“Why…why…why…why would he do that? What did he say!” I struggled with remaining calm. I needed to get to that diary.
My little sister's grip tightened, her badly painted nails—that she must have done herself without Jolie around—digging into my barely-there muscles.
“He didn't mean it. He was very sorry. He was crying and upset, and he said she was screaming. I heard her, too.”
“Where, Ness? Where did you hear Jolie?”
Like a magnet, I felt the pull. My gaze moved to the darkest part of the dismal room, to the broken basement door, and then it creaked asshepushed it open.
I sawher, and her image yanked me up onto my feet.
I shook from head to toe.
My eyes examined her features and the pain permanently etched within them.
Her face was different, melted down the left side. Those same scars traveled down her neck, right to her nipple. Her eyes were bloodshot like she'd cried for fucking months.
Cried for me.
Her lips and skin were dry. And her shoulders much narrower than before. I scanned lower, taking in the limp she walked with, thanks to the dislocation in her knee and the purple and black shades surrounding the break. Her hands moved, neither of them hiding her intimate areas, but protecting a bump. Her stomach was bigger, while the rest of her was smaller.
My mouth dropped, and I stumbled over Nessie to get to her.
“Oh, shit. Jolie. . .”
The second I touched her, I wrapped her tightly in my hold. My breath, warm against her cheek, and she leaned into it, eager to rid her body of the chills she waswracked with.
She smelled like she hadn't bathed in months, and maybe she hadn't.
But that didn't stop my hands rushing over her skin, into her hair, touching everything. Hers, reached for me, her fingers tightening on my t-shirt.
“Woodrow. Oh, my God. I missed you. I missed you, so much.”
Nessie careened to us, the glass slipping through her fingers. Chocolate milk and glass threw themselves into the space of the room.
Nessie’s lips parted, but it was my mother I heard. Her hateful voice blasted through the house like lightening. “What the fuck was that!” Her feet rushed down the steps, swallowing the distance quicker than I'd ever known her to move.
“Oh, God. I need to leave. I need to leave. We need to go now.” Jolie tried to hobble towards the back door, pulling me along with her.
It must have taken her ages to get up the damn stairs, and I felt like the monster, who my father had convinced us kids lived in that basement, as I tried to push her back into it.
I couldn’t let her reach the door. I knew my father was still out there—the real monster.
“Not that way,” I tried to think of alternate options but nothing came. So, I continued shoving her back towards the basement.
“No. No, no, no,” she pleaded, her cold fingers reaching for my face. “Please, no. I can't go back down there.”
“Just for a second, I promise. I know where you are now. Just one second.”
She was about to argue once more, and I was about to ignore her because I thought my way gave us higher odds of getting her out safely.
But our time was up.
“Momma.” Nessie alerted us to the presence of my mother, standing in the doorway, her head close to a chip in the woodwork that I never remembered being there before.
I turned around, concealing Jolie behind me. Her fingers locked on my shoulders, her heartbreak and fear loud and clear as she whispered, “Don't put yourself in danger for me. I'm never getting outof here.” Her dry pout pressed a kiss against the back of my neck, and her words pushed a knife into my heart.
I welcomed it, ignoring her demands, as she had mine, because I'd happily die here today, if it meant her freedom.
