Locked.
Uma’s head turned woozy, eyeballs constricted.
Stress, she thought.This is stress. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
The door suddenly swung open, and she fell in behind it, jostling her boss in the process. After pulling the door from the woman’s grasp and slamming it shut, she leaned back on it, bent double from the waist, gasping. It was like that first day here, against the side of the house, and—
A ghostly whisper of Ivan’s warm hand. Just a memory, but tangible enough to calm her. She glanced up and caught Ms. Lloyd’s horrified expression.
“What the hell is that?” the woman snarled, pointing at Uma’s arm. Her sleeve was stained dark with grease and dotted with blood.
“Nothing.” She tried to move to the stairs, but before Uma understood her intention, Ms. Lloyd blocked her way, grabbed hold of the fabric, and yanked it up, baring half her left arm.
It hurt. Oh, it hurt.
“You call that nothing? What is wrong with you? This what you’ve been doin’ in town? Gettin’ these filthy things put on?” Ms. Lloyd’s accent got thicker when she was riled up. More country and less genteel.
“No,” Uma muttered. Her vision, dark at the edges, narrowed on Ms. Lloyd’s face, the focus too close: an eyebrow, a hair.
“You just did those.”
She swallowed. “I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie to me, girl. You think I’m blind? It’s all red.”
A tiny, snide little voice inside Uma almost pushed her to laugh. At Ms. Lloyd’s innocence, maybe. The fact that she had no idea what a new tattoo looked like. It was weirdly liberating. Because what did it matter anyway, if she knew? “I’m getting themremoved.”
A pause. “What?”
She forced herself to watch the woman’s face as understanding dawned.
Yeah, that’s it, lady. Look at the freak show you hired.
Those enormous black eyes took in the story, read the words scrawled across Uma’s skin, no doubt shoring it up as ammunition to drag out at some later date. The messyJs andOs,Es andYs, veering off into skid marks when Uma had gotten a kick in. Other things too, marking Uma as devalued property, like where he’d forgotten theTinBITCHand scratched the whole word out. What she couldn’t see was that he’d moved to the other side to start afresh. Mostly, though, what Ms. Lloyd stared at was a road map to the single worst night of Uma’s life—a series of jagged, unintelligible inscriptions, documenting Joey’s descent into jealousy-fueled madness.
“Who did this to you?”
“My ex.” With a sigh of relief, Uma pulled the sleeve back down.
“I’m callin’ the sheriff.”
“No!” She stopped Ms. Lloyd with a hand to the wrist—bird thin and brittle.
“You sayin’ you wanted this?”
“Of course not.”
How could Uma explain what Joey had done? How he’d chased her to the door, yanked at her hair, pulling it out by the roots, and dragged her back by the ankle? Crushed her like a bug and trussed her up like a pig. Held her down and hurt her, over and over and over.
How could she possibly tell this woman about the humiliation, the degradation, theforevernessof it? How she’d begged and cried and tried to fight him off. But in the end, she’d endured it, hadn’t she? Fucking weak, pathetic thing that she was, Uma had lain there and let it happen.
She wouldn’t do that today. No cringing, no flinching, no giving in. Today, she’d—
“Well, honey, we’ve got to do somethin’ about this, then.”
“What?”
An evil glint shone in Ms. Lloyd’s eye, and for once, it wasn’t directed at Uma.
