Page 35 of Quiet Rage
What I will never have.
Chapter 16
Tamson
Will he?Won’t he?
This is insane. I’ve been ready to jump out of my skin all day, looking for Kellen around every corner, glancing over my shoulder and expecting to see him towering over me. I’m supposed to drop out just because he thinks I should, and he still can’t give me a reason why.
He obviously doesn’t know me if he thinks I’m going to do what he says just because he says so. That’ll make me twice as likely to do the opposite. There’s a reason Jason would remind me to pick my battles carefully. I’ve never been good at taking orders. I’ve never been good at hiding my reaction, either.
Even so, even though I know I’m doing the right thing for me by being here at school, my nerves are shot. How much can a person go through before they completely shatter? Every little noise—somebody dropping a book out in the hall during class, somebody laughing too loud out on the quad—has me jumping today. My heart has spent more time in my throat than in my chest. Like I’m waiting for something awful to happen. I’m here, but I’m not here.
Not knowing is the worst part. Expecting something terrible to happen, not knowing when or what it will be. It reminds me of something I heard in a movie a long time ago: anticipation of death is worse than death itself. Yeah, that’s about right.
That quote bounces around in my head while I’m on my way to Chemistry. Being in this building is a little bit of a trigger, since this is where Tiana and her hags locked me in. The memories can’t hurt me. I am going to see this through. They’re not going to break me.
Funny how that’s the last thing to cross my mind as I round a corner and run straight into the mountain of muscle that is Kellen.
I don’t have a chance to scoot around him or knee him in the balls or anything before his hands are on me. Big hands with the power to make me hurt or to give me indescribable pleasure.
There is no pleasure in his grip this afternoon. He pulls me in close enough that the warmth of his body heats my skin. I swear I feel his heart pounding while he searches my face. “This is your last chance,” he mutters, teeth clenched. “Drop out. Walk away.”
All he’s doing is making me more determined than ever. Jason wouldn’t let a bully stop him or push him around. Neither will I. “I can’t do that. I told you already. I can’t.”
For one second, I’m torn between wanting to push him away and wanting to melt against him. I can’t pretend my body doesn’t react in the worst possible way to his nearness, his touch. That’s all it takes for the memories to come rushing back. The sensations. My pulse is racing—is it fear or anticipation?
He answers my silent question with the hardening of his eyes. They go blank, vacant, like two endless, dark holes with no bottom. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
There is no hope of fighting back when he pulls me across the hall, into the girls’ bathroom. The same girls’ bathroom where Tiana and Company stripped me down.
The bathroom where they are now waiting when Kellen shoves me inside.
My blood turns to ice, and I back up against the closed door, but he’s leaning against it. There’s no moving it. “You just can’t take a hint, can you, bitch?” Tiana’s holding a black permanent marker, waving it around and laughing as the girls rush me, pulling me further into the room.
One of them shoves wadded-up paper towels into my mouth – I can’t spit them out, and I can’t yank them out when my arms are held so tight. “All you had to do was go away,” Tiana sighs while the girls wrestle me to the floor. It doesn’t matter how I fight and twist and scream behind my makeshift gag. I end up on my back, lying on the cold, dirty tile, so Tiana can straddle my chest.
“Let’s see…” She taps the end of the marker to her chin while the girls laugh and egg her on. I’m sweating, fighting for every breath, half crazy with panic by the time she pops the cap off. “Now hold still,” she advises, taking my jaw in one hand and holding my head in place so she can write across my forehead.
My screams are muffled, my tears ignored. The marker’s felt tip presses hard against my skin as she draws on one cheek, then the other. I don’t know what it is she’s drawing. I only know the girls laugh.
“What aboutcum here?” one of them asks. “On her boobs.”
“Good idea,” Tiana agrees, tearing open my cardigan, and pulling my tank top down low so she can scrawl across my chest. She keeps going and going, marking my skin, laughing at my misery.
How could he let this happen? Tears run down my face and soak into my hair. They probably just make the girls laugh harder until finally, Tiana gets up and lets the marker drop on my stomach. “A masterpiece,” she declares. “And a definite improvement.”
I’m aching all over when they let me go, choking on my tears as I pull the paper towels from my mouth. They watch as I grip the counter to pull myself to my feet.
And instantly recoil at my reflection. “What, you don’t like it?” Tiana laughs while my gaze darts around from one obscenity to another. She drew arrows on my cheeks, pointing to my mouth.Insert Here. And sure enough,Cum Hereis written across my boobs.Slut. Bitch.I’m covered in filth thanks to them.
But it’s the word she wrote across my forehead that stands out the biggest, backwards in the mirror, but still clear as day.Whore.
I have to go home. I have to get out of here. Nothing matters more than grabbing my backpack and throwing myself at the door, prepared to kick it down if I have to. But Kellen isn’t blocking it this time—I almost tumble out into the hallway, barely catching myself before I hit the floor.
He wasn’t holding the door closed, but he is waiting, now propped up against the door to the janitor closet. His face is a stony mask when I glare up at him. “What did I tell you?” he murmurs.
The door opens behind me. “I think it’s some of my best work.” Tiana steps up next to him, smirking, sliding an arm around his waist. But that isn’t the worst part. The worst is when he drapes an arm around her shoulders, shrugging, before the two of them walk off together down the hall. He doesn’t even look back once.
