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It hurt.
I cried, telling her my arm stung, but she didn’t stop.
She just kept tugging, the room a blur.
Everything but the animal.
It had big teeth, a large mouth like it’d eat me whole. It would eat me.
Mommy dragged me toward it.
“Mommy, I’m scared,” I cried, but Mommy didn’t stop tugging me. A door was beside the animal, a big door. Would the animal eat me in there?
“You have to,” Mommy said, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to go home. Why couldn’t we just go home?
I shook my head, the tears falling down my cheeks. I could taste them in my mouth like salty crackers.
“Mommy, please,” I called, but she grabbed me by my shoulder. She was taking me to the animal, the door. She wanted to take me to it.
I didn’t want to go.
Chapter Thirteen
Sloane
I had a weird dream about my mother last night, weird because I didn’t dream about my mother.
I barely remembered her.
She’d died when I was six and Bru was five, and nothing really particularly stood out about her. I mean, I loved my mother.
I just didn’t remember her.
I remembered her funeral a little, mostly because Dad hadn’t let Bru or me out of his sight the whole time. He’d made us stay with him, our hands in his. After she’d died, we hadn’t even had babysitters anymore. He’d become pretty much a recluse after that, outside of his job. It was like he’d been scared he’d lose us too, always scared.
The moving around had started shortly after that, going from school to school and town to town. We’d never stayed anywhere for longer than a year, and Dad had constantly had new jobs in the midst of it. He hadn’t been able to hold on to one for longer than a year.
Hence the moves.
I’d resented my father for a long time while in the rough of that. I mean, I was basically socially inept because of it. We’d never been anywhere long enough for me to make friends, and I couldn’t deny the fact that wherever I’d gone, trouble had seemed to find my brother and me.
That went triple for Maywood Heights.
I thought about my mother pretty much all morning the next day at school, finding it weird I was suddenly thinking about her. The dream hadn’t made sense, and it more so felt like a nightmare than anything else.
I’d actually woken up in a sweat.
My mother had never been heavy-handed or physical with me. Neither of my parents were, so whatever that was last night had been so weird. I was so in my head that morning I hadn’t been paying attention. In fact, I slammed right into someone, and had he not been a football player, all my shit would have exploded in the hallway.
“Watch it, little,” Ares Mallick growled. His lips pressed together. “Watch it, Sloane.”
My brow jumped, him actually making good on not insulting me for once.
“My bad.” I had run into him, on me.
And people were staring at us.
More than one set of eyes lingered over Ares, then me. He naturally got attention. I mean, he was Legacy, but I’d all but disappeared since Dorian and the rest of Legacy weren’t putting any attention on me. When I’d hung out with Wells and Thatcher for a time, the school had started to get me off their radar a bit in a negative way. Still, being with them definitely got a girl more attention than she wanted. Positive or negative.
