“No,” Lulu whispers. Her eyes were squeezed shut but at the sound of her own voice against the night they fly open. “No,” she says again. “No!” she yells. “No no no no no no no no!” By now she’s howling. “NO!” She screams. “NO! I WON’T! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!”

She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, or even who she thinks she’s yelling at. Definitely not Naomi or Ryan. God, maybe. Whoever, whatever made a universe like this one.

She’s yelling at herself, for not being able to keep Ryan from hurting her, and the women who raised him, who raised him like this. The men who raised him, who raised him like this. His great-great-grandfather and all of his money. His great-great-grandfather and his money and his property and the woman he saw on the screen and then plucked off of it to keep for himself. Avery wanted what Ryan wanted: to own a woman’s body. To control her any way he could.

“No,” she says again, and this time it comes out in a raw, hurt whisper. “No. No. No.”

But the world doesn’t care what Lulu has to say about it—whether she hates it. If it seems like it’s trying to kill her. Good, it’s probably thinking. You weren’t tough enough anyway, then.

Lulu knows what she wants, now: to look the indifferent universe in the eye, defiant, and triumphant and recklessly, impossibly, alive.

Despite it. Despite everything.

Lulu looks around at the orange grove, her little tiny oasis of quiet in the big busy noisy city night. She remembers standing here with Owen, plucking fruit from the trees, letting their heaviness tug them off the branch and into her open palms. That was when she first started to understand that she was really, really going to lose him. That was the day after she met Cass for the first time. That was a different life, she thinks, and yet here she is again, her bare feet in the same earth.

The world is indifferent to her, and that means she can do whatever she wants as long as she’s in it.

“Fuck you,” Lulu says to the night. She wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater. She turns and goes inside.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

BEA DRESSES LULU up for the party. That’s the condition: Lulu will go with her, but only if Bea is responsible for her outfit, and for driving, and for making Lulu feel like less of an ass for being there.

“Act like everything’s normal, right?” Bea said when she proposed it. “And, like, fuck anyone who wants to mess with you.”

“Didn’t you say I shouldn’t do things I didn’t want to do?” Lulu replied.

“Ugh,” Bea said. “Technically, I did.”