Lucy: Five Years Ago

LUCY

FIVE YEARS AGO

“Yeah, sure, let’s kill my husband,” I said with a laugh. “How should we do it? Knife him while he’s sleeping? Push him into traffic? Wait, I know. Poison in the liquor bottle. Matt sucks down those drinks so fast he’ll be dead before he realizes the taste is off.”

I laughed again, but Savvy didn’t. She cocked an eyebrow. My smile slowly faded.

“Savvy.” I shifted on the barstool as I realized that I was the only person kidding around. “I can’t kill him. I can’t kill anyone.”

“Why not? He deserves it.”

I opened my mouth to argue.

“Don’t you dare say he doesn’t.” She wrapped a warm hand around my arm. “I’ve seen bruises on you so many times, and I know you’re not even telling me the worst of it.”

I wasn’t. The worst of it was too much to recount. It wasn’t even that it was humiliating, I just couldn’t bring myself to put together words to explain how he’d choked me until I blacked out. Or when “things had gotten out of control” (as he always liked to put it) and he’d dragged me by my hair from the kitchen to the living room and then slammed my head repeatedly into the hardwood floors until I saw stars.

“He deserves it,” I confirmed quietly. “But even if I wanted to kill him—”

“We,” Savvy interrupted. “Even if we wanted to kill him. I wouldn’t make you do it alone.”

I huffed out a laugh. “Damn, Savvy, I knew you were ride or die, but that’s next-level.”

She tossed her hair over her shoulder with a grin. “I’m the best friend in the world, you can say it. And as the best friend in the world, I would be delighted to help you off your dickhead husband.”

I stared at her, still convinced she must have been kidding.

She cocked an eyebrow. “What do you say? Are we going to kill a dude or what?”