Bile burns up the back of my throat and I lurch to my feet, rushing across the shag carpet and barely making it into the bathroom before I throw up.
Hardly anything comes up, but that’s not a surprise.
I don’t eat much anymore.
Just enough to sustain my body—and sometimes, when things are really tough, not even that much.
Food is expensive.
Food is an experience.
I close my eyes at the sound of Brooks’s voice in my head, at the memory that brings only pain now.
And guilt.
Or maybe that’s because I just cleaned his blood off my boot.
I gag again, chest heaving but nothing further comes up. Not that my body seems to understand that, the retching taking long minutes to calm.
Finally, out of breath and my throat burning, I rest my forehead against the cool porcelain, not moving until my pulse has steadied and my stomach settled.
Only then do I push up to my feet and move to the sink, scrabbling with the cardboard box that houses the tiny bar of soap, trying to ignore the flashes of red out of the corners of my eye. Then the soap is free and I wrench on the hot water, shoving my hands under the stream, lathering until bubbles are covering my skin, hiding the copper stain…and then making it disappear, swirling down the scarred basin, disappearing into the scuffed silver drain.
I watch as the red turns to pink and eventually the water runs clear.
Or that faint soapy white color, anyway.
But I still can’t stop myself from keeping my hands under the water, not until it truly is clear, not the hint of a sud in sight.
That’s when I finally realize that steam is clinging to my hair, my face…
And that my hand hurts.
Gasping, I pull back, wincing at the bright red of my skin then carefully turn off the water, trying to push the sight of Brooks’s blood on my skin out of my brain.
He hurt me.
Guilt ripples through my body, turning my already shaky legs heavy and weak.
I could lie and say I didn’t want to hurt him—not like that. Not physically, not getting violent.
I’ve experienced a lot of violence in my life.
Too much, I know.
But I was never the aggressor, never a person to dish out pain just because. Escaping fists and pain? Sure. I’d done a lot to get away from it, had punched and scratched and kicked and screamed until I was free.
That wasn’t what happened in that dark, shadowed office.
No, that was me wanting to hurt Brooks.
I don’t want to hurt you.
A lie.
A huge gaping lie.
He hurt me deeper than anyone in my life ever had—deeper than my parents who dumped me with a grandfather who didn’t give two shits about me, whose only act of kindness was to not kick me out until I turned eighteen.
