Every instinct in me screams run.Run to where?
“What are you doing here?” my mother says sharply, her voice tight with fear.
Before I can even react, she’s stepping in front of me like a shield, frail and trembling, but still trying. Still pretending she can protect me from a world she handed me over to.
Oliver lets out a laugh. A bark, rough and guttural, like this moment is a joke to him. Thick smoke curled from his lips like poison. In a blink, he moves. The heavy stomp of his boots echoes as he climbs the trailer steps, and with one brutal swing of his arm, he throws her aside, making me flinch.
She flies across the trailer like a rag doll, crashing into a cabinet with a sickening thud.
My heart doesn’t even have time to react.
Because the next second, his hand is around my throat.
I don’t even see it coming.
One moment I’m stunned and the next, my back slams into the trailer wall with bone-jarring force, a force no one prepared me for. A breath punches out of me as his fingers squeeze around my neck tightly. I gasp, trying to inhale, but nothing comes. My lungs scramble for air as he lifts me just slightly off the ground like I weigh nothing at all.
“Nice to see you again,” Oliver drawls, his voice gravel and venom. His face is inches from mine, cigarette smoke mixing with the scent of vodka and sweat and something far darker.
I glare at him.
And I don’t stop glaring.
Because I’m so fucking tired.
Tired of all of it—this place, these people, this life.
And for one dizzy, dangerous second, I wish he’d kill me. Right here. Right now. Let it end.
But then, Alex.
His face flashes in my mind. His arms wrapped around me last night. His voice whispering my name like it was something holy, I think of Tyler, too, my over dramatic best friend who can’t do anything without me by his side, my first real home.
No. Not like this.
I want to live.
I have to live.
A strangled sound rips from my throat as my hands fly to Oliver’s, trying to pry him off. My nails dig into his wrists. My chest burns. Everything is spinning. Every fiber in my being is screaming at me to fight. My ears are ringing so loudly that I barely hear the sound of my mother screaming my name.
But I catch the blur of her body in the corner of my eye, fighting and struggling but being held back by the two other men. One of them claps a hand over her mouth. She’s crying and thrashing like she’s gone feral.
Just like me.
“You’ve got fire,” Oliver rasps, grinning at me. “I like that. Is that the same look you gave Tim when you stabbed him, over and over? Were your eyes wild like this when you bled him out?”
I freeze.
His words slam into me harder than the wall ever could.
My hands falter. My limbs go still.
How the fuck does he know?
How does he know what I did to Tim?
His grip tightens once more, then suddenly lets go. I collapse, knees buckling as I slide down the wall, coughing, choking, sucking in air like it’s the first breath I’ve ever taken. My vision blurs with tears. My throat throbs.
