Heartbreak (Stripped 1.50)

“I don’t know,” Lucy says. “Why don’t you ask him?”

The corner of his lips tilts up. Even from this far away, I recognize the look in his eyes. There’s promise. There’s a threat. It makes me shiver, and not entirely with fear. “I think I will,” I say faintly, mostly to myself.

Mrs. Moreno is still talking when the boy—Blue—pushes himself up off the car. He’s taller than her. He strides past her into the house, leaving her to check boxes on her clipboard alone.

Chapter Two

I manage to avoid the new boy that night and the next. Even though I’m curious about him, I know too well how badly things can go. Besides, he has to be the one to make a move. You don’t approach a wild tiger, hands outstretched for a hug. Not if you want to live to tell about it.

He’ll have to stalk me. He’ll have to pounce.

The water in this house turns cold in three minutes. I stand under the shower, letting the cold water batter my skin. It makes me hard—goose bumps rising over my flesh and my nipples tight. I wish it worked that way for everything. If every time I got touched or slapped, my body got harder, I would be turned to stone by now.

I’m already made of stone, cold both inside and out.

There’s a bang on the door, shaking the walls and the showerhead set loosely in the wall. A steady stream of foster kids means there’s never enough time in the bathroom. Never enough privacy. The quiver in my chest says this is worse than that.

Bang.

“Coming,” I say, stripping my voice of any worry. I’m old friends with bravado. It’s kept me alive on more than one occasion. I’m not so sure it will help today.

The handle shrieks as I turn the water off, protesting any movement. The cold spray turns to an even colder dribble, and I reach for the towel I’d placed just outside the curtain.

It happens quickly then, a soft sound that my heart understands before my mind can catch up. I locked that door. Then the light shuts off. Coldness gathers in my lungs, freezing me more deeply than the water ever could. Someone had the key.

“Hannah,” comes a low voice. Not Blue.

Matthew, who they sometimes call Big Matt. It’s a friendly kind of name, but it’s not a friendly girth he carries. It’s weight in every sense of the word, and it can crush me. He’s the son of my foster father. In other words, he has power here that the rest of us don’t.

And I recognize this voice, because I’ve been evading it ever since I got here. “What are you doing?” I make my voice hard, the way my skin and nipples are. Hard like armor.

“Is that how you say hello?”

“Go away.” My hand closes around rough, thin fabric. I pull—and the towel pulls back. Matthew already has the other side in his hand, and he yanks. I slip against the wet tub and fall into the plastic shower curtain. His body is on the other side, warm and hard and sickening.

He laughs. “That’s much better.”

I scramble back and hit the tiles, trapped in a small place with a large body. “Get out. I’m serious.”

“I feel how serious you are,” he says, his voice mocking. “While you’re naked and shaking your tits at me. How is an innocent boy like me supposed to resist?”

It’s too dark to see, but I cover my breasts with my hands. It’s useless, though. He can do worse than see them. He can touch them. He’s almost close enough. All he has to do is step inside the tub—or drag me out.

Scream, a part of my brain says. I know that will only bring everyone in the house to witness my shame. They would believe whatever he says, that I had gotten naked to tempt him. They would send me away, and I have nowhere else to go.

He shifts with a whisper of cheap fabric, and then there’s a click. He’s holding a lighter up. Orange flame lights up his face—and my naked body. He smiles, looking demonic in the angled glow. “You’re the prettiest one,” he says.

Survive, says the other part of my brain. And I know what I have

to do.

He comes toward me, and I shut my eyes tight, waiting. Surviving.

There’s a huge crash. I gasp as light floods into the bathroom from the hallway, drawing a tall body in shadow. Broad shoulders and a cocky tilt of his head. Blue.

Matthew is sputtering. “What the fuck? You can’t just barge in here and—”

“I thought I heard something,” Blue says mildly, almost as if he doesn’t care. As if he didn’t just kick the door in. “I came inside to check.”