No.
The single word slams through my head like a freight train. I’ve been here before. I can’t do it again. Won’t.
I no longer see Cliff. Everything is a black haze around me, but I hear things, strange voices that echo in my head. My own thoughts?
You can’t let him.
Don’t let him.
You hate him.
You always have to hate him.
Never give in.
Never give in.
Be a good girl and do as I say.
A coppery taste explodes across my tongue, flooding my mouth. Cliff’s sharp cry of pain breaks through the cacophony of noise in my head.
“You bitch!”
He yanks his hand away from my mouth, blood streaming down his wrist from the ragged teeth marks in his skin. His face looks pale in the dim light, the boyish smattering of freckles across his cheeks at odds with the way his lips curl back in a snarl.
Cradling his bitten hand to his chest, he swings out with his good one—a wicked backhand that catches the side of my head and sends me reeling.
But it doesn’t stop me.
The rush of pain narrows my focus to a pinpoint. The only thing my mind lets me focus on is fighting back. Hurting the person trying to hurt me.
With a feral scream, I launch myself at Cliff, fists flying as he staggers back in surprise.
The world around me is a fury of red and black. Pain, fear, and violent rage course through me unt
il it’s all I can feel in my veins.
I’ve let people hurt me before.
Never, ever again.
I get glimpses of Cliff as my fists connect with any part of his body I can reach. His face looks foreign, the freckles and red hair and angular features seeming to belong to someone else. But whether it’s Cliff or some other person from my fractured past, my fists don’t care.
Even when he fights back, striking out and catching my face with a vicious right hook, I still don’t stop. I just keep hitting and hitting and hitting, following him down to the ground as my fists fall like hammers over and over again.
I’ve been here before.
I won’t let anyone drag me back.
22
Everything is black.
A dark-washed cocoon blankets me, smothering consciousness.
It’s comforting. Strangely peaceful. Fresh grass and soil fill my nose with their scent. It’s the closest I’ve been to nature in years, and some faint memory of begonias in a garden in spring tugs at my mind.
“What the fuck—”