Page 113 of The Love Syllabus

But they say strength is what you find when survival is your only option, and I found it. In that moment, weak, starving, and barely clinging to life—I found it. In the way my hands kept clawing, kept fighting. In the way my body, broken as it was, refused to stay down. In the way my heart, despite everything, still beat with the will to live, I found it.

Cory’s groggy voice slurred from the other side of the room as he woke from one of his drunken stupors.

“Kerry.”

A violent shudder ripped through me as I curled into myself. He wasn’t fully alert, still drowsy and slow. I only had a few seconds before he got to me, before he realized I wasn’t where he left me. I only had a few seconds before he tried to put me back.

The only thing standing between me and him was the lamp. The moment his bleary eyes landed on me, something inside me snapped. I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate. Ilunged. My fingers wrapped around the heavy base, my grip tightening as I lifted it with every ounce of strength I had left. And then, I swung, hard and desperate. Like my life depended on it…because it did.

The crack of metal against his bone echoed through the room. Cory roared in pain, stumbling backward with blood trickling from the gash. His hands flew to his head, and his eyes flashed between rage and disbelief, like he couldn’t believe I’d dared to fight back.

I didn’t wait a moment further. I swung again. And again.

His screams fueled me. His pain, his shock, the way he buckled to his knees—I relished it. The tables had turned. The fear that had lived in my bones for years was gone and replaced by something new—power.

But I didn’t have time to bask in it. I had to go. With all the adrenaline I could muster, I bolted out the door and into the street, where I screamed for help.

A porch light flicked on. A curtain shifted. A door cracked open but then closed. Some neighbors wanted to help. Some of them didn’t. And some were too afraid.

I made it as far as the front lawn before my adrenaline dissipated and the pain hit. A deep, searing, and almost blinding pain. A pain that didn’t come from my battered body, but from inside me. I collapsed.

My hands clutched my stomach. My breath increased. And I knew. A deep, broken sob wrenched from my throat.

“No,” I gasped. “No, no, no,no. I fought for this. I survived for you.” I cried for what I was losing.

I cried to myself, for myself, while my neighbors all watched. My body was wracked with unimaginable pain, loss, and grief, and for the first time that night, I felt hopeless. So hopeless that I didn’t even care what happened next.

I heard the police sirens, and I saw the flashing lights, painting the night in violent streaks of red and blue. They finally came.

But not to save me. They came to save him.

Rough hands grabbed me, and yanked my frail arms behind my back, then locked my wrists with metal cuffs. I barely registered them reading me my rights. I barely registered the cold ground as my face was pressed into the dirt. I barely registered anything at all.

Because the last thing I remembered before my world faded to black was the blood pooling beneath me. The proof of the life I’d lost.

I woke up in a jail cell with mind-numbing fluorescent lights buzzing and flickering overhead. The cement floor beneath my bare feet was hard and unforgiving. My whole body felt like it had been wrung out. My limbs were weak. My skin was clammy. And my insides hollow.

I barely had the strength to lift my head, but the pain I felt clawed at me from the inside out. I screamed in pain, but the guards ignored me.

The officers walked past me like I was invisible. Like I deserved to be there.

Every muscle in my body trembled and teetered on the edge of what felt like death. I was septic. My body was shutting down. My baby was gone, and I wanted to go with it.

Cory had tried to kill me because I told him I was leaving, taking our unborn child, and never looking back. So, in return, he took the one thing that gave me the strength to leave. He stole the last piece of hope I had. And as I lay there in that cell, I was ready to stop fighting. I didn’t want to breathe anymore. I didn’t want to exist in a world where my baby never would.

But then I heard them. Footsteps. Urgent voices. A commotion outside the bars.

I hear my Dad’s voice, but I barely turn my head and barely open my eyes.

The bars rattled, keys jangled, and my eyelids fluttered as the edges of my vision dimmed.

Then, gentle hands cradled my face, smoothing back my hair and gripping my hands.

My parents, Serena, Kiera, and Izzy—they were all there.

And for the first time in years, I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t trapped. I wasn’t screaming into the void with no one to hear me.

I was found.

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