The Start
-Lola-
One Year Ago
New York City, 11:47 p.m.
The blood came first.
That’s what I remember most—not the fall, not the impact of my body hitting each step on the way down, not even the sound of Marcus laughing at the top of the stairs as I tumbled. Just the blood. Warm and wet between my legs, soaking through my jeans, pooling on the landing where I finally stopped moving.
I knew before the paramedics told me. Before the doctors at the hospital confirmed it with their careful, clinical voices and their sympathetic eyes that didn’t do a goddamn thing to help me. I knew the second I felt that first cramp, that sharp twist in my abdomen that meant something inside me had broken, had been taken.
The baby was gone.
Marcus had made sure of that.
“You think I want a fucking kid with you?” he’d said, standing at the top of the stairs, his hand still raised from where he’d shoved me. “You think I’m going to let you trap me like that?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. My body was too busy trying to hold onto something that was already slipping away.
The hospital was worse than the fall. The doctors knew—I could see it in their faces, in the way they looked at the bruises on my arms, the fingerprints on my neck, and the old scars on my back that I’d stopped trying to explain away years ago. They knew Marcus had pushed me. They documented it. Took photos. Asked questions in low, careful voices while a nurse held my hand and told me I was safe now.
But I wasn’t safe.
Marcus had connections. Money. Lawyers who could make anything disappear, including evidence of what he’d done to me, what he’d been doing to me for three years. By the time I was discharged two days later, the case was already closed. An accident, they said. A tragic fall. No charges filed.
I would’ve gone back to the apartment. Would’ve walked right back into that prison because I didn’t know how to do anything else, didn’t know how to be anything other than what Marcus had made me.
But then Daniel showed up.
Marcus’s friend. The one who’d always looked at me with something like pity, something like guilt. He came to the hospital the night before I was discharged and slipped an envelope into my hand when the nurses weren’t looking.
“There’s ten thousand dollars in here,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “Enough to get you out. Enough to disappear.”
I stared at him. “Why?”
“Because he’s going to kill you if you stay,” Daniel said. “And I’m not going to watch that happen.”
He left before I could say anything else. Before I could ask him why he’d stayed friends with a man like Marcus, why he’d watched me suffer for three years and only now decided to help. It didn’t matter. The money was in my hand. The door was open.
So I ran.
-Lola-
The Year Between
I didn’t stop running for twelve months.
Pennsylvania. Ohio. Indiana. Illinois. Missouri. Kansas. Colorado. Nevada. Arizona. New Mexico. Texas. Back up through Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee. I moved like a ghost, never staying in one place longer than a week, sometimes just a few days. Cheap motels with stained carpets and flickering lights. Diners were where I ate alone and kept my head down. Bus stations and rest stops and the occasional kindness of strangers who didn’t ask questions.
The scars didn’t fade. The bruises on my upper back and neck turned from purple to yellow to a sickly green. These bruises didn’t want to leave me either. He used to hit me in the same spots that now seem slightly permanent.
I found gyms in every town. Shitty ones with rusted equipment and peeling paint, expensive ones with pristine machines and judgemental trainers who looked at me like I didn’t belong. It didn’t matter. I paid the day rate, walked in, and let it out.
The weights became my therapy. The treadmill became my escape. I ran until my lungs burned, lifted until my muscles screamed, hit the heavy bag until my knuckles bled and my vision blurred with tears I refused to let fall anywhere else.
And when the flashbacks came—Marcus’s voice in my ear, his hands on my throat, the feeling of falling, always falling—I didn’t break down. I went harder. Faster. Stronger.
I got fit. Lean muscle replacing the softness Marcus had hated, had punished me for. My body became a weapon I could control, a fortress I could retreat into. I didn’t eat unless I earned it. Didn’t sleep unless I was too exhausted to dream.
Some nights, alone in another anonymous motel room, I’d catch sight of myself in the mirror—the scars on my back visible, the faint bruises on my neck that never fully healed, and the hollow look in my eyes that I couldn’t work out no matter how many miles I ran.
I looked like a survivor.
I felt like a ghost.
But I didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering, and remembering meant feeling, and feeling meant breaking.
And I refused to break.
Not for Marcus. Not for anyone.
-Lola-
Present Day
Los Angeles, California, 4:32 p.m.
I stood outside Auntie Lucy’s house and told myself to breathe.
The California sun was too bright, too warm, too alive after a year of shadows and cold motel rooms and the grey anonymity of highways that all looked the same. The light hit my skin and I wanted to flinch, wanted to retreat back into the rental car and keep driving, keep running, because that’s what I knew how to do now.
But I didn’t move.
Lucy’s house was exactly how I remembered it—pale yellow with white trim, a garden full of flowers I couldn’t name, and a porch with rocking chairs that looked like they’d been there forever. It was the kind of house that screamed family and safety and home, all the things I’d lost when my parents died, all the things Marcus had made sure I’d never have again.
I hadn’t seen Lucy in four years. Hadn’t called, hadn’t written, hadn’t let her know I was even alive until two weeks ago when I finally broke down and sent a text from a burner phone: It’s Lola. I’m okay. Can I come visit?
Her response had been immediate: YES. Please. I’ve been so worried. Come home.
Home.
I didn’t know what that word meant anymore.
My hand moved to the back of my neck, fingers tracing the faint ridges of scars that would never fully disappear. Marcus’s favourite place to grab me, to hold me down, to remind me who was in control. I’d covered them with makeup today—expensive shit I’d bought at a drugstore in Nevada—but I could still feel them, could still feel him, like he’d branded me and no amount of distance or time could erase it.
I dropped my hand. Straightened my shoulders. Pulled the armour back into place.
I was good at this now. The mask. The performance. The version of Lola Pierce who was strong and unbothered and fine, always fine, even when she was screaming inside.
Lucy didn’t need to know about Marcus. Didn’t need to know about the baby, the fall, the hospital, or the year of running. She just needed to see her niece—alive, healthy, fine.
I could do that.
I’d been doing it for a year.
The engagement party is tomorrow. Lucy’s daughter—my cousin Emma—was getting married to some guy I’d never met, and Lucy had begged me to come, to be there, to be part of the family again. I’d said yes because I didn’t know how to say no to her, didn’t know how to explain that I wasn’t the same girl who used to spend summers in this house, who used to laugh and feel safe and believe the world was a good place.
That girl was dead.
Marcus had killed her.
But Lucy didn’t need to know that either.
I took a breath. Felt the California air fill my lungs, warm and clean and so different from the stale recycled air of motel rooms and bus stations. My body was strong now—I could feel it in the way my muscles moved, in the way I held myself, in the way I didn’t flinch when a car door slammed somewhere down the street.
I was strong.
I was fine.
I was in control.
I walked up the porch steps, my hand steady as I reached for the door.
And then I knocked.
