Page 28 of The Taste of Deceit

The way he says my name makes my skin crawl.

“No.” I shove against his chest. “Get away from me.”

For a second, his expression hardens. Before I can move, he’s crowding into my space again. I turn my head away instinctively when he tries to kiss me, but he doesn’t stop. Every survival instinct I have finally wakes up at once.

“No!”

I lash out without thinking. My teeth sink into his lip hard enough that I taste blood.

Randy jerks back with a curse. For one brief, stupid second, I think I’ve done the right thing. I think I’ve shocked him enough to make him stop. Then his hand cracks across my face.

The force of it sends my head snapping sideways. Pain explodes through my cheek. The world seems to tilt for a second, and I stumble against the stall wall trying to stay upright. A ringing fills my ears.

I stare at the dirt floor, struggling to understand what just happened. Randy hit me.

The ringing in my ears drowns out everything else. My cheek burns. My heart pounds so hard it feels like it’s trying to break free from my chest. I need to get out of here. I run, but I don’t make it.

One second I’m moving toward the aisle, and the next his hand closes around my arm. Panic explodes through me. I scream. I twist. I fight with everything I have. My nails scrape skin. My boots slide in the dirt. None of it matters.

“Randy, stop!”

He doesn’t.

The world tilts violently as he jerks me backward. My foot catches on something, and suddenly the ground rushes toward me. The impact knocks the breath from my lungs. Before I can recover, before I can crawl away, his weight crashes down over me.

I shove at him. I kick. I thrash hard enough that my muscles start to burn. Terror floods every part of me. My chest feels too tight. My heartbeat is too loud. The air won’t come fast enough.

Above me, the slats in the barn ceiling come into focus. I’ve looked at them a thousand times. When I was little, I’d lie in the hayloft and make shapes out of the knots in the wood while Daddy worked below.

Now I stare at them and pray for it to be over.

Chapter 10

Luca

Ican’t feel my hands. They’re clenched somewhere beneath the table. I know that because my forearms hurt. My jaw hurts too. Everything fucking hurts, and I still want to put my fist through the wall.

The urge hits so hard I have to lock my shoulders in place. I can feel it sitting beneath my skin, hot and ugly and violent. Every breath I take seems to feed it. Every time I look at her, it gets worse. Because she’s sitting there. Just sitting there. Like she didn’t just hand me a nightmare I’m going to carry for the rest of my fucking life. I drag a hand over my mouth and immediately regret it. It doesn’t help. Nothing helps.

My chair creaks beneath me as I lean forward. I can’t sit still. I can’t think straight. My mind keeps racing in circles, looking for somewhere to put all this rage and finding nothing.

I want to break something. I want to burn something down. I want to find somebody to blame.

The worst part is that Sarah isn’t giving me anything. No tears. No shaking. No sign that she’s about to fall apart. She sits there staring at the table, completely detached from the bomb she dropped into the middle of my life.

I hate that she had to survive it. I hate that she had to carry it. I hate that I wasn’t there. I wasn’t fucking there. Eight years ago, she was seventeen years old and alone, and I was somewhere else living my own life while she was surviving hers.

The rage gets worse. My hands curl into fists again.

“Fuck.”

The word slips out quietly.

Sarah finally looks up. I hold her gaze, and for a second I forget how to breathe. Because she’s looking at me like she’s waiting. Waiting to see what I do with it. Waiting to see if I look at her differently now. Waiting to see if this changes something. It doesn’t. If anything, I think I love her so much it might actually kill me.

I push back my chair to get up, but she holds up a hand.

“I’m not finished.”