Old wood, faded and dirty, assaulted my knees. I rushed to my feet, listening to the sound of my father upstairs, arguing with someone who shouldn’t be in this house. They were both searching for something that my mother must have moved during one of her reorganizing sprees. She liked moving stuff around that didn’t belong to her.
I took a step forward, my eyes finding Jolie in the space between the hallway and the kitchen.
“Moonlight,” I called quietly, forcing myself to step in her direction.
The look of fear on her face would haunt me until the day I die. Her mouth was open, her trembling lips mumbling something as her head shook, pleadingly.
“Moonlight,” I said again, moving closer to her frozen body. I took in the blood on her body, a trail of red moving down her neck.
Drifting into her breathing space, she didn’t move. I flicked her hair from her neck, peeling it from her sticky blood. My fingers weaved through her curls. And she jumped, flinching from the pain and not me.
“You’re bleeding.”
She didn’t talk, but shaking fingers wrapped around my wrist as I touched her, proving she didn’t trust me.
And it hurt me.
My hold on her stiffened. I didn’t want to hurt her. I wanted something to grasp onto because I was slipping away already.
It freaked her out, and she pushed away, falling into the kitchen away from me.
I blinked, seeing her differently, through someoneelse’s eyes. As a thing that was no longer my girl.
My head spun. Hell wanted to get back to the top. He wanted to protect me from my feelings and the girl that caused the pain behind them—pain, he was also feeling.
I tried to touch her again.
“Keep me here. Keep me with you. Talk me through it,” I begged, not knowing how to do it alone. “Jolie. . .”
She backed herself against the far wall. Her fingers tried the back door handle but the door was locked.
She didn’t talk to me, but her eyes remained glued on me, watching as I switched rapidly, my eyes blinking throughout, my body gifting her the image of its mini-spasms.
The rage inside for the brief seconds where Hell took over couldn’t be held in, but I wouldn’t allow him to get near Jolie. But every time she so much as moved or murmured, he broke everything between them. Cookware pots flew through the air, one of which, knocked one of my mother’s scented candles onto its side. The flame too near to the ugly curtains. But Hell didn’t care about that. He stomped around, destroying all in his path; cups smashed and glasses shattered. He stepped over the broken pieces, each one crunching beneath our bare feet. I’d feel the pain of those china splinters later.
Jolie’s breath got quicker as he closed in, a desperate plea fell out of her mouth, “Woodrow, please.”
And I heard her. Her voice called me back, just like I’d asked.
Registering the switch between Hell and me, she relaxed a little. . . only a little.
And that hurt, too.
I heard my father shout upstairs, shout at my mother who had suddenly appeared from wherever the fuck she’d been. He’d found the item he was looking for. My stomach dropped because I knew what item that was.
“You need to leave. Right now.”
Chapter 32
Jolie—aged eighteen
My eyes followed Woodrow’s to the ceiling, beyond the damaged patch of artex where his head had hit. Noises moved above me. Two sets of feet, heavy from the weight they carried, shifted from the Heavens’ bedroom. There was no way the second set of feet belonged to Wynter. Though I could hear her again, alert and alive, unfortunately.
“Get out! Now!” Woodrow shouted as loud as he could.
He wasn’t gentle, his fingers embedding into my skin as he pulled me from my spot and shoved me into the hallway. When his hands left my body, he pushed me again, trying to get me as far away from him as possible.
“Get. Out!” Woodrow spat his words in my face before turning away from me.
