Page 35 of Rage

“Why help me get out of here when I’d bring you more money inside?”

“Don’t you worry about me. I got a big boy coming in who’ll rake in the dough. Losing your scrawny ass ain’t gonna hurt me. But you’ve never really belonged in here, now, have you, Accetta?”

I glanced at the floor, then let my eyes pass over the eight-by-ten rectangle of a room that had been my life for the past five years. Everything left of me since that day was within these four walls. Pictures I’d drawn of things I remembered on the outside, angry diary entries I’d ripped out, crumpled, and then stuck to the wall with toothpaste and tape, letters from that fuckstick traitor of a twin, his lies and insults circled in red pen over and over until the line ripped through the paper.

I had plans for him when I got out of here. I could take my life back when I made it outside. I could make him pay for what he’d done to me, how badly he’d ruined my life.

“You know what, Macy? I don’t think this rib’s all that sore anymore.”

He grinned as I stood up and rotated my arms in a circle, stretching for the brutal fight ahead that would likely either kill me or set me free.

“I knew you’d see it my way.”

Chapter One

Tara

“If I have to hear you whine about your fucking problems one more time, I swear to god, Tara?—”

The bottle he slung at me flew over my shoulder, little droplets of the backwash and foam hitting me in the face as it zinged by on its way to the wall. I flinched as it shattered, hating the way he could make me so afraid for myself when I knew damn well he was all talk and no action. All he ever did was throw bottles and punch a few walls.

Fucker didn’t even stay up long enough to be disappointed in sex these days.

Not that I was giving it to him. With the way the laws trended these days, I ran a higher risk of dying before I couldhavea kid than I did of this fucker actually evolving to full-on murder.

Still, I had to try. I moved over a thousand miles to be with a man I hadn’t seen since college. I left behind what little bit of family I had, the three friends who insisted this was a bad idea, and fled one horrible man in my past for another.

At least this one didn’t cheat on me.

That I knew of.

“When is that business trip you’re supposed to go on for the bank?” I asked, heading into the kitchen for the broom anddustpan. “I need to make sure your suit is ready and your bag is packed.”

“Yeah, 'cause you just want megone!”The walls between here and the living room muffled some of the sound, but his voice was still plainly filled with malice and rage. And he was very, very drunk.

I didn’t bother resisting the urge to roll my eyes. He couldn’t see me in here. And even if he could, he didn’t look at me long enough to notice a smirk now and again.

Walking on eggshells was such a fuckingchore,but I loved him. He was my everything. My whole world. Leaving him would be stupid, especially over a few beers a night.

I flipped through our calendar on the wall, eyeballing the dates as they flew past. I skimmed over October 30th and frowned, remembering that I messaged Rhonda on her birthday, but she never replied.

Rhonda was one of the only friends from my old life I left behind when I packed up and left. She promised she’d always be there no matter what, if I ever needed to talk or wanted to return. But the last time we spoke was my birthday, and she’d heard him screaming in the background about his dinner being terrible and me being a whore, or something like that.

And I hadn’t heard from her since.

One more friend lost because of my shit choice in men I fell in love with.

I flipped past another week in the huge calendar I’d bought the last time Arkady broke my phone, thinking he’d never bother to rip a physical one off the wall. Aside from remembering dates and important trips, it wasn't valuable to me. When I flipped through a third week and spotted my monthly little red dot to mark the day I was supposed to start my period, I froze, my subconscious screaming at me that something wasn’t right.

No.

No way in fucking hell.

I counted backward in my head to my last period, then forward, to the dot I hadn’t crossed out yet. And then I flipped back to last week, when I should have been crossing out another dot in celebration of another month kid-free.

It was still there. The one the month before was crossed out, just like it should be. I remembered that one ending because if it’d gone another day longer, he would have started complaining about not getting sex on our anniversary.

I should have started a week ago. No—two weeks ago.

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