CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
are you complete or is something missing?

IT'S IN THE EVENING THAT SAWYER REALISES this is going to be the first time Quinn is going to fail an Astronomy pop quiz, and by proxy, that means Sawyer is going to fail too. Before the test began, Sawyer and Quinn had already claimed two seats in the back corner of the classroom. The moment Oliver and Wyatt entered with the rest of the Gryffindors, Oliver didn't bother looking at anything else once he'd caught her eye from across the room, and beelined straight for the two empty places in front of Quinn and Sawyer. So Oliver sits in front of her for all of an hour they've been doing their test and sometimes she kicks the back of his chair just to spite him. At one point, he chucks his quill at her head when Professor Sinistra has her back turned. In the next desk over, having completed his test in record time, Wyatt has his head on the desk and Sawyer knows he's fast asleep.

In the back of the classroom, Sawyer and Quinn sit close—close enough so Sawyer can copy off Quinn's paper like she always does.

Close enough to notice that Quinn is shaking more than she should. In fact, she's not even writing anymore, even though she's only halfway through and Sawyer thinks about all the little bones in her body rattling around like little pills in a bottle. Chest heaving, her breath coming up in pants, Quinn's eyes dart towards the window where a dark shape lurks. Sawyer straightens up and stares and Quinn is staring at her quaking hands like they're an afterthought.

With thirty minutes of test time left on the clock, Quinn raises her hand and her face is half-stricken. Professor Sinistra excuses her to the bathroom and she doesn't come back.

"Is she okay?" Oliver asks, after, when they're handing in their quizzes on the way out of the classroom. His voice is low, a murmur amidst the hum of complaints and discussion the other students were swept up in as they file out of the door.

Sawyer shrugs.

"What happened?" Wyatt asks, frowning.

"She won't want to talk about it tonight," Sawyer says, to Oliver, even though she can feel the whole gravity of Wyatt's gaze on her cheek.

It's true.

By the time Sawyer was in bed, lying awake and staring at the window at the overcast night sky, wondering if the clouds had drowned the moon, Quinn still hadn't spoken a word. They're not the type of friends to sit on each others' beds and talk about things like boys and nail polish and the newest shoes on Witch Weekly. They're not even the type of friends who talk about feelings, about what's killing them, about how shitty it's been, how it feels like the marrow of everything good has been sucked out of their bones. Sawyer's always been a girl of action. Words lose her. She can barely read them properly, much less speak them in a way that could assuage someone else of whatever affliction they were plagued by. That's probably why she buries her own afflictions in the scars on the back of her hands. What they are, in actuality, are friends who burn their pasts together.

Maybe she's embarrassed, Sawyer thought, tracing the grooves of the chipped yellow paint in the wall, faded with time that nobody had to repaint or touch up. Why would anyone paint a room this ugly shade of yellow? Supposedly, all the other houses have their dorm rooms painted in their house colours, but this watery yellow reminds Sawyer less of their Hufflepuff ochre ties and more of piss. Maybe Quinn's sad because she's constantly reminded every night they're sleeping in a room that looks like piss. If Sawyer could care more, she might be sad, too.

Now, though, she lay awake in the dark, watching the moonless sky, listening to her roommates' breathing lulling her to sleep.

"Sawyer?" Quinn whispered, amidst the snores and the rhythmic breathing, the cicadas singing to the night, and the rustle of trees in the distance, her voice is a silver thread permeating the static silence. "Are you awake?"

A beat.

"No," Sawyer said, deadpan.

"I had a bad dream."

Sawyer turned over. Squinting, she barely discerned the shapes in the dark, but she managed to distinguish Quinn's mass of hair, the hazy shadow of her figure, rising from her bed, and lifted the edge of her blanket. "Tell me about it."

