“Stop saying that!” I was loud, erupting in anger. “You’re twisted. Your whole family is twisted.”
I stared into his eyes, struggling to be mad at a boy who seemed so lost. Thinking of the boy who gave me a reason to live only yesterday. I blinked, trying to force the look on his face from my mind, but it lingered, his face presenting itself in the center of my mind, a million and one thoughts swirling around him.
“Me and Woodrow would never want to hurt you. Please, forgive us forHell’sactions.” He still only mouthed the name.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Please, try. Please. For us.” His pretty gray eyes blinked twice, slowly. Silver shadows glowed in the dark. His breathing changed, from panicked to something that eradicated it even more.
“Can I take a shower?”
He didn’t answer my question, but he stood, rising before me. His fingers wrapped around my hand, and he pulled me from the ground, moving the door away from us.
“Did he. . . I. . . did he hurt you like my father did the other—”
Woody couldn’t finish his sentence because he knew the answer. He looked down at his crotch—sticky with everything he’d stolen from me—trying to keep his eyes averted from me, bleeding and battered.
He didn’t fully understand what happened, having not been present.
And I didn’t understand any of this. What others was he talking about?
I guided his dipped eyes back up with the tips of my fingers to his chin, not wanting his eyes to wander anywhere near my intimate areas when they were done examining his own.
The skin-to-skin contact drew out more of my tears, as I noticed the bruises on his body—they weren’t there yesterday.
He’d been provoked. Abused, in a way different to me, but equally as traumatizing.
When I crept up here. . . he was already here, locked in his room, trying to control things out of his range.
But then his father came home, smelling of more drink than I was. I could smell the vodka from his filthy saliva in my hair.
Woody blinked twice, as if he knew what I was thinking.
I felt him twitch beneath my fingers before I had a chance to move them, and then he shot away from me and from the room, slamming the door shut behind him.
I didn’t have the courage to follow him out.
I didn’t even dare open the door, not after hearing Ville’s bedroom door creak open and his giant feet traipsing across the hall.
I pushed the toy chest back against the door. The dresser at the side, too. I pushed all of Nessie’s toys to the same place, my chest rising and falling with enervation as I blocked the entrance, praying it would be enough to keep me safe, all the while, knowing it wasn’t.
I stepped back until I hit the bed, guided by the fear of me wondering if I’d even hear the door open, because my senses had already failed me once.
I wanted to shower, but I didn’t feel safe enough to do that.
Ville said Wynter would be home soon. I could wait, if it meant safety.
I didn’t believe she was in on their sordid plan. Woodrow had already given me inklings that Ville kept stuff from his wife. I hadto believe that.
I had to believe she didn’t know.
The thought of her knowing turned me sick. The smell on my skin turned me sick, too, and I had to swallow down my emotions with the regurgitated wine climbing my throat.
I bent over, as if I was ready to let it all out—all my sick. . . all my pain. But nothing came. . . nothing but tears.
I sobbed silently on the carpet, my fingers whirling through the carpet for comfort. No daydreams came to bring me peace. Nothing took me from the pain I felt.
Time ticked away. I had no idea how much, losing all sense of that and everything else. A fuchsia horse’s tail moved around the numbers as I stared at the clock for hours.
