Page 1 of Ryder

My hand covered my injured cheek while my lips moved in silence, praying to be saved from the monster who’d attacked me. Again. I wished for his death, and sadly, even at the tender age of seven, there were moments I wished for my own.

Still whispering my pleas, I finally opened my eyes. That was when I saw him standing in the doorway to my bedroom, huffing and puffing as if he’d run a hundred miles just to get to me.

Words formed in my throat, but when I opened my mouth to plead for him to leave me alone, only silence sounded. His black eyes stared me down, the intensity enough to make me cower on my bed. With my hands clutching the superhero blanket beneath me, I closed my eyes once more and tried to escape what was going to happen next. Unfortunately I knew all too well the pain I was about to endure in the next few minutes, although it would certainly feel like hours.

“Look at me, you little shit!” he thundered, pounding the doorframe for emphasis. When I refused, I heard him shuffle his heavy feet across the wooden planks of my bedroom floor. “What did I tell you about interrupting me and your mother?”

I’d woken to the sound of my mom begging him to stop. I knew what was happening and, although I was terrified, I had to help her. After racing from my room, I’d flown down the steps and found her crumpled on the living room floor, clutching her belly with one hand while the other was raised in the air to try to stop his next attack, blood dripping from her nose. As I ran toward her to try and protect her, I was hit so hard I flew across the room and crashed into the far wall. I was a small kid, weighing nothing at all, especially compared to the man terrorizing us. She tried to crawl toward me, but he stepped on her back, pinning her to the ground. With defeat in her voice, she told me to go back to my room, promising that she’d be all right. I didn’t believe her but I didn’t want her to watch him hit me again, so I scrambled to my feet and ran back to my room.

I heard him getting closer so I squeezed my eyes tighter, but my loss of sight didn’t stop my mouth from opening.

“You’re hurting my mom,” I cried out.

“That’s none of your business,” he spat.

I tried my hardest not to appear scared, but I was. When I pried open my eyes, I saw him standing directly next to my bed, his hand on his belt buckle.

“I’ll teach you not to interfere,” he slurred, his stinky breath making me sick to my stomach. He’d been drinking that brown liquid again. He took another step closer, the belt loosening and sliding through the loops of his pants. Instead of holding on to it, however, he tossed it on the foot of my bed. “You’ll learn your place in this house,” he threatened as he unzipped his pants, a stranger than normal look in his eyes as he snagged my ankle and yanked me down the bed. Without much effort, he flipped me on my belly and knelt across my lower legs to keep me from getting away. “Don’t fight me or you’ll hurt yourself.” I didn’t understand what was about to happen.

Why wasn’t he hitting me?

Why was I on my stomach?

Why was he taking his pants off?

Before I formed another silent question, I heard my mom screaming at him to get away from me. When the pressure on my legs lessened, I turned around and I saw that he had ahold of her hair, her arms swinging wildly, trying to hit him. “Don’t you touch him, you bastard,” she gasped, her breath coming in short spurts as she winced with every movement. She didn’t care that she was bleeding, that bruises were forming on her face and arms, that some of her ribs were probably bruised or broken. Her only concern was for me.

He shoved my mother to the ground, grabbed the belt that had been tossed on my bed, knelt down next to her and wrapped it around her neck. Everything happened in slow motion and yet at a frenzied pace all at the same time. Her green eyes bulged wide, while her fingers scratched at the rough leather robbing the breath from her lungs.

“Noooo,” I screamed as loud as I could, watching the life slowly start to drain from her face. Finding my last bit of strength, I launched off the bed and flew toward her, trying to loosen the belt, but it was useless. He was too strong.

When all of the fight had left my mom, he let go of the belt and stumbled backward, mumbling something only he could understand before disappearing from my room.

Burying my face in her neck, I cried harder than I ever had before, praying she would start breathing again. Hoping this was all a nightmare and I’d wake up any minute.

But it wasn’t a nightmare.

My mom had just been murdered, a tragedy that shaped the person I would eventually become.

Ryder

The muscles in my hand burned, the ache intensifying with no sign of relief. My knee was wedged into his back, holding him steady against the gravel beneath me. Rage bubbled inside me, overtaking any sense of rationality I had left, which was but a frazzled thread. Words tried to escape, but nothing passed my lips except my harsh breaths, panting like some kind of rabid animal.

Fury.

Revenge.

I felt it in spades but I couldn’t move from the spot I was frozen in. I tried so hard to exact my kind of justice, but my mind was spiraling out of control, ensnaring me deep in its tight grasp.

“Ryder.” I heard my name as if it’d been whispered. I’d been staring into the face of the man who’d changed my world forever, but his lips never moved. “Ryder,” I heard again, that time a little louder. Before I could shout out and ask who said my name, the man I’d been pinning down vanished, as if he’d never even been there.

All of a sudden a sharp pain radiated through my leg. “Ryder!” A female voice captured the letters of my name, shouting out in fear and anger, both emotions mixed together to form a jolt that thrust me from whatever world had dragged me under, trapped in the deepest recesses of my mind. My eyes were already open, but as my vision tunneled and then expanded, I realized that Braylen was lying on her back . . . and I was pinning her to the mattress. Her legs were spread wide and flailing, my knee wedged between them to keep them apart. I’d captured both of her arms with my large hands, trapping her so she was utterly defenseless. That was until another wave of pain shot through my calf again.

“Fuck!” I yelled, staring down into the face of the woman who’d been sharing my bed for the past five months. Her wild blonde hair was fanned out on the pillow, the look in her eyes telling me she was gonna lay into me as soon as I fully came back into the moment.

“Get off me,” she cried out. “You’re hurting me.” She bucked beneath me and, although she didn’t possess the physical ability to budge me, her show of strength was enough to tell me she meant business. Before I could move, however, she kicked me again, that time the heel of her foot grinding into the tensed muscle of my calf.

“Goddamnit, Bray, stop fuckin’ kickin’ me.”

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