Chapter 1
Logan
“He’s coming,” I whisper into my phone. My friend Carly says something, but my ears are ringing too loud from my fear.
“Lo!” Her whisper-shout drags me back. “Is the door blocked?” My head bobs up and down in response, but she can’t see me.
“My dresser is in front of it.” It took me an hour to move that damn thing, it’s so freaking heavy.
“Can you get out?” she asks, and I stare blankly at my window, now decked out with bars welded to it from the outside. I’ll never be able to sneak out again.
“Nope.” Gulping, I nearly choke when the knob turns, and the door silently smacks against the back of my dresser. He won’t make a fuss now because, Heaven forbid, he wake up his wife, my own mother.
Biting the inside of my cheek as he tries again, Ian curses, then leaves. “He’s gone.” My entire body wilts, losing strength as I stand in the corner of my room, waiting on Ian or his son, Connor, to brutalize me again.
“You have to run, Lo. It’s not safe anymore,” Carly warns, her tearful voice matching my own.
Wiping my eyes with the bottom of my shirt, I crawl into bed and under the covers, so exhausted I can hardly keep my eyes open. “I don’t have anywhere to go.” Sniffling, I wrap the blanket tightly around myself to feel more secure in such a vulnerable moment.
“Your sister. What if you found her?”
After our dad died when I was four, my mom moved us to Montgomery, Alabama, while my older sister, Trista, stayed with her mom in Mississippi. I was never allowed to talk about her after that day. She’s ten years older than me, and while we weren’t super close, we always had fun when she came over on her visiting days.
“I wouldn’t know where to look. It’s been so long since I’ve seen her.” Sometimes I wonder if she would even remember me. My mom has made me try to forget her, but I’ve hidden all the pictures I had of us.
“Logan, it’s time to start looking. You’re eighteen now; there’s no telling what more they’ll do to you, and you can finally legally leave.”
She’s right. I turned eighteen last week. I’m free to go wherever I like. The problem is that ever since then, I’ve been locked in the house, and either Ian or Connor has always been around to ensure I don’t leave.
I’m a prisoner in my own home.
Carly stays on the phone with me until we fall asleep, and when I wake up later to check the time, I notice my device is dead a second before spotting the dresser shifted and a hulking body standing in the middle of the room.
“No, no, no, no,” I whine, trying to push back but being stopped by the wall as Ian prowls towards me, huffing and hissing like a predator.
“You fucked up, Logan. You shouldn’t have locked me out like that.” His evil eyes glow in the dark room. My body violently shakes, and I just know I might not make it through the night if I fight him.
Gulping down the apprehension, my hand searches for something to fight him off with. Ian kneels on the edge of my queen-sized bed and begins caressing my leg when my hand touches the edge of a hardcover novel I’d been reading.
Inhaling deeply, I muster all my strength and whip my hand out with a firm grip on the book and bash the side of his head with one of the corners. He grunts and drops, partially on the bed before slipping to the floor.
Peering over the edge, I see his chest still rising and falling, but he’s out like a light, bleeding from the wound in his temple. Stunned, I only take a second to scramble to my feet, reach under the bed for the bag I’ve had prepared since turning sixteen, grab my phone and a sweater, slip on my runners, and flee the house I spent so many years dreading.
Panic drives me forward. If Connor catches me along the way, there’s no way he’ll let me go now. Pure adrenaline fuels my movements as soon as I quietly shut the front door and exit through the backyard, into the alley.
Sprinting the entire mile to Carly’s house, I climb the trellis leading to her room and pray she’s left the window unlocked like she has since we were twelve and I confided in her the things Ian had been doing to me over the years.
Shoving the window up, it makes the same creaking noise it always has, and she immediately pops up in bed and rushes to me.
“Lo! What happened? Are you okay? I think your phone died.” She wraps me up in a tight hug, and I immediately begin to sob. We drop to the floor together, where she holds me through the storm.
“I think he was going to rape me, Carls. God, the look in his eyes was pure hatred.” She hands me a box of Kleenex to wipe the tears from my eyes and blow my nose.
“You need to lay low for a couple of days. Miles says you can stay with him. His girlfriend suggested it.” Shocked, I had no idea Carly had spoken to her brother about my situation. “I’m sorry. After the last time we talked about it, he saw how upset I was, and I just blurted it out. Please don’t hate me.”
“I could never.” Chewing my lip, I look up at her. “He knows everything, everything?”
“Not all the details, but the important parts. I’ll text him to call as soon as he’s up, and we’ll form a plan.” She nods, locks her window, closes the curtain, and together we climb into bed, waiting for Miles’ call, which comes just as the sun begins to rise.
