Page 19 of Offside Angel

I think it’s my brain’s way of protecting me. Of rewriting what happened that night.

Where would I be if I’d just left? Where would my father be?

“I had a whole speech planned,” I continue, my voice as soft as a whisper, “but as soon as I saw them, I just blurted it out. ‘I’m leaving.’ Just like that.”

“Where are you going?” my father asked, bloodshot eyes sloshing over me. “I don’t want you waking me up when you come back home.”

As if he wouldn’t be blacked out by then, anyway.

“You look like shit,” Dante mumbled, not even bothering to look at me to confirm.

My father laughed. He laughed at my brother’s cruelty the way he had a thousand times before, but I snapped. Everything I’d wanted to tell them for twenty-one years came pouring out of me.

“Then be grateful you won’t have to look at me anymore,” I spat. “I won’t wake you when I come back because I’m never coming back. This house is hell on Earth and I hope you both burn here for eternity like the demonic assholes you are. I’m doing what Mama did years ago—what I should’ve done years ago. I’m leaving.”

Zane whistles, and I blink out of the memory. My heart is racing, but I’m here. I’m not back in that house.

I’m with Zane.

I’m safe.

“I bet they took that really well,” he says.

I don’t want to go back into the memory. I’ve spent the last seven years repressing the hell out of it for a reason: it sucks.

But I trudge back into it, every word like walking through quicksand.

“It happened so fast. My dad was in his chair one second. The next, there was a crash and I was soaking wet. He was standing in front of me, and I couldn’t figure out what happened. Until I heard Dante. What the fuck did you just do? It was the first time I’d ever heard Dante question our dad. It was also the first time I’d ever been stabbed.” I wrap an arm around my stomach as a phantom pain ripples through me. “He shattered his beer bottle and stabbed me with it. He didn’t even say anything. He just… stabbed me.”

His face was cold. Flat.

“I dropped to my knees, and he looked down at me like I was a stranger. Whatever humanity I thought my dad might be clinging to, it was gone. He walked past me into the kitchen and Dante followed him. While blood was pooling in my hands, Dante followed our father.”

“What are we going to tell people?” Dante screamed. “She can’t go to the fucking hospital again. She’ll tell them what happened!”

There was a pause—and then: “She can’t tell them if she’s dead.”

“They were going to kill me,” I explain. “I could hear them planning it in the kitchen. My dad had taken things too far and they knew I wouldn’t lie for them. So I grabbed the beer bottle. It was my only weapon.”

Zane smooths his hands up and down my arms. “You’re shaking.”

He’s right. I’m trembling all over.

“You don’t have to do this,” he adds. “You don’t need to?—”

“I do.” I pull his hands away, putting some space between us. “You need to know that I didn’t flinch. As soon as my father walked in the room, I aimed for his face. His eyes. I was ready to gouge his eyes out, Zane. I was prepared to peel his skin from his skull if that’s what it would take to kill him. But my aim was bad and I hit his neck. His carotid.”

Some nightmares are just red. A sea of blood. That’s what it felt like that night. Like I was drowning in blood. In the metallic smell of it and the slickness of it between my fingers.

“He dropped instantly. He didn’t stand a chance,” I whisper. “If I hadn’t been wounded, I would’ve gone after Dante, too. But I was bleeding out and weak. When Dante stopped to help our dad, I knew I needed to leave. I was already in my car and pulling out of the drive when Dante came to the door. He told me he’d get revenge. And that’s what he’s been trying to do for the last seven years.”

I feel lighter. Like I shucked off some weights I’ve been carrying for way too long.

But I’m still exhausted.

Getting all of this off of my chest has to be good, but there’s going to be long-term damage. I’ll never be back to “normal.” I’ll carry the scars of all of it with me for the rest of my life. I’ll always remember what my family did to me, but I also have to remember what I’m capable of.

Zane sits back in his chair. “Is that all of it?”

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