Page 5 of When a Soul Cries

Then they disappeared.

Then appeared again.

I stared at the screen, silently begging her to answer. Zari had already helped me more times than I could count. She had her own life, her own responsibilities, and her own problems to deal with. I hated that whenever mine became too heavy, they somehow ended up sitting on her shoulders too.

Finally, her reply appeared.

A breath rushed from my lungs.

I got her.

Three simple words, but coming from Zari, they meant everything.

A’zaria Banks had been saving me long before either of us knew what the other looked like in person.

We met through social media when I was twenty, nearly two years before the night she helped me escape Pinehaven. I had made a late-night post about feeling alone—nothing detailed, just enough for another hurting person to recognize the pain behind it.

Zari sent me a message asking if I was okay.

For some reason, I told her the truth.

One message turned into an entire night of talking. That night became daily texts, long phone calls, and video chats that sometimes lasted until one of us fell asleep.

Within months, Zari knew more about me than the relatives I had lived around my entire life.

She became the sister life had forgotten to give me.

And when everybody else turned their backs on me, Zari was the one person who reached through a phone and pulled me out of hell.

Her message dragged me back to the night she first told me she had me.

The night I lost the only home I had ever known.

TWO YEARS EARLIER

PINEHAVEN, MISSISSIPPI

My aunt’s hand connected with my face so hard that my head snapped to the side.

For several seconds, I couldn’t hear anything except the sharp ringing inside my left ear. Heat spread across my cheek as I slowly lifted my hand to cover it.

Aunt Trice stood in front of me breathing heavily. Her eyes were filled with rage, but none of it was directed toward the man who had hurt me.

“You lying little bitch,” she hissed.

My mouth fell open. “Auntie, I’m not lying.”

“Don’t call me that!”

Tears blurred my vision. “I swear to you, I didn’t want it. I told him to stop.”

Behind her, Mack leaned against the entrance to the living room with his arms folded across his chest. He hadn’t said a word since I came downstairs crying and told Aunt Trice what he had done.

He didn’t need to.

The tiny smirk sitting at the corner of his mouth said enough.

He knew she would choose him.