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My bottom lip wobbled as dread pitched in my stomach, overriding the hunger pains. All I wanted to do was throw up. “I’m not hungry.”

“You’ll eat what I give you and you’ll be grateful. Now go to your room.”

I spun on my heel with lightning speed, just so he didn’t see the waterfall of tears erupt as I choked back a sob.

But he stopped me one more time.

“Oh, and Halley? Don’t you go sneaking into the garage to save that pesty rodent. You’ll fail. And you’ll suffer the consequences for disobeying me.”

The back of my neck pricked with icicles. “Yes, Father,” I choked out.

“Wouldn’t matter, anyway. You’ve never been good at doing hard things.”

He was right, I decided, as I holed up in my bedroom that afternoon and slid beneath the starchy covers, tucking myself into a ball as my body shivered in the aftermath of my beating.

I was a late walker, a late talker, a late learner in so many chapters of my life.

I was never able to earn my father’s affection, no matter how desperate I was, how needy and fraught.

I couldn’t put my fractured family back together.

I couldn’t even save that little bunny.

Father was right…

I wasn’t good at doing hard things.

Life is like photography. You need the negatives to develop.

—Ziad K. Abdelnour

CHAPTER 1

June, 1995

“Are you lost?”

That was the first thing the guy in the Soundgarden T-shirt and leather jacket said to me as my ankles kissed the lake water.

I tilted my head over my shoulder to assess the stranger who was standing just inches from the waterline. “Lost?” Curling my toes into the soggy muck, I gave him a onceover. The man was older than me; probably too old to have come from the house party a few yards away that reverberated with loud grunge music. “Do I look lost?”

Moonlight carved him out of the darkness, outlining a tall, muscled frame and a mop of inky-brown hair, its hue approaching black but not quite reaching the deepest shade.

“A little.” He shoved both hands into denim pockets and slanted his head toward the house. “I mean, you’re out here all alone, standing in a lake.”

“Maybe you’re the one who’s lost,” I volleyed back. “Unless you’re here with unsavory intentions. You know…watching a girl standing all alone in a lake.” My gaze slowly panned down his body like I was checking for weapons. But I knew well enough that a man only needed two capable hands and a sharp tongue to inflict harm. Sometimes less. A single look could do me in.

His brows bent at my implication. “I’m looking for someone.”

“I’m probably not who you’re looking for.”

He peered back over at the house, marinating in the statement before deciding it was true. “Yeah,” he replied, the response just loud enough to carry over the deep bass seeping out through an open window. “Sorry to bother you. Have a good night.”

“You’re not bothering me.” I watched as he faltered mid-swivel. Still wading in the shallow water, I took a small step forward and confessed, “Maybe I am a little lost.”

The man glanced at my chunky heels tipped sideways in the sand, then panned his gaze out to the stretch of water that appeared endless as the surface bled with dark sky. “You don’t live here?”

“I live on the other side of town.” Live was a tragic elaboration, but he didn’t need to know that.

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