Page 437 of Lessons in Cruelty

The kiss between Bastian and Kai is a serious contender.

But…of course…nothing, nothing compares to the hazy, fractured memories trying to lure me in from much, much farther back.

How Uncle Lenny grabbed the back of my hoodie as I tried to run out of the apartment. Him shoving me against the wall. How he snatched up Dad’s car keys and ground them against my chest, coming in so close I could feel the heat of his body as he told me to take him to the underpass so he could score some meth.

Dad had passed out on the couch, leaving me to drive Lenny. It was that, or distract my uncle with my cunt until Daddy woke up, as he’d put it.

Something snapped inside me that night.

I was done sneaking into the house at ungodly hours.

I was done living in filth, surrounded by junkies.

I was done placating Lenny’s violent mood swings with my cunt.

But he had me by a fistful of my hoodie, and I knew I wasn’t strong enough to fight him off. And I recognized the look in his spiteful blue eyes. The meth-roaches nesting inside his head had chewed through anything resembling morals or patience or empathy.

He’d get his way, one way or the other.

The only choice I had in the matter was how much pain and humiliation I’d have to suffer through first.

So I took the fucking keys.

And I got in the car with Lenny.

And I drove him to the goddamn underpass at one in the morning when no girl my age should’ve been near the place.

So he could placate himself with meth…not me.

But the moment Lenny’s drug dealer spotted me in the car, shit went sideways.

Like cosmic-horror-dimension type of sideways.

I snap my textbook closed.

Fuck this.

What I should be doing instead of torturing myself, is completing some of my assignments. I’ve never journaled or kept a diary, but it felt quite fucking cathartic when I wrote down all that childhood shit in my Activity Log last time. I should do that again, because damn do I need to purge.

Where the hell is it?

I push a textbook off the stack nearest me, riffle through a heap of notes. As I’m dragging my tote bag closer to make sure it isn’t still inside, someone knocks on the door frame.

I gasp, spinning to see Abigail hovering in the doorway, her perfectly manicured hand resting on the wood. Ever since a video of my dad calling me a fucking cunt went viral, everyone in the sorority has been eyeing me like I might steal their hair irons.

“Delivery for you,” she says.

A package? For me?

My first thought is my father sending me something to fuck with my head. But he doesn’t know about the sorority, and even if he did, he sure as hell can’t afford to have something delivered, even if it was a bag of his own poop.

Which leaves Bastian. Or Kai.

I’m not sure which is worse.

“Who it’s from?” I ask as I slowly get up.

Abigail shrugs, smoothing a hand down her velvet sweatpants. “Didn’t ask.”