Page 123 of Releasing 10
Rough enough to break me from the inside out.
“I didn’t say anything, I swear,” I tried to plead, but it was no use. The monster wasn’t listening to me.
“What did he tell her?” he continued to demand, scratching and tearing at my clothes. “You know something, don’t you?”
“I don’t, I swear,” I strangled out, not bothering to fight back.
It didn’t matter because it wasn’t real.
I would be okay.
Everything would be better when the sun came up.
In the darkness, the monster pinned me down and hissed all his commands in my ears…
“On your knees.”
“Bend over.”
“Don’t make me hurt you.”
“Quiet, or I’ll snap your fucking neck.”
Over and over again.
Until I wanted to die.
“What’s wrong?” Caoimhe asked from the driver’s seat of Dad’s Jeep on our way to Avoca Greystones. “You’re doing that weird, spaced-out thing again.”
“I’m grand,” I lied, clearing my throat.
I wasn’t grand.
I was the opposite.
I had an anxious energy building up inside of me and felt like I was two seconds away from snapping.
But I would never tell Caoimhe that.
Not when she was our father’s eyes and ears.
“What time are you supposed to be at Sinead’s house?” I asked instead, steering the conversation to safer waters.
“Ten minutes ago,” she muttered under her breath, weaving through the country roads. “I don’t know what happened this morning. I never usually oversleep.” Groaning, she shifted gears and tightened her grip on the wheel. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a lorry.”
Welcome to my world, I thought but decided to keep to myself. “There’s a bad bend up here,” I warned, gesturing to the winding part of road ahead of us. “Take it handy.”
“I know how to drive, Lizzie!”
Maybe, but she wasn’t very good at it. Since getting her license back in April, my sister had racked up an impressive number of scratches and dents on our father’s Range Rover.
“Ugh!” She complained loudly again. “Why do I feel like I’m doped off my head?”
“Were you drinking last night?” I knew she drank alcohol with her friends on the weekends. She smoked, too. Not in front of our parents, of course, but I often spied her in the stableswith a cigarette in her mouth. “Maybe you’re just tired from a hangover or something.”
“I was home all night,” she replied, sounding frustrated. “We had a takeaway and watched movies in my room.”
We.
