Page 42 of Never Broken

She’ll fuck up everything

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Bass du mëll???3 If this girl were a slave that would be one thing

But do you realize what she risked??

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What SHE risked??

What about me??

How the fuck am I supposed to help you if I’m shoveling coal??

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For someone so smart, how can you be so dumb??

Our lives are so shit we have to make up happy endings or we’ll never get them, and here you are throwing away your chance for a real one

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This story will NOT have a happy ending, Maeve

It’s going to end up with her life ruined and me dead

Which is exactly why I’m ending it now and coming to get you

You’re all that matters

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But I’m not

Don’t YOU want to be happy?

The simple logic of innocents.

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Of course I do, but it’s more complicated than that

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No it isn’t, you stupidtockskapp?4.

O vreck,?5 someone’s coming

Left idle, the phone went dark. There was nothing more I could do but wait and pray she’d learnedsomethingfrom me over the years and picked out a hiding spot for the phone in advance.

Meanwhile, the aloe was helping, of course, soothing the lash wounds like a girl’s soft, cool hands. I’d almost prefer it wouldn’t help at all, and then I’d have at least one reason to forgetthe girl that even Maeve—who didn’t even know her—seemed determined not to let me forget.

Brave.Really? I didn’t feel particularly brave at the moment, given what I was up against, nor did I think I was notably braver than any other slave who had somehow survived a lifetime of the cruelest and most degrading shit imaginable. But to someone like Louisa—whose childhood, from where I stood, seemed to have been made entirely of lollipops and puppies and rainbows and unicorns—I could see why it might seem that way. It didn’t mean she understood anything. It didn’t even mean shecared. It meant I was just a project, a walking, talking charity food drive, one she could and would throw away when the next shiny object came along. Because an object was what I was. Literally.

Still, she hadn’t chosensad,pitiful, orpathetic. She’d chosenbrave.

And nobody had ever called me that before.

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