Page 127 of Relapse

“More toys,” I heard Ray say with a chuckle. He released me so that he could maneuver over to the black bag.

Instinctively, my good hand shot to cradle the injured one, and I sunk in on myself defensively, as if that would stop them from hurting me anymore.

Dante snapped at him. “Make it fast, we have limited time.”

I blinked through the sweat that dripped down into my eyes. What now?

My mind was so focused on the stabbing pain radiating through my body that I didn’t see them take the glass bottle out of their bag. I didn’t hear them approach.

But I felt it when it came crashing down on the back of my head.

Glass shards tumbled off of my hair and onto the ground, and a wash of warmth cascaded down the back of my neck.

Blood. Had to be.

I wasn’t sure how bad the damage to my head was, but I was beginning to think that my hand was the least of my worries. I abandoned my hand, reaching back to my scalp tentatively, to assess the damage. Sharp edges of glass met my fingers as I combed through my hair. Some fell out. Some stayed stuck in the soft tissue of my scalp.

The reality was becoming clearer. My cousins intended to kill me here tonight.

Vance hadn’t done much of the grunt work so far. He mainly lost his temper and threw a brick, but he was stooping down next to me now, holding out the jagged remains of the glass bottle. He was so close to my eyes I could see bits of my blood and hair still drenched along the serrated pieces.

“On your feet,” he whispered darkly.

I wasn’t sure if I could get there on my own, but I was sure as hell going to try. With the combined pain of my ribs, hand, and now head, I didn’t think I’d be successful pulling my body to a stand.

Vance didn’t care. “Get the fuck up, you little bitch.”

Ray laughed aloud—again. That joker was always fucking laughing. I couldn’t wait to get my revenge and shut him the hell up.

The anger helped, and I used my good hand and arm to push against the asphalt, up to my knees, then shakily, my feet. The motion of rising from the ground after taking such a beating made my head swim, and I wobbled a bit before I could balance myself.

Almost immediately, Vance reared back and shoved me.

Back down to the ground I went, as though I weighed next to nothing.

Falling on my ribs might have hurt worse than being hit by the brick the first time. On top of that, I couldn’t catch myself with my bad hand, so when I hit the ground—I hit the ground hard.

I stayed there. My breathing was labored now. It was almost a chore.

Vance bent back down. “Get up again.”

There was no fucking way.

But I knew that he meant me to. So I obeyed, for a second time, trying to roll my body back over to my good side, then to my knees, propping myself up to a sitting position.

Vance still held the broken bottle outright, facing me.

“What are you going to do with that?” I asked, weakly. If an onlooker would have let me listen to my voice just then, I wouldn’t have recognized it. I sounded feeble, like an eighty-year-old man who had just run out of oxygen from his portable tank. I couldn’t fake it anymore. Fear and exhaustion were catching up to me.

“Maybe,” Vance said, twirling the bottle around in his hand to give it a better look. “Maybe we shove this glass bottle up your ass. Since you like embarrassing this family’s operation with all that gay shit.”

I spat at him, without thinking, my blood showering his face.

Oddly enough, the action made me think of Delane—yet again. She had done something similar to me once, and I admired her tenacity for it. As it was, I could appreciate the irony of how the tables had turned on me.

Vance didn’t appreciate my retaliation. He reared back, punching me in the face.

“Faggot!” he screamed. And although he meant it as an insult, the word was music to my ears. Because no matter how pissed he got, no matter what word he called me—none of that mattered. He couldn’t break me or make me into what he wanted me to be. I would always be the one thing he couldn’t understand. I wasn’t going to change for anyone, even if it meant sacrificing my life to prove it.