Page 144 of Did They Break You

“Stop, Cortland.”

“No. I’m not gonna stop, not until you use your words.” I’m seeing red and I should probably pull over, but I don’t want to because if I do, I might turn this car around and find Silas and rip his goddamn throat out.

“Cortland.” Her voice is so quiet.

I take a breath, in. Out. I run my tongue over my teeth, her hand beneath mine. “Remember what happened the last time you didn’t speak, Remi?” I keep my tone low, my eyes on the road. “That didn’t work out so well for you, huh?”

“Stop it!” She screams those words at the top of her lungs, smacking her free hand on the dash, trying to jerk away from meagain. “You are such an asshole!” I tighten my grip on her, my palm sweaty. “You don’t get to demand whatever you want and think I’ll justgive it to you, just like that.”

I huff a laugh, irritation working its way through my veins. “And you don’t get to keep your mouth shut and expect people to read your fuckingmind.”

She rips her hand from mine and this time I let her go, my heart racing. “You have no idea what it was like.”

“Then why don’t you tell me?”

“You couldn’t possibly understand what it feels like to be that powerless.” Her words are barely more than a whisper.

I think about my mom screaming at me. My brother.My dad.Her dominance wielded over our entire house with a heavy hand. “Try me, Remi.”

“You just get everything you want, don’t you, Cortland? Girls? Money?A clean record?Is that why you waited, in high school? You asked me out so you could fuck me over during the summer, head off to college and forget all about me? You wanted to hurt me all along, at just the right time, so you could let my heart break into pieces while you fuckingran?”She snarls those words out, and I grip the steering wheel tighter.

But I don’t speak. I want to reach for a cigarette and my lighter, but my hands are already shaky, and I don’t think I could keep the truck on the road if I did that. She has no idea what she’s talking about.

She has no fucking idea.

“You just thought I was so shy and so quiet and I’d just let it all go? You hunted me down, offered me up to your friends in those woods and thought I’d go home and cry into my pillow and that would all be that?—”

“Stop talking, Remi.”

She slams her fists on the dash. “You just bitched at me for not speaking and now that I am,you can’t handle it.”

I breathe in. Out. Again. Stare at the gray skies ahead, the empty road.

“You’re so good at wrecking shit, Cortland, but you can’t stand to see the damage when you’re done. Is that it? Why are you even here, anyway? You just want to watch me burn all over again? It wasn’t enough for you after graduation?”

I’m off the highway, pulling into the dirt path to Lilith Cave National Park, and I throw the truck into park as soon as I back into a spot in the lot, turning to glare at her.

She has her arms wrapped around her chest.

“You got daddy issues, Remi? Is that what this is all about?”

Her cheeks flush pink, and she grits her teeth, glaring at me.

If she’d had a good dad, would things have been different? She was so easy to get to. She sat on my lap, let me touch her, trail my fingers up her arm. And in the woods, she was so giddy.

Until I pushed her against that tree.

My mouth hot on hers.

And Chase and Brinklin, circling us.

Storm watching.

I was supposed to protect her.I fucking failed.

“Is it me you’re mad at,or him?”

“Don’t do this,” she whispers.

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