted to hide. In her. In the whiskey. In the blank page.
A sound from outside—the crunch of gravel under tires—made him turn. He walked to the window, peering through the blinds into the dark.
A Mustang its engine grumbling, had pulled up to the curb not in front of his house, but close to Lexi’s side. The driver’s door opened.
Ace got out.
David watched, frozen, as the boy from the auto shop stood by his truck, staring up at the lit window of Lexi’s room. He was just a silhouette against the streetlight, but David could see the tension in his shoulders, the way he clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides.
What the hell was he doing here?
Ace took a step toward the house. Then another. His movement was deliberate, almost grim. He wasn’t skulking. He was walking straight up the path to the front door like a man heading to his own execution.
He was walking straight up the path to the front door like a man heading to his own execution.
David was already moving, a deep paternal alarm overriding his own tangled guilt. He took the stairs two at a time, his bare feet slapping against the cold hardwood. The heavy oak door felt solid under his hand as he pulled it open just as the knock came, sharp and urgent, cutting through the quiet house.
Ace stood on the porch, his shaggy hair lit from behind by the streetlight, his face shadowed and grim. He looked younger than David remembered, and older at the same time, his eyes hollow.
“Mr. Thompson.” Ace’s voice was rough, scraped raw.
“It’s late,” David said, his tone flat and final. He didn’t open the door wider. He filled the space with his own body, blocking the entrance. “Whatever it is, it can wait until morning.”
“It can’t.” Ace’s jaw tightened. He looked past David into the dark foyer, his hands flexing at his sides. One was wrapped in a stained dish towel. “I need to see Lexi. I need to talk to her. Please.”
“You need to leave,” David said, stepping forward. The authority in his voice usually worked. It had no effect now. “Now.”
“I screwed up.” The words burst out of Ace, strained and desperate. He held his wounded hand up, a pathetic exhibit. “I hurt her. I need… I need her to know I’m sorry. I need to say it to her face.”
“You hurt her?” David’s voice dropped, dangerous and low. His own hands curled into fists. The protective rage was instantaneous, a white-hot surge that burned away the last traces of whiskey. “What did you do?”
Before Ace could form another broken sentence, a soft voice came from the staircase behind David.
“Dad.”
Lexi stood on the bottom step, wrapped in an oversized hoodie, her dark hair falling around her pale face. Her eyes were on Ace, wide and unreadable. They flicked to her father.
“Let him in,” she said. Her voice was quiet but clear, leaving no room for argument.
“Absolutely not,” David protested, turning towards her but keeping his body between her and the door. “Honey, it’s after midnight. He needs to go home.”
“Where were you earlier tonight?” Lexi asked. She didn’t move from the step. The question was simple, delivered without accusation, but it landed with the force of a hammer.
David froze. He saw the knowing in her green eyes, the quiet disappointment. She smelled the truth on him—the lingering vanilla candle smoke, the ghost of another woman’s perfume. His righteous anger deflated, punctured by his own shame.
He opened his mouth, but no defense came out. The fight left his shoulders. He looked from his daughter’s exhausted face to the broken boy on his porch, then back again.
He stepped aside. The movement was stiff, a silent surrender.
Ace hesitated for a second on the threshold, then crossed into the foyer. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing the three of them in the dim light. The house seemed to hold its breath.
Lexi descended the final step. She stopped a few feet from Ace, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She looked at his bandaged hand, then up at his face.
“Say it,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Ace whispered. The words sounded torn from him. “I’m so sorry, Lexi. What I did… at the party… it was wrong. You didn’t deserve that. I’m a fucking monster.”
He was shaking. A muscle jumped in his jaw. He kept his gaze fixed on the floor between them, unable to meet her eyes.
David watched, his own heart a tangled knot of fury and powerlessness. He stood against the closed door, a spectator in his own home.
Lexi was silent for a long moment. The vintage clock in the hall ticked.
“You are,” she finally said, her voice still soft. “But you stopped.”
The three words hung in the still air of the foyer, a fragile verdict. Ace’s head snapped up, his eyes finally meeting hers, searching for the lie. He found none, just a weariness that mirrored his own.
