Page 20 of Worth the Trouble

I’ve never seen him happy, never even seen him smile. If there’s evidence he ever has, I’m sure he burned the pictures.

“Where the fuck were you?” Dad snaps.

The air snaps.

The tension snaps.

Everything around me clicking, like the sound you hear on a roller coaster as you ascend the first hill. A slow clenching of teeth as the pinnacle gets closer. Knowing it’s only a matter of time before you go over the other side, and the ground gives out, making your stomach drop.

With each step, I feel the teeth of anticipation counting down.

Dad looks me up and down as I stop beside the chair he’s sitting in.

“I was at work.” Instead of adding ‘because you weren’t’, I shut my mouth. No use poking the bear unless I’m in the mood to get hurt.

Not that it’ll stop him.

Dad peels himself up to a sitting position, and it doesn’t matter that I’m finally almost his height or filling out my T-shirts, he’s got more over me. Cold indifference. Violence he knows I won’t reciprocate.

Not because I don’t want to, but because you can’t beat a man at his own game when he’s got no soul. And while I like to parade around like I don’t give a shit, it’s not actually the case. Because I might hate this motherfucker who gave me life, but I won’t go down for him either.

I’m smarter. I’m patient.

I’ll get out of here someday.

Dad’s gaze runs over my face, and he grimaces. I’m surprised he even looks me in the eyes when he usually avoids it. Says I look too much like her and it’s not fair when I’m the reason she’s dead.

“Sure you were.” Dad stands, coming to his full height.

Unfortunately, being drunk doesn’t make him off-balance or sloppy. That, I could deal with. Instead, all it does is fill him with more rage.

He faces me and pulls his cigarette between his lips, taking a long drag and holding the smoke in while he stares me down. Cold eyes that don’t reach anything resembling a person.

When he finally releases his breath, it clouds the space between us, and I try not to react to the smoke filling my nose and mouth. But he reaches in and lands the burning end of the cigarette on my arm as he does.

It sizzles through my skin, and I choke on the smoke-filled air at the surprise of it.

Grabbing my arm, I hold where he put the cigarette out on my skin and remind myself not to feel it. Not to validate the pain by acknowledging what it does to me.

Dad smiles, but it isn’t amusement, it’s sick satisfaction.

“Don’t be late again,” he says, pushing past me.

The now burned-out cigarette falls to the floor as he passes. I hold my arm and close my eyes, blocking out the pain and focusing on something else—anything else.

Someday he’ll get what he deserves, and I can’t fucking wait.

“Rome?”

I blink and I’m brought back to Lili sitting in front of me. She’s leaning in, giving me a hit of her sweet perfume.

“You went somewhere just now,” she says, but her tone is level. Her words are a fact instead of an accusation.

She’s right, not that I’ll admit it. It’s been a long time since the memories have managed to make their way out like that, and it’s unsettling.

“It was nothing.” I shake my head and smile, throwing dirt on the demons trying to get out.

Lili looks like she wants to ask more to figure me out, but instead, she surprises me by relaxing slightly. Like it comforted her to watch me break around the edges. I’m not sure how to take that, so I shake it off instead of thinking too much about it.

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