Page 71 of My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me
Turning to face him, I risk his lies slapping me in the face. “It makes no difference. You lost me the moment you gave them attention.”
A heavy sigh leaves him, almost like he can’t believe there are repercussions for his terrible actions.
He walks away, and his footsteps quieten with the distance between us.
Disappointment crushes me, taking me to my knees. Our relationship wasn’t perfect, but it’s all I’ve ever known.
And now, I don’t have it. It could really be over this time.
Almost silent cries wrack my body but are quickly drowned out by the smashes and crashes that replace each thud of his sneaker.
The noise tortures me, and I feel my heart kick up a beat. I rise on shaking legs and slowly drift into the reading room.
I find the mirror more broken than ever. It sits in pieces on the floor. Quickly, I avert my gaze out of fear that my broken reflection will bring more bad luck my way.
My eyes land on Shane and the pile of damage around him. My crystals are lost to the mess he’s caused.
Bright colors crunch under his sneakers as he stomps down on the remains of my mother’s ornaments.
My jaw almost shatters on the ground with every unicorn and Pegasus.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I stride through the devastation in my over-knee socks and an aura of disbelief.
He doesn’t stop, using a big piece of ceramic to hack into the wall I’d spent hours painting, chipping the paint and the wall below, and huffing with the challenge as he accepts it.
“These are my mother’s ornaments!” I crumble to the ground with the pieces. “They are all I have left of her!”
Shane takes a break from destroying the plaster to run over to me. His dirty nails pierce my cheeks when he grabs my face and spits hatred. “Well, you can thank your cunt brother for that, can’t you! Not me. No, not me. She’d be alive if not for that cunt. You don’t hate him for that, but you hate me for a few fucking messages?” Through bared teeth, his spit hits me again as he nudges his head against mine and says, “Get fucking real, you stupid bitch.”
He pushes me away.
My hands come out to stop me from head-butting the floor, and I’m lucky that they avoid all my broken memories.
Before Shane moves off, he delivers a kick that catches me in the hip.
Shock grips me. He’s never been like this with me before. He’s broken things and screamed, but he’s never hurt me physically in an argument.
It leaves me shaking on the floor.
And he doesn’t care. He really doesn’t care.
“You just can’t leave stuff alone!” he screams, pulling at the hair I cut for him last weekend. “This mess is all your fucking fault.”
Ignorance is bliss, or at least that’s what I try to tell myself.
I can’t focus on him right now.
I push happier memories into my head and blink away tears because all those memories are attached to another person, one who hates me enough to threaten my life.
More tears fall, and I force myself to look at Shane rather than think of Ambrose—because, somehow, the thing with him hurts more.
As soon as my hand leaves my hip and the bruise forming there, it moves to a coral wing that bites at my skin as I pluck it from the ground. Ignoring the pain, I collect as many matching pieces as possible that I can see.
I know I won’t be able to fix Mom’s ornaments, but I can’t stop the urge to try to fix at least one.
“You just couldn’t believe me, could you?” Shane stops hacking at the wall for a second time to ask the stupidest question in history.
“I saw it with my own eyes, Shane! I saw you ask another girl to reenact a movie full of sex. I saw all the pictures you asked to see of their bodies and that you saved them to a chat where you could access them daily. You did that, and you did this! Destroyed priceless things that belonged to my parents!” I don’t even mention the kick.
