Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas

“Alex told me after the haunted house the other night
about everything that happened to you,” I explained to her.
“How they mistakenly thought you were the one to upload the
videos and they went after you because they thought you sent
them to prison.” I paused as she remained silent. “She told me
what Damon did. But you don’t seem to hate him. Why?”
She invited him and our family to her engagement party.
She was fine being around him at the haunted house. I heard a
rumor they were having business meetings.
But she just sighed. “Why don’t I hate any of them?” she
asked. “I guess when you hate someone you don’t have to hate
them forever.”
But it wasn’t okay. How could she trust him? How could
she forgive him?
“I don’t excuse what he did,” she said, hesitating for a
moment, “but…I don’t know. I see a chance in there. I can’t
explain it.” And then she continued, “Michael, Kai, Will…
They have never disappointed me since.”
I didn’t know what they’d done to her compared to
Damon, but I knew what he did to me compared to her. I
would never forgive him.
“He hasn’t hurt you, has he?” she asked, like she expected
he wouldn’t really.
Another hard question to answer. Was he forcing me? No.
Was he threatening me? Playing with my head?
“The mindfucks are a little rough,” I told her.
She scoffed, sounding like she understood. “Yeah, they are
good at that.”
The director was shouting on stage, giving direction, and
then the piano started up again as I heard a dozen pairs of
ballet slippers hit the stage, the musical number beginning
again.
“The only good memory I have of Damon when we were
younger was when we were kids,” Rika told me. “I was like
three or four—the memory is faint but I remember the gist—