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“Why?” I ask him meekly, and his eyes light with something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in anyone’s eyes as they look at me, and I can’t quite place what it is, but there’s a layer of glee in them.
“Because it will only hurt for a moment,” he snarls.
Those words rage through me, spiking unease in my chest as I struggle against his hold.
“Hold still,” he says, fighting to keep me in his grasp.
“Please, don’t hurt me,” I beg, whimpering as he rips a chunk of hair from my head as I slip on the ground, but he doesn’t let go.
“Fuck,” he says, throwing my hair down in disgust. “Just behave!” he shouts, grabbing for me again.
The sting at my scalp isn’t bad, but I’m sure it’s going to hurt later. The bathroom here isn’t small, the claw-foot tub is in the corner, and the expanse between it and the sink has to be twenty feet, at least. Whomever had lived here had money. It makes me feel like I’m somebody when I sleep in here. It’s why I’d chosen it. Plus, it’s the smallest room in the house, making it warmer than outside or any other room.
When he lets me go to unbuckle his pants, I turn and run toward the tub. Logically, there’s nowhere to go, but I have to get away from him. If I can unnerve him long enough, I can shoot around him.
“You little bitch, get back here!” he snarls, and I hear his belt buckle rustling as he runs.
But it’s not on his pants, I realize far too late.
He wraps it around my throat and shoves the rest of the belt through the metal clasp, using it like a leash as he pulls me to him. My air is gone, the life force stolen from me by a boy I’ve looked at more than once and wished that he’d look back.
Now, I’m in his crosshairs, and I want to beg him to get out of them.
“Please,” I mouth, but he’s behind me, loosening and tightening the belt repeatedly as I fight to stay conscious.
“I thought I was going to have to fuck the drugs out of my system tonight with my hand. Good thing I found you here. Now, I won’t have to,” he whispers in my ear, and my stomach turns.
He has the belt too tight. I fight on tiptoe to stay up against it, so that it doesn’t break my neck if I fall. But my toes slip, and down I topple, taking him with me.
Even with his weight on my back, I use my fingernails to claw into the wood floors and drag away from him, two nails giving in and pulling off their nail beds. Agony sears my insides like a vise. There’s no way out; he’s going to kill me.
He shouts, turning me over and biting my lip. “Be still!”
I don’t know when I resigned to behave, but I think it was this moment. The look in his eyes as he straddles my body on his knees is intense and spine tingling. Fear has never felt like such a tangible element until Emery Stanner made it corporeal. He’s the living embodiment of nightmares.
“Please,” I beg in one last ditch effort to appeal to his humanity. If there’s any left in there.
He rears back and punches me in the face. Bones crack under the pressure. Blood spurts from my nose as my head turns, coating the side of the beautiful tub that’s kept me safe for so long from the outside world. But tonight, it had done me no favors.
“Don’t speak again,” he warns as he moves down my body and slides my pants and panties to my ankles.
It’s the first time a boy has seen me, and this isn’t how I’d envisioned one seeing me, either. I thought it would be clumsy, yes. But this? This is hell. I almost wish he’d knock me out, hit me again so I didn’t have to bear witness to whatever atrocities his drunken mind has planned for me.
“Fuck you,” I spew at him. “Fuck you for thinking your worthy of what my body has to offer. You’re no better than your father, taking all the time. You’re a piece of shit!” I growl, lifting off the floor with all my might and spitting in his face.
Anger fills his features as he pulls his arm back, landing a blow that sends me into the arms of oblivion, like I wanted.
I surge to life on the couch, crying instantly as the nightmare I haven’t had in years resurfaces. I let all the anguish out, screaming violently as I remember every fucking thing he did until the lights went out. And thank God they had. Just knowing the state I’d woken up in was enough to assess what happened to me. I’m not proud of my past, or my life before now, but I’m proud I had the gall to give him the truth. He’s a piece of shit. And I hope he remembers every fucking word I’d given him.
The fact he hadn’t remembered me on sight had caused an electrical storm so powerful in my body I almost couldn’t speak to him during my interview. How does one brutalize another in such a fashion and then go on with their life like nothing happened? How can he sleep at night? Fuck, how can he look in the mirror?
I pad up to my room when the worst of the tremors have left me, slipping into the shower to wash the dream and his touch away. Let it be part of the sewer system because that’s where people like him belong.
When I finally run out of hot water, I move into my room with a towel wrapped around me. I rifle through the closet for some pajamas when I hear the floorboard near my bed creak. It freezes me, heart lumping in my throat as it seems to stop beating.
I steel myself. If I could deal with Emery, I can deal withhim.
Because I know it’s him.
