Page 1 of Overcast

“You’re lookingmighty pretty tonight, Stormi. If I didn’t know any better...I would say you were hiding from me.”

That voice.

My body cringes in pure dread at the throaty tone that just snuck up on me. He’s exactly what I wanted to avoid.

Him, his hands, the way his eyes violate and suck me in because he thinks he can.

Because I’ve never stopped him before.

There’s something wrong, maybe a screw missing, with how I say nothing at all. I freeze, I burn up in chills, and my stomach firmly coils at his touch.

But my brain doesn’t activate a movement to run.

Walk away.

Because you’re weak and worthless. Forget Dad being my biggest disappointment, it’s me.

On cue, his beefy palm suddenly rests on my lower back, fingers splayed as a weak shove gets me to step out of the darkness of the hallway. “Come join the rest of the party. I saved a spot for you.”

Hollis’s words singe every hair on my body as I stumble gracelessly into the throng of people gathered tonight.

Three men sit around our modest dining table with Dad, all chins tucked into their chests as they study the cards in their hands. Bottles of Jack Daniels and Miller Lite scatter the wooden surface with remnants of peanuts and ashtrays full of still lit cigarettes. A wad of cash is carelessly discarded in the middle, alluding that this night is going to end up with a sore loser and all of them drunk.

Coffee brown eyes snap up at me from the head of the table, and Dad, for once, looks satisfied to see me.

“There you are.” He pulls his hand closer to his body. “I need—” His gaze then latches on to the menace behind me.

Please, Daddy, see me.

“What did you do, take a piss for an hour?” My heart and hope sinks pathetically into my stomach.

It shouldn’t.

Dad plays deaf, dumb, and blind when it comes to his friends. How they always find a way to sandwich me up against something. How they conveniently disappear when I’m running the errand Dad can’t get up from the table to do—grabbing beer from the garage. Or how they reach over and brush their forearm along my breasts, whispering vile and dirty things in my ear. How they’ll make me come so hard if I just spread my legs for them.

Bile rises up my throat as I recall the last encounter I had with Paul, one of Dad’s coworkers, on Tuesday night.

His breath was hot on my face, stinking of pungent cigars and whiskey. His pudgy fingers looped around the waistband of my cotton shorts as he tried to delve deeper.

My words conveniently lodged in my esophagus. His, unfortunately, didn’t.

“I might not be as young as I used to be, darlin’, but I can still fuck like I’m twenty-two.”

Hollis’s half-hearted chuckle behind me assails the back of my neck before he possessively grips the fabric of my second-hand T-shirt. “Didn’t know I was being timed, Bobby.”

He twists the cotton material, keeping me grounded to my spot, and I silently scream at myself to move.

Scream.

Yell.

Do freaking anything right now.

I despise that I don’t round on him and bark out not to touch me like a normal twenty-two-year-old. That my lips fail to respond to the way my brain tells them to operate.

My mind and body, they don’t function well together. They’re two distinct entities that short circuit when danger emerges from its depths and into my solace surroundings. Hollis learned early on that these grounds are easy for the chase.

And even then, it’s not a pursuit because I’d have to run in order for it to be one.

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