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“What the fuck are you still doing here?” Sully all but shouted at me.
Whoa whoa whoa, WHAT?
I just blinked at him in confusion.
“How could you let them do that to you?” Sully went on. “What the fuck is so worth it to you that you’d let them treat you like an animal to bury in the back yard?”
My mouth dropped open. Was he seriously giving me this bullshit right now? Right now? After I’d just been buried the fuck alive? He was going to scream at me and accuse me, like it was my fault those bastards had shoved me screaming into that fucking box and started dumping dirt onto my head and scared the living shit out of me and—
I just started a slow clap. “Way to blame the victim, Sullivan VanDoren. I’m so glad that you are such a bigger person, cause it’s not like you’re still here, too. Ever wanna take a look in the mirror, pal? You’re trying to be one of the bastards who likes to bury innocent women in coffins. Who’s the hero now?”
His face turned red. “You fucking know I want nothing to do with any of this shit!”
“And you think I do?” I screamed back at him. Except it barely came out as a whisper, because my vocal chords were still shredded from screaming for my goddamned life in that goddamned coffin and fuck him for giving me any of this bullshit right now.
I got off the bed and turned my back to him. “I’m taking a fucking shower,” I said.
Then all of the sudden, he grabbed my arm and swung me around to face him. “Just tell me why.”
His eyes were burning into mine, fury still written on his features. “Why are you here? What is it they have on you that could make you fucking stay for this? Cause I’m racking my brain and I can’t think of a fucking thing that would make anyone stay for what you just went through.”
He was such an idiot. Such a stupid idiot. He couldn’t think of any reasons? Didn’t he fucking know me by now? Didn’t he have a clue who I was? Anyone who truly knew me knew I would never do this for myself. That it would only be for someone else I loved.
Goddamn him for coming in here accusing me and being cruel to me when all I needed was love and compassion, and a gentle hand to help me to the shower.
And now here he still was, demanding answers when he ought to be giving me understanding, when he ought to be giving me the benefit of the doubt, when he ought to be letting me rest until fucking tomorrow because I’d just been BURIED THE FUCK ALIVE.
But then, Sully being Sully, he just huffed out a sigh and shook his head. “Guess you’re too embarrassed to just say it’s for the money after all, huh?”
He backed away, disgust in his eyes. “I’m gonna go find myself a bottle of whatever the fuck will help me forget all that disturbing shit I saw tonight. You enjoy that shower.”
Again, my mouth dropped open. “You can’t leave the room without me. The rules—”
He gave me a cruel smirk. “The rules say you can’t leave, cause you’re a woman. Us men, kings of the universe, can wander wherever the fuck we want. And after tonight, I’m gonna go get drunk as fuck, cause, baby, it’s time to forget. Forget you, forget this whole fucking fucked up fucking place.”
And with that, he just… left.
He just walked out the goddamned door and left.
It was a familiar sight. The strong silhouette of a man’s back exiting out a door without once looking back.
I’d seen the same thing as my daddy left oh so long ago.
Mama’d just died a couple months before and taking care of four daughters alone… well, that wasn’t what Daddy’d signed up for, now was it?
It was so easy for them, wasn’t it?
So easy to just walk out that door. No thought for the mess they left behind. The long-suffering. Daddy was fond of a bottle, too. All that easy forgetting to be found in the amber liquids. He’d take a clear liquid too, vodka was fine in a pinch, but Daddy was a whiskey man at heart.
Leaving behind a seventeen-year-old me, just on the cusp of her eighteenth birthday, to keep the bodies and spirits of my sisters and myself together.
I’d had plans. I’d wanted to go to college. I’d even had scholarships, cause God knew we were broke as hell. I’d thought maybe I could just defer one year, but that year passed by and eventually I realized I just had to let it all go. Dad wasn’t coming back. Mama was buried in the ground. The girls needed a parent or the system would take them, and I’d heard too many horror stories.
