Page 9 of Did They Break You

I have to get away from them.

I can’t do this again.

I push harder against Cortland, but he doesn’t move.

It’s like I’m right back there, the memories bursting again.

He’s pushing his way into me, gripping my throat, telling me it’ll be okay. I’ll be fine.“Shh, pretty baby, I’ve got you,”he murmured in my ear while his friends all laughed, save for Storm. He was just watching, leaned against a tree, looking bored as he stared at me.

I didn’t speak.

I didn’t fight.

My stepdad asked me about it so many times.“It’s almost like youwantedthem to use you, Remi.”

But I’m not that girl anymore.

I’m not that fucking girl.

“Let go of me,” I say, my voice hoarse, barely more than a whisper. But at least I’m fucking saying it.

“Ah,” Storm says with amusement, “shedoeswant to run.”

“She’s not gonna run.” Cortland’s voice is low as he tightens his hold on my wrist. “Are you, Remi?”

My hand is still trembling against his chest. “Let go of me,” I say again. “Let go of me or I’m gonna fucking scream.” I soundfar braver than I feel, but I think he knows it’s a façade, the way his smile widens as he stares at me.

“Go ahead,” he taunts me. “Make it loud, too.”

I grit my teeth and twist my head to see Storm. Maybe make an appeal to him to let this shit go. Questions whirl in my mind.Why the fuck are you here? What the fuck are you doing?

But I don’t ask a single one.

I meet Storm’s eyes, only to find him staring back at me, expressionless, his hands in the pockets of his black pants. “Why don’t you turn around?” he asks quietly. “Look at him.I’m not gonna save you.”

A chill slides down my spine.

I see the edges of a tattoo up his neck, and I don’t know what it is. I never saw them completely naked that night, even though they saw too much of me.

Cortland laughs, a low, husky sound. “Turn back around, Remi.”

I swallow down my terror, slowly turn to look at Cortland.

But I can’t face him.

Instead, I’m staring at his clean white T-shirt. At my fingers, pale even set against the starkness of the material. I don’t spend much time in the sun. Only my runs, when there’s plenty of daylight. I see my chewed-up nails, picked black polish.

The girl I’m trying so fucking hard to be.He’s ruining it.

“Can’t look me in the eye?” he whispers.

Because I don’t know what else to do, I tip my head back to meet his gaze.

Cortland Adler was always tall. When he first moved to Aben from West Virginia, it’s the first thing everyone noticed.

I didn’t bother trying to get his attention. Maya, the cheerleading captain, snatched that up all on her own. She was a fucking piranha, and she got her teeth into him and his dick into her the first weekend after he moved.

Besides, people gravitated toward him. And even before he came around, I preferred my own company over anyone else’s. When I wasn’t with Sloane, I was home, watching horror movies under my covers and writing in my fucking journal. Silas was rarely there, and when he was, I tried my damnedest to avoid him at all costs.

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