Page 39 of Beautiful Scars

"I'm almost finished getting ready and I, uh, I wanted you to know I'm thinking about you. I can't wait to see you tonight."

The cigarette burns forgotten between my fingers. All I can see is her, probably standing in the middle of her room, looking so beautiful, so sweet, so fucking… perfect. I can hear her nervousness in that small hesitation. I would bet anything she'd been twirling her hair around her finger like she always did when she was feeling unsure.

"I've got a surprise for you too."

God, the way she said it—shy but determined. I never got to find out what that surprise was. Never got to see her in that black dress again except...

"I'll see you in a few. And hey... hurry up and get here already. I miss you."

The message ends. It always ends too soon. Thirty seconds that I play on repeat, reminding myself what I lost. What I caused.

If I hadn't been so focused on Zack, so determined to make him pay. If I'd answered just one of her calls instead of letting revenge consume me—

The door creaks open behind me. I quickly pocket the phone, but not before catching Zane's reflection in the loading dock's grimy window.

"You good?" he asks, though we both know I'm not. Haven't been for a long, long time.

"Fine." I take another drag, letting smoke fill the silence between us.

He doesn't know. Neither of them do—not really. They know Garrett killed her, know he murdered my mother. But they don't know about what happened the day I met Sunny—what I did to set all of it in motion. They don't know about the calls I ignored. Don't know I was too busy setting up Zack to notice that payment for everything I'd done had come due.

They think it was a matter of both the women I loved being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That Garrett had finally gone off the rails and went on a rampage. That I couldn't have prevented it. Their loyalty and sympathy is built on a foundation of half-truths and omissions that would crumble if they knew the whole story.

"We'll find him," Zane says, his certainty unchanged after all these years.

I nod, not trusting myself to speak. The guilt rises in my throat, choking me—for lying to them, for failing her, for becoming—this.

I turn to face Zane, flicking my cigarette out into the darkness. "I don't get it. How does a piece of shit small-town dealer just vanish into thin air? Seven years, Z. Seven fucking years of throwing everything we have at finding him. And nothing."

The frustration rakes at me. We've built an empire that makes my father's look like child's play. I have eyes and ears in every major city, connections that reach into most of the darkest corners of all of them. Yet Garrett might as well be a ghost.

"He's not smart enough for this." I run my hands through my hair, the dried blood on my knuckles flaking off. "A drunk who got his kicks abusing women and dealing cut-rate meth to teenagers. That's who he was. So how is he outmaneuvering us?"

Zane leans against the wall, his face half-hidden in shadow. "Maybe that's what we're missing. We're looking for who he was right then. Maybe we need to go backwards. Or forwards."

"What do you mean?"

"People change. You did." His words hit deep. "We haven't been able to find out a whole lot about his past. Maybe we should go back and start there."

I laugh, but it comes out hollow. "Men—monsters like that don't change. If there was something significant to find we'd have found it by now."

"Men "like that" don't change? We all did."

The words hang between us, heavy with implications. He's not wrong. We've become something else entirely over the years—deadlier, darker. The scared kids we were are long gone, replaced by men who deal in fear.

"I'm tired, Z." The admission costs me something to voice out loud. "Not of looking, I'll never stop looking. But I'm tired of being one step behind. Tired of following leads that go nowhere. Tired of failing her."

"You've never failed her." Zane's voice is firm. "Garrett did this. Not you."

If he only knew. The weight of my secrets presses down, threatening to suffocate me. How do I tell him that every dead end feels like losing her all over again? That each false lead is another reminder of how I chose revenge over protecting her that night?

"Something's not adding up." I pace the loading dock, mind racing. "We've checked every possible connection we could find. Offered money, favors. All for nothing. Nobody can disappear that completely."

"You think someone's protecting him?"

"I think..." I stop, the pieces slowly shifting in my head. "I think he's definitely had help along the way from someone who knows what they're doing."

Zane straightens—interest sparked.

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