Page 2 of A Love Like Venom

Even at the young age of twelve I know I can’t survive this world without Reed Carter by my side.

His pinky finger tightens around mine. “Anything,” he replies warmly.

“Promise you won’t ever leave me.” I know that I am asking a lot from him. I know that it’s a great deal. It’s far too much.

See, I can handle the loss of my father. I never knew him. I can handle the loss of my sister. All she is, is mean. And I can handle the loss of my momma. Some days I wish her, and her men would just go away.

What I cannot handle is Reed leaving.

Turning on his side his pinky removes from mine. I miss the contact immediately. Before I can reconnect our pinkies, he pulls me in to a hug. My head lays upon the crook of his neck. I greedily breathe him in.

The scent of cedar wood and rubbing alcohol fills my nostrils. To some, that may be unwanted, but to me it’s the most comforting scent I have ever known.

“I promise,” he vows to me.

I clutch on to him tighter. Desperately holding him as if this might be the last time I’ll ever see him.

Reed Carter just made me a promise.

Only I didn’t know that one day he was going to break it.

That one day my sister would lure him in.

That one day he would look at her the way I always wanted him to look at me.

And the worst part of it all?

I sat back and let it happen.

Some say passion and hate are the same thing.

I never believed them. I always thought I would love Reed Carter.

Then came the day I understood.

And now things will never be the same.

Alice

Ican tell you the first time my heart broke.

I can also tell you the last time it did, too.

To be fair, I think I have known heart break my entire life. There must be something in my genetic makeup. Something flowing through my blood that allows it to always happen to me.

You can say my first technical heartbreak was when I was born. From what I was told, repeatedly by my mother, my father had left a couple of months after I arrived. I was the reason why he left, and why he stopped loving my mother. I was the reason he abandoned my sister.

My second heartbreak came from the woman who gave birth to me. Sometimes it’s hard to refer to her as my mother. She was never much of one during my childhood to teen years. She hated me as soon as my father left. My sister says the only reason she had me was because I was a last-ditch effort to save their marriage. My mother hasn’t shown me an ounce of compassion since. Not even when I tried to win her love. At least tried to gain some affection.

As soon as I turned eighteen, I thought I would taste freedom. But freedom was a pipe dream. Freedom requiredmoney. Freedom required a good credit score. Freedom required release from the chains that bound me.

Freedom, I have learnt, comes at a cost too high.

Over the years I’ve come to learn that freedom is a luxury that I simply can’t afford.

Then, there comes heartbreak number three. My older sister. Older than me by three years I looked up to my sister in more ways than one. In the early years of my childhood, she was someone I admired. Someone who I had loved and had given me love in return. Maybe that’s why the lasting effects of her heartbreak pains me more than the woman who birthed me.

With my mother I never stood a chance at love.

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