Page 34 of Before Now

“Be grateful, Rebecca,” he says, voice low and as much of a threat as his words. As his grip digging into her cheeks. “You’re a pathetic junkie, thrown away by men once they figure out you’re worth nothing but a quick fuck and regrets. Appreciate me for tolerating you and your fucking kid and be grateful I haven’t traded in your gash for a better one.”

My nails break the skin on my arms as he shoves her face, sending her stumbling backward. He storms away. I breathe in once he passes me, unsure the last time I exhaled, but my lungs were starved and my head swims.

But my mother doesn’t wait for me to regain my bearings.

She rips at her hair and then screams, tearing through the living room. I lunge in front of her and barely catch her to keep her away from Daniel.

“Mom,” I plead while she screeches and fights to get past me. “Please. Stop.”

She shrieks so many insults, my ears ring, but it doesn’t stop me from hearing Daniel shouting closer and closer behind me. The words don’t even matter anymore. My eyes sting, and my heart beats out of my chest while crowded between them. His front presses against my back, and his pointed finger is right beside my face. The sensory overload causes me to throw all my weight against her. I move her a few feet in the safer direction until she twists away from me.

No.

I try to stop her. I try to lock around her middle when she dives at him. Itry.

The little girl always tries, even though that’s what broke her in the first place.

Daniel pushes her off, and she knocks into me, and then he throws her to the floor, following her down. Everything roars so loudly in my head, but I hear each word between his fists. “Fucking. Worthless. Bitch.”

“Stop.” But it’s weak, my voice breaking. I rush toward a limp form forever burned behind my eyelids. “She’s not moving.”

He isn’t stopping, though, and I shove his shoulder, trying to get to her, trying to get him off her. I land on my knees beside her, only to be ripped away in a split second, then the world’s spinning out of control, and pain whips across my face as Daniel backhands me. My shoulder slams into the overturned table, a jagged piece of wine glass slicing into my forearm when I land on the floor. It hurts so fucking bad, but I grit through it, sharp inhales and exhales through my nose.

Daniel’s already blown out of the room. I hear him swipe his badge and holster off the entry table and the quiet click of the front door behind him. His chief of police mask firmly in place while he hides the destruction behind an elegant door knocker.

I push myself up on shaky arms, the last sixty seconds replaying in flashes. Blood drips onto the white porcelain shards beneath my hand. I sit up against the table and wrap a cloth napkin around my arm, my eyes falling shut. They open to my mother crawling off the floor. She holds her ribs and grips a fallen chair for balance. And she starts for the stairs without even looking at me.

“Mom?” Every tear I refuse to cry strains the word.

She braces on the banister and slowly turns. Her face remains untouched as always even though mine throbs. After a second of her unfocused gaze on me, she shrugs. “Your own fucking fault.”

I stare off at nothing once she disappears to their bedroom. Scar tissue scars differently, rougher and thicker and more noticeable than the original. Scarred scars tear easier. Each layer heals uglier and uglier, covering the previous but not with a neon lion or panicked man. They build on the last wound and embed its memory deeper.

While I clean and bandage my arm in the bathroom, I spare a glance in the mirror. The swelling and redness creep up from my cheekbone to my eye, no way of hiding it.

The need to escape builds to a point of overwhelm, and this time I get all the way to the window with my contingency bag. Only I pause for too long with my hands on the frame, think too much about the unknown.

I let the strap of my bag fall off my shoulder. It hits the floor, and I pull my headboard away from the wall. Lowering down, I run my fingers over the Sharpie words, smooth and tethering, even if his voice has faded from them.

You can always run to me, darlin’. Escape for a while and then weather your storm.

I unzip my contingency bag that I always keep hidden and ready for the worst. I pull the velvet pouch from the inside pocket, but I leave my dad’s SD card inside—the only thing I have left of him. I took it from his camera after his funeral, and in seven years, I’ve never even looked at the pictures. It feels too final to see the last things he captured. Like there could be more, so long as I don’t witness the end.

Like I can still run to him when it all becomes too much.

I pull my phone off the nightstand. Reality needs to fuck off until I can breathe again.

Even after calculating the time difference, I text my new favorite escape.

Show me something beautiful.

11

FOSTER

I casta glance at my phone’s screen when it vibrates against the wrought-iron bistro table beside me. Rather uncommitted considering it’s three in the morning, but then I see the name. Suddenly a lot of me feels committed.

Remi Saint has become an intrusive thought, nudging her way in where she doesn’t belong. This woman hijacks my mind and steers me in directions I’ve never wanted to go, but I go every time.

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