Taking that as an invitation, Quinn's sheets rustled as she slid out of bed, and Sawyer heard the soft pad of her feet against the wooden tiles as she crossed the room, and then Quinn was climbing onto her mattress and under her duvet. For a moment, Sawyer inhaled the faint scent of honey and lavender that Quinn brought with her as she tucked herself close, but never touching, just an inch of space between them as Sawyer lay on her side, facing Quinn. Some part of her didn't know why she let Quinn hole up like this, but maybe—just maybe—she knew what it was like to be lonely in a room full of people.

"I saw you, you know, the other night," Quinn said, her voice a tiny whisper, a piece of crushed paper fluttering in the wind. "You had your lighter and you... I didn't want to say anything, but— I thought..."

"You thought nothing." Sawyer's voice was flint and steel, unbending, a low growl of thunder. But her chest was freezing, her spine pulled so taut she thought it might snap under just a fraction of pressure, the way she always felt when someone knew. Like fight or flight, she couldn't ignore it. "You thought I was better. I break down in front of everyone one time, I get patched up, and that cures everything. You thought I was what? You thought I could be better?"

Rage was an animal, a thousand bees inside her skin dying over and over again each time she lashed out. Someone always suffered, someone always got dragged out with bruises on their face and blood in their mouths, but that didn't mean she wasn't suffering too. When there wasn't anyone to lash out against, who else was there for her to take all that rage out on but herself?

"No, that's not it at all," Quinn murmured, sounding a little defensive.

"Go back to sleep."

"How can you just—"

"I'm not asking." 

"It won't be like this forever," Quinn said, fervently, and Sawyer couldn't tell which one of them she was trying to convince. Quinn took Sawyer's hand with tentative fingers and traced out the cicatrixes scoring the mottled skin like she was trying to read braille. "You have to tell someone."

"Who's going to listen?" she says, her voice a knife's edge, tearing her hand out of Quinn's gentle, barely-there grip. She's already told Oliver, and Dahlia knew everything. She didn't think it needed to go further than that. "Go to sleep. I won't tell you twice."

Silence lapsed between them as Sawyer turned over again, her sweatshirt twisting around her waist as she lay flat on her back. Throwing an arm over her face, Sawyer shut her eyes, thinking that this was all there would be.

She thought wrong.

"Give me your lighter," Quinn said, her voice low and firm, a marked resolve in the strain of her tone. Sawyer didn't have to open her eyes and look to know that Quinn was glaring at her.

Without budging, Sawyer said, "no."

"I'm not asking," Quinn said, and Sawyer wanted to laugh because her own words were just getting thrown back into her face, but couldn't find the energy to express her amusement. "Awhile ago you said you have my back and everyone else's, but who's watching yours? If no one else will, I'm going to be the first."

At first, Sawyer stayed still, and for a cruel moment she wanted to let Quinn think she was dead asleep already. But then she reached blindly with her other hand for the lighter under her pillow, and chucked it in the general direction of Quinn's bed, not caring where it landed. There was a loud thunk as it hit the bedpost, and clattered to the ground. Sawyer felt Quinn jump a little.

"Is your saviour complex satisfied?" Her tone was impassive, but Sawyer felt both relief and dread settling like a live coal in her gut. Relief, because there was no other method that would bring the same kind of catharsis as burning her own flesh off (cutting, she'd tried in second year, and like a bad organ transplant, it didn't take; hitting to bruise or break herself made her feel stupid). Dread, because now she had no outlet. Now, she had to find something healthy. Something stable to hold onto. She didn't know how long she could go without directing all that pain on the inside out.

And for a moment, as the sheets rustled and the duvet caved as Quinn readjusted herself, Sawyer thought she might turn away. Might be finished with this conversation just as much as she was finished with dealing with Sawyer. For a moment, Sawyer felt a prick of panic and she didn't quite understand it.

"No," Quinn said, finally, "not until you are saved."

Saved. Sawyer didn't know when that might be. So she said, Tell me something good.

(What she didn't: Tell me that there is hope in the world.)

