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He made sure my underwear was back on and my skirt wasn’t out of place. He even patted my back in what would normally be a reassuring gesture.
Then he left, and I didn’t say anything. I sat at lunch with him and his son. With his wife and her son. I ate lasagna that I threw up the moment I got home. And that was it. Just like that, I was broken forever.
Nothing hurts when you’re dead; you only feel the phantom pain of what killed you.
So Andy’s, and Vickie’s, and Lea’s hits don’t really do anything. They get bored of it pretty quickly.
“Sort yourself out, you pathetic bitch,” Vickie spits my way before they stroll out of the alley without a care in the world.
I pick myself up like I always do. Sitting back against the wall of the alley, I grab the crumpled pack of cigarettes they stamped on, and I take my time to smoke before I come back to reality.
It only starts to hurt when I walk back inside the house through the back door. My mouth tastes like blood, and I can feel that my lips are swollen. I hold my side when I walk in. My ribs had barely healed from being hit with a car that I’m already back to not being able to breathe properly.
I fucking hate this town.
Elliot is alone in the living room, sitting on the sofa texting someone. He looks over his shoulder when I close the door and his face falls.
The panic in his gaze makes me wonder what I look like. He’s up in a split second.
“Ethan!” he calls for him as he approaches.
“I’m fine,” I rasp.
I try to look away, but he grabs my jaw delicately.
“Who?”
“Elliot, I’m fine,” I insist, taking a step back. He cups the side of my face that isn’t currently pounding from pain.
“I saidwho?”
“I—”
For the first time in my entire life, I hear what Elliot’s voice sounds like when he screams from fury.
“Who did this to you?”
My ears ring in the silent aftermath. I’m pretty sure the walls are still shaking.
I’m the screamer. I’m the angry one out of us three. The gunpowder that lights up at the flick of a flame.
Not today.
He’s angry.
Fuming.
Murderous.
“Vickie.” But he knows she’s not brave enough to attack me on her own.
“And Andy?”
I nod. “And Lea.”
Ethan jogs into the room. “What? What’s—” He freezes on the spot. “Jade…what happened?”
“You go to Andy’s house,” Elliot orders without answering. “I’ll get Vickie and her sister.”
