Butterflies & Vicious Lies (Fractured Rhymes Book 1)

I’M ready for this day to be over, and it’s nowhere near being done.

For three nights now, I’ve been trying to catch up on my sleep. Friday night when I returned exhausted to a roomful of butterflies was the start of my demise. It took almost two and a half hours to remove each insect from my room, and once I’d showered and finally climbed into bed, the sun was just starting to light the sky. With back-to-back twelve-hour shifts at the studio, I should be able to come home and crash without a struggle.

But that’s not the case. I find myself lying there in my dark room with my mind racing a million miles an hour. Between reliving the depressing events of this week, I play the “what if” game. It’s a special way to torture yourself, and a surefire way to hurt your own feelings. It’s also something I find myself doing a lot. What if I’d kept Rafferty’s secret? What if I hadn’t given my dad the evidence he needed to build a case? If I’d just kept my mouth shut, would everyone be safe and healthy?

It’s always when I get to that last question that I’m once again reminded of why I betrayed Rafferty, and with it, my resolve for my actions strengthens. Knowing you did the right thing doesn’t make it hurt any less.

And Rafferty wants me to hurt.

The leather choker around my throat feels like a chain connecting me to him. With a simple tug, Rafferty can have me falling to my knees without any objection. Nobody warns you when you accept the burden of a secret that you must bear all degrees of degradation to keep it. I made a promise that I would never tell, and while I hate everything about Rafferty’s collar, I’ll wear it because the bigger picture is more important.

I’m trying to do my best to ignore Lark’s inquisitive and concerned stare as we walk across campus toward our next classes.

It’s the blonde I’m quickly becoming close to who finally breaks the awkward tension. “I’m not Zadie, so I’m not going to come right out and ask you what the fuck that was about. All I will tell you is I’m here if you want to talk about it.”

There’s nothing more I want to do than to talk to someone about what’s happening. The only other people who lived through that time with me are my father and Pax, and neither one of them is talking to me right now. Granted, it’s for different reasons, but the silence hurts all the same.

“Rafferty blames me for something that happened a few years back. He hates me and wants revenge.” My mouth is forming words before my brain has fully comprehended I’m speaking aloud. Apparently, the need to confide in someone is taking over and I’ve lost all control. My only saving grace is I kept it vague enough to avoid any real trouble.

Lark’s hand wraps around my upper arm, stopping me from continuing down the pathway we’re on. She’s about three inches taller than me, and she has to look down at me when she talks. If she wasn’t trapped in the world of politics, I’m sure she’d make an amazing model.

“And you’re just going to let him treat you like this?”

“It doesn’t matter how good my reasoning was almost six years ago, Raff will always have every right to be mad at me.” My shoulders shrug nonchalantly even though I’m feeling anything but.

I don’t realize my crucial mistake until Lark’s perfectly symmetrical face falls. “Six years? You mean this happened before he transferred out of Hemlock Hill?”

A stress headache instantly wraps around my skull like a vise. Eyes squeezed tight, I rub my temple as I sigh her name in an unspoken plea for her to not take this any further. “Lark…”

She doesn’t hear my silent begging, or she chooses to ignore it. So much for her not being like Zadie…

“So, when you said the other day that you don’t know Rafferty Wilde, you were telling the truth. You haven’t seen him since he dropped his father’s name after his mom—”

That’s enough! Eyes snapping open, I frantically grip the hand that still holds my arm. “Please. Just… just don’t, Lark.”

For the first time, I get a small taste of what it must have been like for Rafferty and Pax during the aftermath. There wasn’t a soul in town who didn’t know who they were or what had happened to their family. No matter where they went, I’m positive they couldn’t escape the stares or whispering. Their tragedy became another’s entertainment. I doubt their grandmother switching them to the other private school in town did much to help them.

I’m met with nothing but unwavering sympathy when I lift my chin. She has no idea what part I played in the brothers’ story, and yet, she doesn’t look at me like she believes for a second I am the bad guy. Meanwhile, that’s the only thing Rafferty sees me as. To him, I was the monster sleeping in his bed that took his mom’s life.

“So, when you say you knew them, you really knew them. You were there when it all went down?” I’m not sure if it’s her intuition or my visceral reaction to her prodding that makes her draw that conclusion. Maybe it’s both.

“Yes,” I whisper hoarsely.

“I’m so sorry, Posie.”

Rafferty’s been telling me that he’s the only one who lost something, that I have no right to grieve. Lark’s earnest apology goes right to my heart, making the fragile pieces of it crack a little bit more, because for the first time in a long time, it allows me to acknowledge that I too lost things. I lost my best friend, my surrogate mom, and my first and only love.

“Thank you.” Exhaling a shaky breath, I try to regain my composure. “I don’t want… I can’t talk about it. It’s not my story to tell.” Rafferty would explode with fury if he heard me say that. He’d be calling me out for my hypocrisy seeing as I had no trouble telling his story back then.

“I understand.” Her free hand reaches for the leather collar, and her finger runs over the silver wings. “Can you tell me just one thing, though? Why the butterfly?”

I’ve lost track of how many times people have asked me about my name. As if it were an oath I’d made to him, I guarded the nickname he’d given me like it was hallowed. When he put this butterfly on my throat, he took the thing that was once sacred to us and made it into the symbol of his control over me.

Keeping the origin of the moniker a secret is no longer something I owe him. So, I tell her. “My mother was from Spain. When she was pregnant with me, she said when I kicked her, it felt like little butterfly wings fluttering in her belly. She started to call me her mariposa. It’s Spanish for butterfly. My dad eventually joined in, and shortly after, the name was shortened to Posie. It stuck, and they decided that’s what I should be named. Not that it really mattered what my mother wanted to call me since she was gone by the time I was two. Rafferty knows this story and started calling me Butterfly when we were younger because of it.”

My mother came from an affluent family in Spain. She moved to the States for college and while she was here, she met Mollie and my dad. He was a couple a years older, and I think she was enthralled by the idea of being with someone who was the opposite of the boys she’d dated before. Dad was simple, hardworking, and down to earth. The charm of being a stay-at-home mom in a middle-class family wore off quickly. Before I had a chance to develop real memories of her, she was signing divorce papers and giving all parental rights to my dad. We haven’t heard a word from her since, but I can’t help but think we’re better off for it.

Lark falls quiet for a moment. “So, he took a story that could have made you sad and twisted it into something that would make you happy?”

The first time he called me that, the smile that broke across my face was so big, it hurt. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

“I don’t know the full story between you guys and I’m not asking you to tell me, but I find it interesting that he still uses the nickname. If I hated someone, I sure as hell wouldn’t be calling them any cute secret nicknames anymore.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s his point. He’s trying to tarnish the sentimental name he called me, just like he’s trying to ruin everything else.”

Lark doesn’t look convinced. “Hate’s a funny emotion. It blinds us from feeling anything else.”

“I don’t hate Rafferty.”

“I know you don’t. If you did, you’d be a lot more pissed about that thing around your neck. I’m just wondering if he hates you as much as you think he does.” Lark’s more optimistic outlook on this is charming and appreciated, but as the person who was choking on his dick in a graveyard, I think I’m the authority on this matter.

And I still think he hates me.