Did you know, Quinn said, her voice a murmur like a heartbeat, a tiny whisper on Sawyer's collarbone, that a group of starlings is called a constellation? They migrate in flocks of a hundred thousand. Last night I dreamt I was one of them, this flying black star in the bone-white sky, little wings carrying me further and further but never straying from my flock. It was the best dream I've ever had. I wasn't alone like I always used to be, but I was this small warm-breasted piece of a living, moving whole. When I woke up, I cried because it was over and I was alone again. And then I realised that's how you guys make me feel.

You're my constellation.

* * *

IN THE MORNING, Sawyer woke with her arm around Quinn's waist and Quinn's face buried under Sawyer's chin, her wild curls tickling Sawyer's nose. Still asleep, Quinn's shoulders rose and fell deeply without a hitch in rhythm, but her eyelids fluttered like she was fever dreaming. Whatever it was, Sawyer hoped for her sake that it was something mellow. Her mind reeled as she blinked awake, gathering her bearings, only just noticing the numbness in her right arm that Quinn was lying on. Last night it was raining as they lay in the dark, listening to the storm wage war against the ancient castle, old magic warring with arcane magic, just existing, trading scars under the umbrage of her duvet, their secret little cove, like two pre-teen girls mashed together in a sleeping bag with their legs tangled together whispering under the stars.

With the first light of the sunrise leaking in through the window, Sawyer traced the little hills and valleys in the rumpled duvet with a finger and it shook loose a warm ache in her chest to think that this was their little city. Only theirs, and they held this sacred, secret thing like a poker hand. No one else could share it. No one else could be the same. A tiny smile tugged at Sawyer's lips. Just a ghost, but undeniable all the same. It was nice to have a friend who was just as lonely as she was.

Untangling herself from Quinn, Sawyer tried not to trip over the mess of her clothes, scattered in organised piles beside her bed, and fished a clean sports bra from the mess of laundry on the floor. She pulled the duvet over Quinn's shoulders before she left to meet Oliver on the pitch.

At breakfast, the students of Hogwarts bustled and bumbled between themselves. Some were too exhausted to make a noise, the remaining dregs of precious sleep clinging nefariously to the bags under their eyes as they picked listlessly at the food on their plates (or had fallen asleep in them). Others survived the opposite; animated gestures, flailing wild and melodramatic, quick mouths moving at the speed of lightning, tongues snapping like whips. The hall, now a glowing sea of sound, stirred with electrostatic ambience, easy to slip under the waves.

Sawyer was half asleep—both too exhausted from the run this morning and because she'd only managed to cinch two hours of sleep after her exchange with Quinn—but she couldn't stop thinking about what Quinn had said last night. You're my constellation, she'd told Sawyer, her voice like brittle glass. By the time the owls were pouring in with the mail, Sawyer felt her head drooping so dangerously low, Rio had to catch her by her ponytail before she face-planted in her crumpets. Sharp spikes of pain staked through her scalp, but Sawyer only glowered irritably at Rio before pushing her plate away, folding her arms over the table, and falling asleep face-down in the crook of her elbow.

"Nothing today?" Marcus asked, as the owl-post rained down on them like missiles from the ceiling. Sawyer assumed he was talking to Jeremy.

"No," Jeremy said, and Sawyer heard the frown in his tone. "Maybe she finally got the message."

"That's good," Rio said, and Sawyer felt him get up. "Look, I gotta run. Gotta meet Severus about my Potions essay. Again."

"Are you really flunking Potions that badly?" Quinn asked, incredulous.

Rio didn't give a verbal answer.

"I should talk to him," Marcus muttered.

"Yes," Quinn said, exasperation dogging her tone. "We've been telling you this for months, you big idiot."

Halloween haunted the castle too quickly, and still, Jeremy hadn't received correspondence from his mother. Maybe she learnt her lesson. Maybe she'd completely given up on her son, on trying to forge the same bridge she'd already burnt when she walked out the door on Christmas day and left her only son to deal with the fallout in a house as empty as a cavity. Either way, Jeremy looked like he could breathe a little better these days. Even if that was temporary, even if Jeremy decided he had a change of heart and wanted to contact his mother to push the reset button on their fragmented relationship, it was better this way progressively. Power balance was the one thing Sawyer needed Jeremy to assert. Sooner or later, if he stood pat and played his cards right, she could be eating right out of his hand rather than the other way round. His mother owed him that much.

