Page 35 of Burn for Me

Shortly after, Phoenix’s violin screeched to a halt and he stalked off down the hill with his arms tensing, his fingers white around the violin’s neck.

My shoulders relaxed as he departed and I threaded my fingers into Muffin’s matted mane.

‘What am I going to do?’ I asked the pony. ‘I’m stuckhere, just like you. But I don’t belong here. I need to get away.’

Muffin whickered into my shoulder as I ran my hands down over his neck, giving him a jolly good scratch.

‘Thing is, he touched me. And it felt like how I’d always wished it would. Not with him, obviously, but when I lay in bed and dreamed of Massimo. Phoenix makes me want it. And I despise it. I don’t want to want his touch.’

I sighed and stood, brushing dry dirt from the back of my clothes, watching as little flecks of grass drifted down to the ground. The raging fire his hands had left burning on my ass cheeks had dulled to a soft ache. I screwed my face up at the thought of being bent over with him chastising me. Who did he think he was?

‘And why did it make me wet?’ I asked Muffin, who ducked his head down to munch on a patch of clover near my feet.

I needed to get out. But how? Could I take the boat? Old Bess couldn’t be that difficult to man, right? Even if I could just get it far enough out to sea that Phoenix couldn’t swim out and sent out some kind of mayday signal.

It wasn’t a concrete plan, but it was the best I had.

I just needed a way to get the keys. Phoenix almost always kept them on him. He needed to be distracted. Distracted and trusting.

Maybe I needed to play along with his game. Men usually slept like the dead after a good lay. I could suck it up long enough to get him knackered and then take the keys from discarded trousers, right?

Fuck, if I played it right, made him as desperate as he was trying to make me, I could have the keys by nightfall.

‘You wouldn’t be mad, would you Muffin? You’d understand my leaving? I need to get home. Tell the police about Massimo, and my family, and Phoenix. Maybe I could come back for you when he’s in jail. Take you home with me.’ I sighed as tears pricked in the corners of my eyes. ‘Not that I have a home anymore.’

Muffin didn’t seem to mind either way.

Alight rain smattered the grimy old cottage windows, the pitter patter a soothing companion as I read Phoenix’s teenaged scrawl. He may have set the rule that I had to only read it in his arms, but what was he going to do? Spank me again?

The delicious thrill that spread out from between my thighs made me scowl. Stupid, treacherous vagina.Who’s side are you even on?

Refocusing on the diary, I read on through a particularly angry entry.

I don’t know if he’s ever going to take me back to the doctors. We’ve been on the boat for so long. Has everyone forgotten about me? Sometimes I wonder if I ever even existed. May, Mum and Dad feel like a dream. I keep trying to picture their faces, but they are getting foggier every day. I wishI had some photos. Something of us all together. I miss them so much.

I miss everything. I miss my friends, my school, even the nights arguing with Mum about eating my veggies. I’d give anything to have her back. And my mouth back.

Uncle let me starve for a bit when I refused to drink the awful pink shakes. When my hip bones started sticking out he forced the shakes into the hole I have left in my mouth. It would make me vomit, and then I have no option but to swallow the soured shakes back down when I couldn’t spit them out.

I hate him.

I HATE the shakes.

But I take them to avoid having him sit on my chest and choke me with them. One day I’ll be strong enough to kill him. I’ll sit on his chest and drown him in the fucking vile liquid. Then I’ll go home. Find someone who cares.

The word cares was blemished with a years old teardrop, the ink spreading around the word in a blurry black smudge.

Phoenix hated the shakes as much as I did. He’d had nothing else to eat for years.

A noise in the doorway had me startle upright, closing the book.

Time for operation make him come, then steal the keys.

I wanted to gag at the thought of him anywhere near me, butI’d done worse things with people who didn’t even know my clit seemed to exist. At least if I closed my eyes, I might be able to get that itch scratched before I left him in the dust.

Phoenix climbed onto the bed, pulling me and the diary into his arms.

Operation play it sweet, Laura. You can do it.

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