Doomed

It felt like something had torn open inside my chest, and the cold was pouring straight through.

Keith Hollister was my closest friend. When I was eight, traffickers grabbed me off the street. Keith held onto the van’s door handle and got dragged for half a mile before he pulled me free.

After that, we weren’t just friends anymore. We were family.

But I never imagined that Keith, who bickered with my girlfriend, Sasha Belmont, every time they were in the same room, would be the one to betray me.

It took a long time before I found my voice again, raw and barely there. “When did it start?”

“Does it matter?” Sasha leaned back, completely unbothered.

“I was annoyed by him at first too. He was always stealing you away from me. But then he stopped picking fights, and I kind of missed it.

“Don’t overthink this. I’m still going to keep my promise. I’ll finish my studies, come back, and marry you.”

I looked at the expression on her face, that unmistakable glow of someone in love, and something twisted hard in my chest. My whole body trembled.

Before I could explode, Keith rushed over and shoved Sasha aside, grabbing my hands. His were shaking.

“Rory, don’t be mad at me. Just say the word and I won’t go abroad with Sash.”

I forced a smile, but it came out worse than crying.

Sash? What an intimate thing to call her.

But Sasha seemed to have forgotten. When the people who came after her family killed her parents, my dad was the one who dove into the river to save her. She made it out alive, but he didn’t.