"This is so boring," Rio grunted, elbow propped up against the edge of the table and his chin resting in the palm of his hand as Dumbledore gave his pre-dinner speech. Like always, all the students were gathered in the Great Hall for their annual Halloween feast. All week, the decorations had begun to spread over campus like vines, glowing pumpkins sat on the courtyard, jagged faces carved into the glossy flesh. "We should just grab some of the food and ditch."

Jabbing an accusatory finger at Rio, Jeremy pinned him with a skeptical look. "You do know that the reason why the Dementors are here is because that Sirius Black guy could be loitering around campus like some kind of serial killer perv, right?"

"So?"

"So," Quinn filled in, rolling her eyes, "we shouldn't be going out in the dark, dummy."

"Also, it's raining," Marcus pointed out, meeting Rio's eyes.

"When has that ever stopped us?" Rio challenged, sending Marcus a steely grin, a snake about to strike. Somewhere in-between the lines, while everyone else seemed flummoxed by Rio's statement, Marcus understood what he was getting at, because he only looked away, a tinge of red staining his neck.

"I'm with Rio," Sawyer mused, "we have all that alcohol in your dorm, anyway. We can have a real Halloween party."

Marcus looked half-convinced.

Jeremy narrowed his eyes and rapped Sawyer on the knuckles with the flat of his spoon. "You know you're not allowed to drink. You can't mix prescription pills with alcohol. That's a fatal headache waiting to happen."

Sawyer shrugged. She glanced at Rio, who met her gaze with a disappointed look. "Hey, I tried."

* * *

LATE THAT NIGHT, everyone in the castle had been dragged out of their rooms due to a little predicament regarding a possible breach in the school. It started with the portrait of the Fat Lady posted in front of the Gryffindor common room, which had been shredded by some kind of animal, and now all the students from all four houses were gathered in the Great Hall. They'd managed to clear out the entire place for what Quinn had mockingly coined the epithet, Sexy Sleepover: Hogwarts Edition. With a wave of their wands, the professors procured pillow-soft sleeping bags for the students.

Craning her neck, Quinn stood on the tips of her toes, trying to catch a glimpse of their friends over the heads of the other students. Bored out of her mind, Sawyer leant against the wall, twisting one of the strings on her grey sweatshirt around a finger lackadaisically, having already secured their space in the far corner of the Great Hall. Knowing Rio, he wouldn't want to be anywhere near the other students if he could help it, so the only logical place to wait was in one of the furthest corners from where the staff were situated.

As she cast her flat gaze around the hall, she caught Oliver's eye a couple rows of sleeping bags away. He sent her a surreptitious smile. Tentatively, she began to smile back. Beside him, his friends were busy slapping each other and roughhousing and the other students' conversations swarmed the room like a million angry wasps permeated by the professors calling for order and quiet, but in the moment, Sawyer understood what it meant—like they always said in the movies—to have the rest of the room fade away, leaving only the two of them alone.

"Oh, I see them," Quinn said, snapping Sawyer from her reverie. Sawyer followed her gaze and spotted the three Slytherin boys making their way over.

"Nice jammies, Comet," Marcus said, laughing as he eyed her faded Hello Kitty shirt and pajama pants with sheep printed on them.

Ducking her head down to hide behind her curtain of curly hair, Quinn blushed.

"They're cute," Jeremy said, smiling softly as he lay out his sleeping bag next to Quinn's.

"Leave some room for Jesus, lovers," Rio drawled, carelessly tossing his sleeping bag next to Sawyer's.

"As if you care about Jesus or modesty," Marcus joked, "this is the first time you're sleeping with a shirt on."