She took a slow breath, her fingers plucking at the cuff of her hoodie. "Follow me," she said, her voice so quiet David almost didn't hear it. She turned and started back up the stairs.
Ace moved to follow, a jolt of desperate hope propelling him forward. David’s arm shot out, a solid bar of muscle blocking his path. His hand closed around Ace’s bicep, the grip tight enough to bruise. "You are not going upstairs with my daughter."
"Dad." Lexi was halfway up the staircase. She turned, one hand on the polished banister. The hall light carved sharp planes of shadow on her face. "Please. Just give us some privacy."
"The hell I will." David didn't release his grip. His gaze was locked on Ace, a silent promise of violence simmering just beneath the surface. "After what he just admitted to? He doesn't get to be alone with you."
"Please," she repeated, the word cracking. She looked not at Ace, but at her father, her green eyes pleading. "He has nothing to worry about. I promise you. I need to do this. Please."
David’s hold tightened for one more agonizing second, his knuckles white. He looked from his daughter’s determined face to the boy’s hollow expression. Every paternal instinct screamed to throw him out, to protect her from the source of the pain she’d carried home. But he saw the note he’d left on the fridge, crumpled in his mind's eye. Caught up. He heard his own laughter from Dede’s window floating across the lawn while his daughter was somewhere, scared.
The fight drained from him, leaving a bitter sediment of guilt.
He dropped his hand. "Ten minutes," he said, the words ground out like glass. He pointed a finger at Ace, who stood rigid, rubbing his arm. "You keep that door open. You speak clearly. And if I hear her raise her voice, if I hear one goddamn thing that sounds wrong, you’re leaving through that window. Understood?"
Ace gave a single, sharp nod.
Lexi didn't wait. She continued up the stairs, the soft shuffle of her socks the only sound. Ace followed, his heavy work boots clumsy on the steps, each footfall a loud echo of his intrusion.
David watched them disappear onto the second-floor landing. He stood rooted to the spot, listening to the groan of her bedroom door opening, then the silence that followed. He didn't hear it click shut.
He walked into the living room but didn't sit. He stood in the dark, staring out the front window at Ace’s empty Mustang. The frozen bag of peas he’d seen in the passenger seat was a bizarre, mundane detail. He leaned his forehead against the cool glass. The hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen was the loudest sound in the house.
Upstairs, Lexi’s room was illuminated by the single brass desk lamp she used for sketching. It threw warm light across her neatly made bed and the stacks of books, but left the corners in deep shadow. Her torn-up drawing of him was a pale mound in the small wastebasket.
She stood by her desk, not looking at him. "Close the door," she said. "But leave it open a crack. So he hears the latch."
Ace obeyed, his movements stiff. The door sighed to within an inch of the frame. The space felt suddenly smaller, the air thick with the scent of her shampoo and the graphite from her pencils. He could see the faint red mark on her neck, now a proper bruise. His mark. His stomach twisted.
"You said I stopped," he began, his voice rusty. "I shouldn't have even started. I don't know what happened. One second I was watching you dance with that spoilt prick, and the next..."
"The next you had me pinned to a door," she finished, finally turning to face him. She hugged herself. "I couldn't breathe. You tasted like anger."
He flinched as if she’d struck him. “I know.” The words were a broken thing. He looked at his hands, the tools he used to fix engines, the hands that had hurt her. “I’m poison, Lexi. Everything I touch. My family… and now you.”
“Stop.” The word was sharp. She uncrossed her arms, letting them fall to her sides. “Stop talking about yourself like you’re some scripted villain. It’s lazy.” She took a step closer, into the circle of lamplight. The bruise on her neck was a shadow in the warm glow. “You think I don’t know what anger tastes like? My mom left because she was angry. My dad swallows his every day. I’ve tasted it my whole life.”
Ace stood utterly still, terrified that any movement would shatter this fragile moment.
“I wasn’t trying to stop you because I didn’t want you to,” she said, her voice dropping so low he had to strain to hear. She looked at the floor, at a stray piece of her torn drawing. “I wanted… I really wanted to. That’s the part that’s so confusing.”
