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Her scream was worse than having the skin flayed from my bones.
I fought hard, hard enough to dislocate my shoulder, but the bastards had me pinned down.
Her screams were painful to hear, but they were nothing compared to her silence. To the absolute agony of the room descending into chaos while she quietly ceased to exist. If it weren’t for her eyes holding mine, I would have thought she was dead.
I stop fighting, stop moving. Hell, I’m afraid to even breathe, in case I somehow break the tether holding her to me. Something tells me if I look away, I’ll lose her forever.
Her body jolts with each thrust, but she holds back her screams, knowing they will only fuel the fire.
Tears run down my face; her pain shared, her heartbreak mine. If all I can do is show the emotion she is forced to hide, then so be it.
We don’t take our eyes off each other. Not when the person raping her tags in the next person, not even when I feel a mouth around my flaccid cock. They can do whatever they like to our bodies, but our souls are so intertwined, they belong to us alone.
My lack of response angers my attackers, so they move from trying to arouse me to punching me. The emptiness in her expression now holds sorrow. Not for her, but for me. Blood runs from a split in my eyebrow, making my vision blur with red, before a fist to the temple knocks me out cold.
When I come to, I’m back in my room, lying face down on my bed. If it wasn’t for the throbbing pain in my head and body, I could have almost convinced myself that it was all just a nightmare. I roll over and give myself a few minutes before I drag myself from the bed.
It takes me far longer than usual to pull myself up into the vent. My thoughts are racing as I make my way to her room, my brain flashing back to her tortured expression. My anger pulses strong and sure, masking some of my pain.
I was sent here because people thought I was a liar. The angry boy they sent here will have nothing on the fucked-up man that leaves. Briarwood House was supposed to be somewhere people went to get help. Instead, it’s a house of horrors.
Staff members drug, rape, and beat their chosen victims, forcing other patients to take part so they can be blackmailed into keeping quiet. They tried it with me. They stripped me and ordered me to fuck her, but I refused, even when they turned their attention to me. The others were forced into similar situations, which saw them quickly turning on each other.
If my girl is strong enough to endure, then so am I. I refuse to bow to them, refuse to give in.
By the time I climb through the vent in her room, I’m ready to collapse. I drop to my knees and lie down, my eyes searching under the bed until I find her waiting for me with her arm out. I slip my hand into hers and allow myself to relax a little.
Neither of us speaks for a while. This time, there is comfort in the silence. We survived another day. We’re another day closer to freedom.
“I’d like to see the ocean one day.”
“I’ll take you. I’ll build you a house near the ocean so you can dip your feet in the water every day if you want to.”
She lets out a tiny sob. I roll toward her, ignoring my protesting ribs, and pull her into my arms.
“What will I do here without you?”
“You’ll hold on with everything you have because I’ll be waiting for you, Boo, right outside those gates.”
“My family?—”
“Fuck your family. I’m your family now.”
She buries her head against my shoulder. When I feel her tears soak the material of my T-shirt, I have to fight to hold back my own.
I found out today that I’ll be leaving soon. My time here is up. My imminent departure is a reminder to Boo of how long she’s been here and how unlikely it is that she will ever live a life outside these walls. Her parents have washed their hands of her completely. If it weren’t for her sister’s sporadic visits, I would have assumed they had forgotten she existed.
My greatest fear is that once I’m gone, she’ll give up. That with her lifeline severed, she’ll have no reason to carry on.
“If you hold on until I can get you out of here, I swear on everything I am that we’ll get our revenge. We’ll make sure that everyone who hurt us pays for what they did.”
She looks up at me, her eyes red and swollen.
“What if you forget about me?”
I slide my thumb across the apple of her cheek and press a kiss against her forehead. “I will never forget you. I promise. You’re my girl. And one day, when this is all just a bad memory, we’ll build castles in the sand with our children. We won’t forgive, and we won’t forget, but we’ll have each other. And that will make everything that they did to us worth it.”
“It already is. Worth it, I mean. If this is all we’ll ever have, it was still enough. You are enough.” She kisses me gently, her soft words feeling like metal spikes through my heart. Somehow, her acceptance doesn’t feel like a promise of things to come.