For a second, Rio stiffened, and it was like his face wasn't sure what to do as a million different emotions flickered across his expression. Nonplussed, he could only blink at Marcus, who smirked like there wasn't a palpable rift wrenched open between them, an ache that ran so deep everyone around them felt it. Even Sawyer, who'd already holed up in her lumpy sleeping bag, felt it glancing off her skin. It was the first time Marcus said anything directly to him. A joke, too. A beat too late, Rio recovered, and Marcus seemed to have realised what had slipped out of his mouth, natural as water running through a spring, and whatever softness had passed between them evanesced like a dissipating fog. Reality set in, sour as sandpaper. They glanced away and Rio crouched down, the moment lost, slipped out from between his fingers. Shoulders tensed, steeped in regret, Rio's features were hard, and Sawyer saw his jaw working intently, like he was internally berating himself for being so stupid, for letting it go like that just because he was caught off-guard.

By now, the calamity of the student population and their noise had reached a lull. Already, someone was snoring, and the sound echoed like a pulse between the walls of the Great Hall. Candles burned, and in periphery, they blinked like city lights and satellites. Above, the domed ceiling had been charmed into a mosaic of the starry night sky. A tiny glimmering piece of the universe suspended above them, swimming in swirling pools of tiny galaxies and dark matter. Sawyer stared at it until she felt a phantom tug on one loose end of her tangled soul, like the fake night sky was drawing her closer, like if she reached out, she'd be six feet under the stars. Something about that shook loose a deep ache inside. Sawyer flipped over in her sleeping bag, so she was lying flat on her stomach.

"What are you thinking about?" Rio asked, his voice a low thunder, barely heard over the sounds of the castle groaning on its foundation, the sounds of their schoolmates, but also the only thing that snapped Sawyer out of the haze in her brain. "I can hear you, you know? You're always so silent until it really matters, but there's so much going on inside, it's like... like listening to the ocean. Sometimes I want you to tell you to shut up even when you're not saying anything. What's in that weird little head of yours this time?"

"Nothing," Sawyer said, turning her head to face Rio as she wrapped her arms around her pillow like a boa constrictor. "What's in yours?"

Pillow propped over his head like he was planning on suffocating himself, Rio lay on his back. He lifted one end of his pillow so he could meet her stone-faced stare, his eyes glittering darkly. If Rio thought there was a body of water in Sawyer's head, there must be a tempest in his, the kind that rages like war, one that rips and rends everything in sight. He let out a sigh that sounded like a breath of wind over the sea.

"I can't wait to get away from all this bullshit," he said, like it was his deepest secret. It might as well have been. Boys like Rio with their old money and old traditionalist families hardly had a choice in their future. That's why he was always so hellbent on destroying his. A fuck you to his father. A fuck you to the world, written in burning cars and shattered glass and the sound of jaws shattering. "Start over somewhere nobody knows me. Live free from all the pain and regret. A clean slate."

Every time she closed her eyes, recently, Sawyer found herself thinking about the water in the bathtub from the summer before fifth year, when she'd taken up the mundane task of learning how to hold her breath for an extended amount of time. Maybe she'd just wanted to see if she could push through the darkness threatening to swallow her whole, maybe she'd wanted to die at that time. It didn't matter now, because, now, death (or at least the notion of it) was a million miles away, no longer haunting every caliginous thought, no longer poisoning her head. What she missed was in the escapism of the act in itself, how the water rocked at the surface, how it felt like she'd made her own current, how she felt within and without, suspended in time. How all the sounds of the outside world were a million miles away, how the distance between herself and the world seemed to grow further and further the longer she held her breath.

Once upon a time the universe was packed so tightly together that the sky would've looked like a tapestry of diamonds stitched together. But her father told her that the universe was constantly expanding, and stars would grow further and further apart with nothing keeping them together, like their gravitational pull was loosening. One day they'll be so far apart it'd be impossible to see one from the other. Sometimes she imagined herself back in that bathtub, submerged underwater, everything moving away from her, her own quiet universe and her own heartbeat and her newborn body shrinking away from the edges of the bathtub, diminishing in size, in gravity, in importance. Vanishing, vanishing, gone.

