Page 187 of Cross Checked
“And if he reacts in a way that makes you happy, send details.”
Charm lifted a finger. “Specific details.”
“Goodbye,” I said, walking backward toward the door.
Charm blew me a kiss. “We love you.”
Aura smiled. “Go be brave, B.”
Halfway to the door, my phone buzzed, and every muscle in my body locked instantly.
When I looked down, my soul went cold.
Luke.
The name glowed across my screen like a threat, with three missed calls already.
Luke: You fucked up
Cold swept violently through my stomach as another text appeared immediately.
Luke: You have ignored me for the last time
My hands started shaking.
Not tonight.
Please, not tonight.
Tonight was supposed to be different. Tonight I was finally going to choose myself and stop this madness.
I started to shove the phone face-down into my purse before either of them noticed the color draining from my face, but Aura noticed anyway because Aura noticed everything.
“You okay?” she asked immediately.
I forced a smile so fast my cheeks hurt. “Yeah. Just my crazy ex boarding the texting train.”
Charm’s expression dropped. “Bliss.”
I handed Aura the phone before I could talk myself out of it.
Her face went terrifyingly still as she read the messages. Then she screenshotted the thread and sent it to herself and Charm without asking permission, because sometimes best friends knew when permission was just fear wearing manners.
“No way is this continuing,” Aura said, voice calm in a way that made it sharper. “We’re giving anything he’s sent you to Knox. These alone show escalation.”
Charm stepped closer, eyes bright with fury. “And when you get home tonight, we’re sitting down and putting together everything. Messages. Screenshots. Dates. Every time he showed up somewhere he shouldn’t have.”
I nodded, my throat tight. “Okay. Yes. We have a plan, and he is not derailing it tonight. I’m coming clean about everything. Nothing he sends me is stopping this.”
Aura’s eyes held mine. “Good.”
“He’s fucked,” Charm said.
A shaky laugh slipped out of me. “That felt very legally sound.”
“Assault is assault in any language,” Charm said, chin lifting. “And once he knows he can’t touch you, scare you, or threaten you without consequences, he can crawl back under whatever rock raised him.”
I knew I had mountains of evidence in my Never book. Screenshots of texts. Pictures of bruises. Dates. Pages full of things I had written down because I needed somewhere to put the fear when my body couldn’t hold it anymore. My Book of Nevers was years of abuse documented in a way I never intended to see the light of day because I never planned on anyone knowing the truth. It was my trauma-dumping journal, my grief archive, my survival record, and somehow, without meaning to, I had turned it into evidence.
