“Tell me right now, or I swear to God, I’ll drive right to her house and ask her myself.”
Piper laughed, sitting back further into the seat. “Fine, but you’ll have to climb through her window. Maybe then I’ll believe you have her best interests at heart.”
“Fucking fine, let’s go.” I turned the ignition, and my Charger rumbled to life.
“Fine! I can’t wait until she tosses your ass back out onto the ground for butting into her business!” she shouted.
Ollie twisted back around to me. “Bro, you can’t just fucking climb through her window.”
My head slowly swiveled over to him. “Watch me.”
Chapter Sixteen
Hayley
I curled into a ball on my mattress for the third time in twenty seconds, and yep, still freaking hurts.
Pete didn’t look in my direction once when I had gotten home. Not even when I took a bag of peas out of the freezer and carried them upstairs to my room. Jill wasn’t home again, but I really didn’t think she’d even care if she knew he had kicked me. She allowed him to hit her, so why would she care if he had hit me?
Piper had emailed me all evening. She’d begged for me to sneak out s
o I could get away from Pete. She even tried to bribe me with ice cream, but the thought of climbing out of the window with a footprint-sized bruise on my ribs? Yeah, no thank you.
She was worried about me. Her mortified expression imprinted itself into my brain after I had showed her the bruise. Piper knew something was wrong when I whimpered while carrying my backpack that morning. She tried to lift my shirt up in the middle of the hallway, upset that I wouldn’t tell her what happened, so I finally dragged her into the bathroom and reluctantly lifted my shirt.
I sighed as I flopped onto my back. The bag of peas was long gone. They thawed hours ago, and then I ate the cold, uncooked peas for dinner because there was absolutely no way in hell I was going back downstairs to see if there was dinner for me. I’d have rather eaten the stuffing inside this shitty mattress before I took anything from Pete.
As soon as I started to doze off, my eyes peeled open. Did I just hear something? I lay still, unmoving, my eyes adjusting to the dark room. The moon from the window gave away a soft glow, so I could see small glimpses of shadows along the wall. I focused on my locked bedroom door, fearful that the knob would turn and Pete would stumble in here. Wouldn’t be the first time someone stumbled into my room, hoping to get something that wasn’t theirs.
Placing my hands on the mattress, I slowly sat up, wincing at the bite in my side. And that was when I saw it. A dark figure standing over by the closet door, immobile, lurking in the dark.
Panic seized me, and I rushed to my feet, yelling out with pain. My breath shortened, but I was ready to fight. Did they really come for me?
“It’s me,” the voice said. My brows drew tighter, and I still wasn’t sure if I should scream.
“What are you doing in my room?” My voice was a whisper, but it was dripping with anger. The tiptoeing of my feet padded over to the small lamp on the floor, and I flicked it on, a soft light giving away that Christian was actually in my bedroom.
His gray, stormy eyes pinned me to my spot. He looked at my face and trailed his stare over my T-shirt and bare legs. I flicked my eyebrow up and tapped my foot, waiting for my answer. When our eyes met again, I felt heat trickle across my body. In an alternate universe, Christian would have been my knight in shining armor. He would have been the Flynn to my Rapunzel. He’d whisk me off my feet and out of this awful tower I was locked in, and we’d live happily ever after. Or better yet, he’d storm over to me right now and rip this T-shirt off my body and have his way with me. Okay, whoa…stop it.
Almost as if he heard my thoughts, he stormed over to me. Too stunned to do anything, I stood stuck in my spot, my bare feet glued to the old oak floor beneath my soles. I sucked in a heavy breath as I peered up into Christian’s face, the storm clouds hooded by thick dark eyelashes. His jaw was shut tightly, the muscles protruding near his temples. He fingered the hem of my long T-shirt, and chills broke out along my naked legs. Heat pooled in my core, but I was too struck by confusion to do anything. Then, he slowly—so slowly I thought I might have melted into a puddle of lust—lifted my shirt up.
When he hissed under his breath, the indifferent look in his eye went back to its normal hardness. “What the fuck happened?”
I stuttered, blinking away my bedroom eyes. “Wh—what?”
He pulled on my T-shirt, crashing my body into his hard chest. He lifted my shirt up again, and I realized what he was looking at. I quickly shoved him away and pulled down my shirt, mortified that I had just allowed him to lift my shirt in the first place.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing breaking into my room like a stalker and lifting my shirt up?” I kept my voice down low, afraid I’d somehow wake Pete out of his drunken slumber.
“I didn’t see you complaining with those fuck-me eyes a second ago.” He squinted one eye. “Better question is, what the hell were you doing letting me lift your shirt?”
My face flamed. My cheeks burned with embarrassment. I hate him.
“How did you get in here?”
Christian eyed my room. His gaze fixed on the mattress on the floor, my one blanket in a crumpled mess. There wasn’t much to the room: a mattress pushed up against the old and tattered, yellowing wallpaper and a small bedside lamp on the floor with the cord trailing across the room like a tightrope. My backpack was tucked away in the corner with my uniform in a bunched-up mess a few feet away. That was it. The only personal item in the room that had any meaning at all was the locket around my neck.
I was certain Christian was comparing his life to mine—his glamorous, entitled, has-everything-he-ever-wanted life, whereas mine appeared like the bottom of a dumpster in an abandoned alley. I had nothing. I was nothing. Those were some of the last words my own mother had spoken to me. That was what sucked about words—they never left you. Bruises faded. But words never did. I’d been hearing her voice for the last few years on a loop in my brain.