Page 18 of Broken Skulls

He waves his hand over the car in front of me. “Beat the shit out of it.”

I drop the tip of the bat to the ground, drawing a circle in the dirt. “Why?”

“It will make you feel better.”

“I doubt that.”

“You’ll never know ‘til you try.”

“It looks like a perfectly good car. I couldn’t.”

He stands, taking the bat from me. He slams the end of it into one of the rear windows. I jump when it shatters.

“There. It’s broken.” He hands the bat back to me and then returns to his rickety throne.

“Jesus Christ. Pretend it’s that bastard you killed. Beating a man is more satisfying than doing it with poison. But I guess you didn’t have much choice since he was behind bars, huh?”

My mouth falls open.

He laughs. That chipped tooth of his somehow deflating my irritation with him. I think it’s the thing I like most about his appearance.

“If you don’t like that idea, pretend it’s all the people who didn’t stand up for you.”

“It wasn’t their fault. He was a master at the game.” I halt my words abruptly, looking at him.

I drop the bat to the ground and sit down beside it, not taking my eyes off him. He doesn’t move, doesn’t ask me what I’m doing, doesn’t speak. JD just stares back at me. I feel naked in front of him.

His head tips to the side as if he can read my thoughts. “You’re fucking beautiful.”

Beautiful is laughable. So that’s what I do. I laugh at him.

“Pick up the bat, Elizabeth.”

My laughter evaporates, and a shiver runs up my spine at his order.

“Show me who you are.”

My heart is beating wildly in my chest. Hundreds of thundering hooves, ready to break free, to run, to be wild … to be me.

The tip of my toe pushes at the bat in front of me. How good would it feel to let it out? To unleash the beast and let someone see me?

The gate breaks. The pounding in my ears intensifies as my hand reaches out and snags the bat. I jump to my feet. The first hit comes with intense relief, but it’s brief and followed by a rage that summons a sound from somewhere deep inside my body that can surely be heard across the heavens.

Blood runs down my arms from flying glass, but JD doesn’t stop me, and I don’t stop myself. Not because my mind isn’t screaming at me to end this. My body has taken over at a cellular level. It’s had enough of this shit. It’s like vomiting pure violence into the world.

And then suddenly my legs give out, and a great sadness washes over me. Grief pours from me for all that I lost, all that I could have been. I fall back, staring at blurry stars against the inky night sky. How long have we been out here?

When my breathing evens out, JD’s face appears over me. “Fucking beautiful,” he whispers before scooping me up and carrying me inside.

He doesn’t take me back to my dark room. Instead, he sets me on my feet in front of a long oval mirror. I turn my face away, glancing around the room we’re in. It’s filled with plants.

He reaches around me, grabbing my chin and forcing my gaze back to the woman in the mirror. “Tell me what you see,” he says when our eyes lock in the reflection of the glass.

My eyes fall over the despicable woman in front of me. “I’m dirty and bloody,” I whisper.

“All true.”

“That’s not beautiful,” I sigh, dropping my eyes to my dusty shoes.

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