Silence passed between all of us. I wouldn’t go on until he agreed. I knew he didn’t understand. He wasn’t from this world. And if you didn’t live in the world I lived in, it was hard to wrap your head around it. It truly was. Sometimes I even struggled to wrap my head around it.
“Fine,” he finally grunted. He moved to the far wall, just beside the door, and propped his leg behind him and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked hot with all the anger bouncing off him.
“I was in a different foster home before Jill and Pete’s. And for once, it wasn’t a complete shithole. They were rich.” I looked around Christian’s room. “Not like you guys are rich, but they had money. They bought me clothes and let me eat dinner with them. Gabe later told me that his parents had wanted to have a girl after he was born, but his mom couldn’t have any more children, so they started to foster when he was in middle school.” I swallowed, looking down at Piper cleaning the scrape on my stomach. “He thought that since his parents were so nice to me and gave me things that it meant he could take what he wanted from me.” A sarcastic laugh fell off my lips. “He was wrong. He tried to…” I worked my jaw back and forth, sweat coating my neck.
“He tried to?” Christian’s voice sounded like he had swallowed bark from a tree. Rough and calloused.
“He made a pass at me, and I refused. So, then he tried to force me, and I took a baseball bat to his car. It landed me in juvie. The bruise on my face when I first started English Prep was from our encounter.”
Christian’s face remained unmoving. Ollie blew breath out of his mouth but stayed in his spot, so I continued with my story.
“The reason I thought he may do something was because he told me if he ever saw me again, he’d make me pay.” An escaped groan fell off my lips as Piper laid something cold and gooey on my stomach.
“Sorry,” she whispered with a crescent-like smile.
“But,” I started again. “I don’t think tonight was a result of Gabe.”
Christian pushed off the wall. “And why’s that?”
Memories from that night five years ago tried to assault me. Tiny images of my father lying on beige carpet with blood pooling around him flashed through my brain. His last look at me still had me shaking to this very day. The black-masked men who killed him and their ugly laughter echoed, as did my mother’s shrieking scream that I’d ruined everything.
Licking my lips, I looked Christian in the eye. “Because Gabe isn’t the only one who has threatened me before.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Christian
Thump. Thump. Thump. My heart was crashing against the bones inside my rib cavity. Blood was rushing down my limbs, my fingers tingling to inflict pain on someone.
My shoes stomped against my bedroom floor. Piper took Hayley into the bathroom so she could change her dirty and torn clothes and finish cleaning her up. Ollie was sitting on the end of my bed, staring down at the carpet.
“Man,” he said quietly. “What a fucked-up life.”
And I was certain we didn’t even know half of it.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t trust myself not to self-combust.
“Hayley was the girl who always smiled when we were in middle school. Do you remember that?” Ollie shook his head as soon as the words left his mouth. “Of course you do. She always smiled when she was with you. But she was nice, and sweet, always including everyone.” She did. Hayley was the nicest girl in our seventh-grade class unless someone messed with her or one of her friends. Ollie shifted on the bed. “You know, I always felt sorry for us. Sorry that Mom died. Sorry that Dad was never home. But this?” My feet stopped moving, and I tore my eyes away from the bathroom door. Ollie smashed his lips together before saying, “I bet you’re regretting being a fucking dick to her a few weeks ago, huh?”
I didn’t say anything. Because yeah, I fucking did. I was up on my high horse, putting blind blame on Hayley for what? Forcing me to face my own shit? For inflicting the guilt on me that I always pushed away?
The bathroom door swung open, and I had to tear my eyes away after a few seconds. Hayley came out with her braids re-done, two of them trailing down her back. Her face looked a little brighter, some color dotting her cheeks along with the tiny cuts and swelling. She was wearing one of my bulldog T-shirts, and it hit her mid-thigh. That was it. Her jeans and T-shirt were draped in Piper’s hand.
When she sat back down on my bed, her bare legs were peeking out from below the shirt, and I had to focus on something else.
“Tell us,” I managed to ground out. “Who else has threatened you? And I want to know exactly what they did and said to you tonight.”
I cracked my knuckles and tried to calm myself by leaning against the wall again. The slick coolness coated my back through my shirt, grounding me to the spot.
Her tongue darted out to lick her lips, and a flame tore through my body. A reminder of the forbidden kiss came through my head like a wrecking ball. That would surely ground me.
“Well, I’m sure you all remember my father was shot and killed in my house five years ago.”
No one said anything, and Hayley didn’t even bother looking up at us.
“When the men came, my mom and dad were in an argument. They were fighting over money or something.” Her eyes crinkled around the edges as she brought
back the memory. “I can’t remember exactly because a lot of what they said didn’t make sense to me, but I was upstairs in the hallway, listening over the banister. The door flew open, my mom screamed, and my father started to apologize and ask for more time. I peeked through the banister slats and saw that the men had black masks on.” She shook her head slightly, her voice growing weaker. It took everything I had to stay in my spot against the wall. “There was a lot of yelling, threatening words being thrown around. My father’s voice was breaking, and it scared me. I’d never seen my dad scared before, so I called 911.” Hayley sucked in a sharp breath. Piper’s hand covered hers. Ollie kept his head down low, staring at the carpet. “My heart was beating so fast in my chest while I was on the phone. The operator told me to go hide, but when I got up to do that, large hands wrapped around my upper arms. The man snatched my phone out of my hand and hung up. He saw that it was 911. He dragged me down the stairs and kept a hold of me as he yelled out to the other two men what I had done. They didn’t even give my father a chance to explain. Our eyes met briefly, and I still, to this day, can’t decipher what he was trying to tell me. They shot him right in front of me. My mom screamed at me. The man held my arm so tight I had a bruise, and my mother didn’t even care. She was mad that I’d called the cops. Sirens wailed in the background shortly after they shot him, so they quickly left, but not before they turned to me and my mother. They threatened us. Said they’d be back for everything and that they’d come for me when I turned eighteen for the rest.”