The touch is like having ice dragged down her skin. Tiffany shivers beneath it and places her hands around Vanilla’s, removing them from her face. She cups the delicate white fingers between hers and breathes hot air onto them.

Her skin is still so cold.

“I don’t know how you’re not shivering, but you are freezing to the touch. The sun’s coming up but it won’t help much, and when it does, you don’t want people seeing you looking like the aftermath of a three-car pileup. They’ll crowd you. So come on, now. Let’s get out of the cold.”

She pulls on Vanilla, hoping she will just follow. Hoping she will make this easy. But of course it’s not. How could it be? Nothing about this is fucking easy.

Vanilla resists with a frown.

“Look, I would feel terrible just leaving you out here like this all by yourself,” Tiffany reasons, glancing around nervously. Seeking the lurker. “A pretty girl like you.” A gorgeous girl, in fact. And I’ll bet he loved that about you. I’ll bet he loved having a perfect doll like you around. “You’re bound to get harassed. I don’t want that on my conscience if I walk away.” Tiffany flashes her a smile then tugs on her wrist. “Come on. You’ll be my good deed for life.”

When Vanilla still resists, Tiffany holds her breath, feeling the ice sting her throat, and sighs it out in a turbulence of regret and reluctance. A cloud of self-hatred from having to pull a card she wishes she could keep tucked so deep within her sleeve it might never see the light of day. But the power it holds is too great. Its usage is inevitable.

“Tiffany. Listen carefully. If she doesn’t follow you, tell her this.”

Tiffany bites down on her tongue, the dots across her arm lighting up beneath her sleeve, the want to itch paired with the refusal to acknowledge. But still she persists.

Above all, she persists.

“Vanilla . . . Vanilla, if you come with me, I’ll give you a lollipop.”

CHAPTER XXII

Vanilla listens to the girl’s reasoning, but she’s thinking about her room. Thinking about her gray walls. Thinking about stepping into that building, walking those stairs, and locking the door behind her—that delicious snap. Thinking about sitting on her mattress, gathering her toys around her, and waiting.

Just waiting.

For what?

For Daddy, of course.

For that press, nothing, inject, press, nothing.

For that thump-thump thumping that will never come.

“I’ll give you a lollipop,” Tiffany says, her voice breaking through.

Lollipops?

That sweet bite!

Vanilla lights up with recognition. She looks at Tiffany as though seeing her for the first time. Not seeing her as a creature but as a provider. Someone to mend the hunger. To retrieve normalcy. Someone whose presence is so sugary to the senses.

“Would you want a lollipop, Vanilla?” Tiffany asks again.