A twitch in Belle’s lips. She turned to see Lily looking at her, a light in those blue eyes. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you have snuck over,” Belle pointed out. “It didn’t end well. The cops showed up at my door.”

“It began well,” Lily reminded, lying back on Belle’s bed. “You held me all night. And even though there wasn’t time for much else, it was the best night of my life. Until the arrest.”

Belle turned to look at her. The suitcase was full, and she could join Lily on the bed if she wanted to. Lily’s blond locks were splayed out on the pillow. She was wearing a bulky sweatshirt, not unlike the ones that had been handed out at the detention center, and Belle wanted to guide it off Lily’s body slowly, seeing her girlfriend for the first time. With nothing between them. They had done more than hold each other the night Lily had slept over, but that had mostly included kissing and very timid touching. Lily had kept her clothes on. After a lifetime of being hidden, it was difficult for her to let herself be seen.

That was something Belle could understand. Edwin had taught her to hide her vulnerabilities, until it looked, to the outside world, like there was no softness inside her. She threatened people with the flowers in her garden and kept her fingernails sharpened to points. Everything about her was a weapon.

Everything but her heart.

Belle walked over to the bed, but instead of reaching for Lily, she reached for the hammer in her bedside table, the one Raven had given her in middle school. It took mere seconds to pop up one of the floorboards. Then she was pulling out the letters she’d stolen after Raven had gone to boarding school. Letters from Raven. Letters from Jack. She knew what she was risking, showing these letters to Lily, but she didn’t care in that moment.

She wanted to be seen.

“I started stealing these on my lunch break,” she admitted, handing Lily one of the letters. “Edwin drives me to school and picks me up, so lunch is the only time I have to wander during the day. I never go very far, but one day, after Raven left town, I noticed the mailwoman at the end of Jack’s block. I don’t know what came over me, but the next thing I knew, I was creeping up to Jack’s mailbox, pulling out a letter to Raven. Then I just… hung around until Raven’s letter had been delivered. I did this every day for weeks, until they stopped writing to each other. It was easy.”

“See also: illegal.”

Belle shrugged, ignoring the heat in her cheeks. “We were going to kill a person, and you’re worried about mail fraud.”