He sucked in a sharp breath. Hope, vicious and unwelcome, cut through the self-loathing.
“I tried to stop you because you were going so fast.” Her cheeks flushed a deep, warm pink. She picked at a thread on her hoodie sleeve. “And you were so rough. It scared me. I got… frozen.” She finally looked up, her emerald eyes glistening. “I’m not… I haven’t… ever. With anyone.”
The confession hung in the air, silencing the last of his excuses. It wasn’t rejection. It was trust, offered back to him in pieces from the very ground he’d shattered.
“Oh, god.” The realization was a physical blow, a nausea that had nothing to do with whiskey. He’d been so consumed by his own want, by the possessive heat in his blood, he hadn’t seen the fear beneath her shy responses. He’d mistaken virgin tension for reluctance. He’d taken her silence for surrender. “Lexi, I didn’t… I’m such an idiot. A brutal, fucking idiot.”
“Yeah,” she whispered, a single tear escaping to trace a path down her cheek. “You were.”
“I am so sorry.” He didn’t move toward her. He kept the space between them sacred, a boundary he had violently crossed and now would die before crossing again without invitation. “Not just for that. For making you carry this alone since it happened. For making you explain it to me. You don’t owe me any of this.”
“I know I don’t,” she said, swiping at her cheek with the back of her hand. A shaky breath escaped her. “But I’m telling you anyway.”
Downstairs, they heard the slow creak of a floorboard. David was pacing.
“Your dad’s gonna kill me,” Ace said, a weak, humorless sound escaping him.
“Probably.” A faint, almost smile touched her lips and vanished. “But he won’t tonight.”
She took the final step, closing the distance between them. She didn’t touch him. She looked up at his face, studying the hollows under his eyes, the split on his knuckles. “Do you understand now?” she asked, her voice firmer.
“Yes.” The word was a vow.
“You don’t get to be a monster,” she said. “And I don’t get to be a victim. It happened. It was bad. But you stopped. You’re here.” She glanced toward the door, toward the sound of her father’s vigil. “That has to count for something.”
He nodded, unable to speak past the knot in his throat. The obsession that had burned in him since the auto shop hadn’t faded; it had transformed, molten anger cooling into a desperate, humbling need to be worthy of this second he didn’t deserve.
“You should go,” she said softly. “Before he really does call the cops.”
“Okay.” He took a step back, toward the door. His body moved stiffly, as if waking from a long, terrible sleep. “Can I… will you be at school Monday?”
“I don’t know.” She hugged herself again, a gesture of self-containment that made his chest ache. “Maybe.”
He nodded, accepting it. He reached for the door handle, his bandaged hand clumsy.
“Ace.”
He turned.
“Fix your hand,” she said, her gaze dropping to the bloody cloth. “And next time… just ask. Okay?”
The promise of a ‘next time’, however distant, felt like oxygen. “Okay,” he managed. “I will. I’ll ask.”
He slipped out, pulling the door quietly shut behind him. The latch clicked with finality.
Lexi stood in the center of her room, listening to his heavy footsteps descend the stairs, the low murmur of voices in the foyer, the distant groan of the front door. Then, the growl of the Mustang’s engine fading down the street.
The house settled back into silence, but it was a different quiet. The fear had been named, and in naming it, had lost some of its power. She walked to her desk and looked at the empty space where his sketch had been. She didn’t feel like drawing. She felt deeply, profoundly tired.
Downstairs, David heard the car leave. He stood at the bottom of the steps, looking up into the darkness of the second floor. He heard no crying. No sound at all.
After a long moment, he walked to the kitchen. He took the crumpled note from the sink, smoothed it out, and read his own hollow words. Got caught up. He balled it up again and threw it away, this time deep into the trash.
He poured the last of the whiskey down the drain, watching the amber liquid swirl and disappear. The hum of the refrigerator filled the void. He had no idea what had just been said upstairs, what truce or understanding had been reached. He only knew the fury that had propelled him to the door had been deflected by the quiet resolve in his daughter’s eyes, and by the ghost of Dede’s vanilla scent still clinging to his own skin—a scent that had started to smell less like betrayal and more like comfort to him.