Disappearing sounded like a fantasy she wanted to indulge herself in. Disappearing sounded like her only option at this point. Maybe this was what she wanted to do after graduation: like Rio, she would choose to forget and live in peace somewhere nobody knew her. All these mistakes that they couldn't correct, they hated to remember. Starting over was better than remembering. Better than keeping the collar made of regret.

"A runaway never changes his patterns," Sawyer mused.

"Fuck you," Rio said, but it was without heat. After a moment, she heard his sleeping bag rustle as he turned on his side, tucking his pillow under his head. "What about you? What do you want, really?"

Sawyer . "Nothing."

Rolling his eyes, Rio smacked Sawyer in the forehead. "Shut up, shut up. Give me something real."

She cracked her fist against his shoulder. "No."

"Everybody wants something."

It was those words that stung her chest. All she could see was the same words coming out of someone else's mouth.

"Now you sound just like Oliver."

Rio smirked. "Yeah, on that note, are you two, like, together or are you just, y'know...?"

He trailed off, and Sawyer didn't want to tell him that it was exactly what he was thinking. So she said, instead, "it can never go anywhere."

"Why not?"

Picking at a seam in her pillow to avoid his invasive gaze, Sawyer tore out a flaking piece of skin on her chapped lip with her front teeth. When it pulled away like a leaf plucked from a branch, her lip stung and she tasted blood. "I won't let it. He has his life in order, and I won't be the car wreck that ruins it all."

"Huh," Rio said, like he'd just been struck with an epiphany, amusement glimmering in his tone as he regarded Sawyer with a searching look, realisation dawning. "You care about him."

In truth, even though everything about Rio was loud as a storm, the way he said it wasn't like that at all. Still, Sawyer couldn't help but feel it resonate. Her stomach dropped. Pushing her dark hair away from her face with jerky movements, she glanced around the room, like he'd just announced it to everyone else, a thousand phantom eyes staring back at her in judgement. But nobody stirred. Everyone else was fast asleep except for them.

Relief was a fickle feather tossed in the wind, finally settling on solid ground. Pinching the fraying seam between two fingers, Sawyer jerked her wrist, tug-tug-tugging until it came out, loosing its neighbouring seams. That simple yet pointless act of destruction did nothing to steady her rough tone. "I spend most of my life wishing it would end. Sometimes I get so angry I do abnormal, irrational things. Sooner or later he'll get sick of that. They all do."

Sometimes Sawyer didn't know what to do with all that rage. It settled in her skin, crawled like bugs, uncomfortable and itching and clouding over all rationale. She wanted to rip and rend the world to shreds, feel the splitting skin beneath her fingernails as she dug into flesh with all her might, pouring that rage like magma into the bloody aftermath. Like it'd make her feel better. Sometimes it made her sick, burnt a hole of guilt in her churning guts. What kind of despicable monster wanted to hurt people this much? Certainly not anyone sane. Sometimes Sawyer wished she could forgive as easily as she got angry. Sometimes she wished that she was a better person, and not someone who only knew how to harm with both her fists and her words. But here she was; all venom and violence. Irrational and slow and angry. Sometimes she thought the Valium would dull her enough, make her feel numb all the way inside from her skin to her bones and all the blood in between, to pretend. One time Dr Josten said to her, It's worse to pretend you're the same as ever. So Sawyer said, I forgot how not to pretend.

Rio's stare burned, and it felt like the flesh on her face was slowly peeling off, bit by bit, piece by piece. All of a sudden his face had lost its mirth, and the line of his mouth was solemn, almost annoyed. "We haven't. We've stuck with you since day one, or have you forgotten? You didn't even lose Jeremy, who could be hanging with a better crowd. He hasn't ditched us. And what about Quinn? She knows what you're like, and she still became your friend."

