Chapter 5

I yanked my wrist free and ran.

Miller caught up and shoved me toward his car. "You think you can wait for a cab? Can your mother?"

I didn't argue. My heart was pounding so hard I could barely breathe.

I pushed through the door. Scarlett was kneeling on the floor in front of me, her face a performance of distress.

"Samantha! I only said a couple of words to your mom, and she started screaming at me — calling me names, trying to hit my stomach!"

I stepped past her and went straight to my mother's side.

"That's impossible. Pancreatic cancer patients don't have the strength to fight or scream."

Scarlett crumpled to the ground, both hands clutching her abdomen, her face pale.

Before I could say another word, pain exploded across my cheek.

Miller's voice was merciless. "You go sleep around and lose your own baby, and now you want to take mine too?"

I had only walked past her. I hadn't touched her.

Was everything Scarlett's fault now mine?

The heart monitor began screaming. Fear froze me where I stood.

I watched Miller scoop Scarlett up off the floor and call every available doctor out of the room.

I stepped in front of him.

"My mother hasn't been stabilized yet. Don't you dare forget — she took care of you every single day. She got up in the middle of the night to make you soup when you were hungry."

Miller glanced at the hospital bed. Something moved across his face briefly. Then Scarlett let out a pained cry in his arms.

"The baby — it'll be okay, right?"

He caught a doctor's eye and gave a quick, loaded look.

"Samantha, your mother's cooking was never that good. And I never asked for her help."

"A woman who raised a daughter like you — maybe the illness is karma."

Those two sentences landed like a blow to the head. I stood there, stunned and dizzy.

While the doctor began resuscitation, a nurse pulled him away.

The last trace of hope I'd held for Miller — the thought that maybe, at least, he cared about my mother — dissolved completely.

The line on the monitor went flat and stayed there.

I couldn't tell anymore if it was numbness or grief. My spine wouldn't hold me upright. My knees hit the floor.

With shaking hands, I pulled the matchbox from my pocket.

The flame kept going out. My tears put it out again and again.

When it finally caught, a hand seized my hair and yanked.

"Scarlett's baby almost didn't make it. Mr. Miller sent us to teach you a lesson."

I stopped fighting. I just looked at the match still burning on the floor. The cold seeped into my skin.

From the next room came Scarlett's voice, soft and playful.

"The doctor said the baby is stable. We're cleared, baby. Come here — I've been waiting."

"Don't you think it's kind of a thrill? Samantha and her mother right next door, listening to us?"

The blood rushed to my head all at once.

I kicked the man in front of me as hard as I could.

I grabbed everything within reach and threw it at them.

Why? Why, even now, did they have to do this to us?

The noise brought Miller in from next door.

His shirt was half-open, red marks visible on his chest.

Scarlett pressed a hand to her lips, eyes wide with mock horror. "Samantha — don't tell me you had someone in here with you? Did you actually get your mother so worked up she — "

I picked up the fruit knife from the table.

I smiled.

I pushed off the floor with everything I had and closed the distance to Scarlett in a single motion.

Miller's instinct took over — he threw himself in front of her.

The knife went into his chest.

Scarlett's scream tore through the room.

The match flame died.

"Miller. I'm the one who can go back in time."

"This time — let's go back to before the SATs."

Miller stared at me, the color gone from his face, his eyes full of something he couldn't name.