Page 380 of Double or Nothing

Than love.

I don’t want to be a part of it anymore. I don’t want to touch a single thing that belongs to the Parkers ever again, because there is one thing I do own, that’s been mine right from the start.

Me.

I own me.

My own heart, and personality, and morals. My own emotions, my own creativity. My own fucking soul.

“Go fuck yourself, Dad,” I say, and I’m out of there, walking away from the table as he bellows my name.

“Alice Rose! If you leave, you will have to accept the consequences.”

I look back.

“So will you.”

I don’t pack a case, because there’s nothing I want to take with me. I only grab the suitcase I borrowed from Jack, the one with my chipped mug, that I never had the heart to unpack. My fingers are trembling as I dig through my handbag in the entrance hall, throwing out anything that isn’t mine. My house keys, my credit cards, my fucking phone. Nothing. I have nothing.

In fact, fuck that, I take a token twenty quid, and toss my handbag to the side as well.

I don’t even take my coat when Helen offers it, her eyes filled with tears. She must have heard far too much from the sidelines.

Mum comes rushing in, white as a ghost as I open the front door.

“Alice, darling, no!” she says. “Don’t leave, not like this.”

She looks at the collection of things I’ve tossed on the sideboard, next to my abandoned bag. She sees my phone, already wiped of anything meaningful.

“How will we contact you?!”

“You won’t,” I say, and step out in the night, closing the door behind me.

The clothes on my back, the shoes on my feet, and one token twenty. That’s all I have, and all I want from them.

I’m halfway down Leafdon Road when a cab passes by and I manage to flag it down.

I can’t be confident Jack is going to be at his place, but at least I have the keycode to the tower. I may well have to sit outside his door like a stray puppy dog until someone arrives to let me in, but that’s ok, because I am one.

I’m no longer a Parker, just Alice Rose.

A soul girl who needs her red and purple.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

BRYCE

It’s nearly nine when someone hammers on the front door. No intercom buzz beforehand. Nothing. Just a hurricane of blows that have me straight up off the sofa and throwing my book down.

The knocking starts up again when I get to the hallway. Harder this time. Desperate.

“JACK? BRYCE? Are you in there?!”

Alice.

It’s Alice!

Oh my fucking God, my hands shake like hell as I turn the lock.