Prologue
LAKE
Dear Diary,
Diary… Confidante. Keeper of secrets.
Secrets… I hold so many inside my heart.
Pain. Loss. Regret.
Love. Elation.
Shame.
So. Much. Shame.
The incident that happened… What they did to me. How they touched me. Everything they stole from me that I can never get back.
I lie in the early morning hours of the day and feel their hands on me. The nauseating skate of their breath across my flesh as if they owned me. The sensation of the rope burns on my ankles and wrists continues to linger, as does the suffocation of duct tape across my mouth and the way it would tug on my hair because they’d wrapped it all the way around my head.
When I was discovered…
I cried. I vomited. I begged for death.
I ripped the knife out of Izzy Lewis’ hand after she’d found me and freed me from my bindings, nearly plunging it into my belly before my nude body was tackled to the ground. Screaming, I cursed her as she held me on the damp lakeside beach. Frogs ribbiting, birds chirping, the warm glow of sunlight kissing my skin as it slowly rose into the brilliant blue sky, not a cloud in sight.
I.
Wanted.
To.
Die.
Every single day since that day nearly eight years ago, I’ve wanted to die. I’ve begged every God I could think of not to let me wake up from the previous night’s sleep. Imagine the disappointment as my eyes popped open at the same time each morning.
1:18 a.m.
Without fail, I wake up. There’s no sleep beyond that time. Locked in a nightmare, reliving the past until the moment I was rescued.
5:43 a.m.
My salvation time.
Except it’s not.
Dear Diary, please let me die.
CHAPTER 1
Saint
DESTIN, FL
Sweat drips into my eyes as my muscles flex and shudder, protesting the damage I inflict. On myself. On the man across from me. The savage tang of blood overwhelms the air, but it doesn’t stop me.
Nothing can stop me.
