Page 111 of Past the Broken Bridges

My ass and back take the worst of the blow, glass shattering around me until piercing pain stabs me through my clothes.

And the man above me doesn’t stop there.

In his alcohol-induced rage, he fights like I’m an intruder trying to take away his vices, and I have no time to see the foot coming down before it connects with my rib cage.

Once.

Twice.

“Dad,” I gasp, voice barely more than a desperate rasp from the insufferable pain as his boot swings at me a third time.

Blood spurts from my mouth as I try to breathe, but it feels like somebody is suffocating me—squeezing my lungs as I curl into the fetal position to try protecting myself.

“D-Dad,” I gasp. “It’s m-me.”

He stops, blinking, foot midway to another strike before snapping out of it. When he looks down, his face drains of color. Then he falls to his knees, reaching for me.

I flinch as his hand nears my face.

He frowns, lowering it slowly to his side.

Frowns like he doesn’t understand the terror in my eyes as I struggle for air.

I cough, blood splattering onto his face.

“Paxton,” he whispers, still blinking like this is all some nightmare.

My head drops to the ground, eyes closing from the energy it takes to keep them open.

The pain is numbing.

So numbing.

I think I groan.

Maybe even black out for a second or two.

He doesn’t apologize.

Doesn’t offer to take me to the hospital.

He simply kneels there in pale disbelief, staring as I bleed out on the floor. Under his voice, so quiet I almost don’t hear it over the thundering pain I’m too focused on, he whispers, “Please don’t leave me like her.”

That’s when I know my father is a broken man. More than the shards of glass on the floor or the splintered wood underneath me. He’s been fractured for a long time since Mom left, but each year split him apart further and further until the void became too big.

It consumed him.

Consumed us.

He says, “I swear I’ve changed.”

But he hasn’t.

His hands shake as they clean me up with washcloths and paper towels, blood soaking everything he uses.

I want him to stop.

To not touch me.

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