Truth was, Sawyer couldn't say anything to that.

"You think you're a mess?" Rio scoffed, his voice an incredulous whisper that thundered in the space between them. "Look at me."

"You got broken up with. That doesn't really help your case."

"So?" Rio lifted a brow. "Sometimes you have to be selfish. You're always doing impulsive things that hurt you in the end. If it ends, it ends. If he's not staying even though you're trying your best, so what? That just shows he doesn't deserve you. Not the other way round."

Sawyer didn't answer him. Silence lapsed over them, but Rio didn't break his stare.

Deep down, she knew he was right. Deep down, she knew she did self-destructive things without thinking twice about getting hurt. She fought people because she couldn't fight herself. She hurt herself because there was no one more deserving of it. In any case, she didn't care about hurting herself. In fact, she wanted it to hurt. But this was different. All the times she got hurt, it'd been physical. There was something to show for the self-induced ruination. Like a bruise spiderwebbing blue and yellow across her knuckles, or a gaping surface wound on her shins, or a bloody-lipped smile, or burns weeping with pus on the back of her hand. When it came to scars that couldn't be seen, scars that marked her on the inside, Sawyer always drew back, like a tide retreating from the shore. Maybe she was weak like that.

"I want to be free," Sawyer said, finally. It took a moment for Rio to realise what she was talking about. "I want to go away. I don't ever want to see my mum again. I'll let my dad visit, but I won't stay with her."

A smile so unlike Rio's usual smiles spread across his lips. There was no sharp edge to it. No cruelty, not even a scintilla of madness in it. His gunmetal eyes shone in the candlelight. In the twilight of the Great Hall, his skin glowed silver-blue, soft as a watercolour painting. "Once we graduate, we'll get a nice apartment in America."

"That's a nice dream." And that's all it ever will be. A dream. Sawyer didn't believe in those anymore.

Rio looked scandalised. "You don't think I have it all planned out?"

"I think you're an optimist. But by all means, if you're going to rob Gringotts, go ahead. Don't say I didn't warn you."

"Not to sound like an asshole, except I absolutely do," Rio drawled, slanting her an unimpressed look, "but I have a trust fund. And I've been stealing money from my dad forever. It's what he owes me, anyway."

It wasn't a secret that Rio's family was one of the wealthiest families in London. Even though his father was an aesthetic surgeon, his mother hailed from a family that ran like a business, a family that sat on money that only kept multiplying exponentially. The kind of money that could buy off anything and anyone in the world thousandfold. It wasn't just riches anymore. It was "fuck you" money, as Marcus liked to say.

Sawyer hummed. "So we'll get a nice house. Then what?"

"Then we evade taxes and live happily ever after." Rio held up a hand, ticking off the stages of his supposed plan with his fingers. "We'll get jobs. Shitty ones. Maybe I'll be a tattoo artist. Maybe you'll be a... I don't know. Whatever it is, it's not going to be glamorous, but that's the charm of it. Most importantly, we'll be free."

"What about Marcus?"

Rio looked like he'd just been slapped. In her mouth, the name burned like blasphemy. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, like he was about to cry. "He's not going to take me back." His voice was scraped raw with some untethered emotion.

"How would you know?"

Rio let out a soundless laugh, and it was both shattering and blood-curdling at once. "I know him. He wants to be drafted into a good team. He can't have bad press. I'm deadweight. Drug addict boyfriends don't count as the model image of perfection."

In all the years that Sawyer had known Marcus, she knew that wasn't true. But she let Rio wallow in his own self-pity. Maybe this would be the final straw needed for him to pull his act together. Maybe he'd finally be clean if he found someone to do it for. She wanted to tell him that he was just projecting. Marcus wasn't that shallow. Rio knew better.

Instead, Sawyer said, "then he doesn't deserve you."

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
rio and sawyer are manifestations of this pic

anyway another thing i'm gonna be sad about once SKOD ends is that my other books will never do as well as this one so it's back to square one begging for feedback