Prologue
My demons would bend yours over.
—Creed’s secret thoughts
Creed
It was the beeping that woke me. Not the pain.
My eyes cracked open, and I stared at the white ceiling for quite a long time before movement at my side had me moving my head to see in that direction.
What I saw had my entire world crumbling.
“Mom?”
What was she doing here?
And how had she found me?
She grinned wickedly. “You thought you could hide, didn’t you?”
My stomach sank.
I’d thought that I could hide.
That I’d be able to hide both Bernice and me until she was eighteen and old enough to be out from under our mother’s thumb.
“Well, it sucks to say, but you didn’t do a very good job.” She bared her crooked, meth-addled teeth at me and said, “But look who made the mistake now. Town golden boy, Justin Arquette, drunk driving with his sister in the car. Plows into a police station and kills two officers.”
My hand jerked in surprise, and the clink of metal on metal had a feeling of nausea welling over me.
I was already shaking my head. “I don’t drink.”
Because why would I when I’d seen all the bad things that could happen when you drank?
Her smile scared the shit out of me. “Don’t you?”
No.
No, I did not.
Because I’d seen what substance abuse did to my parents.
I wouldn’t touch drugs or alcohol.
Neither would Bernice.
“What happened?” I asked, stomach sick.
“You were drunk,” she repeated. “Can’t believe it. My golden boy. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”
I fisted my hands.
Nine months later
The clang of the gavel hitting the wood on the judge’s desk felt like the final nail in my coffin.
“Sixty years,” I heard Bernie whisper, her voice cracking. “This can’t be right.”
