Page 13 of Between Never and Forever
I should have flinched. I should have cowered.
Before I can fix it and act terrified to feed his ego, Terry swings on me, cracking my cheek with the back of his hand. It hurts like a bitch, but it’s nothing compared to what I know he’s capable of, so I play it up. I cup my face with my hand and whimper, staggering backward a step as my mom yells from the bedroom.
“Don’t start in on her again,” my mom slurs. “Come back to bed, baby.”
When I glance in her direction, I notice a second body in the dark room with her, and my fear spikes. I didn’t see any extra cars out front. Did I miss something? Was I too distracted to notice? I try to avoid the house at all costs when Terry brings his friends over.
What he lets them do to my mom...What he makes my mom do...
It makes me want to vomit, and there’s always that terrifying reality that it could be me next. Would she let Terry’s friends pay for me? Terry would do it. No doubt. But would Mom allow it?
I always put myself between her and Terry when he’s beating on her, but she never does the same for me. Usually, she’s already passed out or otherwise occupied. She’s never stepped in to try and protect me before. Why would she start now?
I hate her. I hate her more than I hate him, even. It takes all my strength not to scowl in her direction. She’s such a shit mom. This is all her fault.
I hope they all die.
“Your daughter’s lookin’ real pretty, Sharon,” the man in the bedroom with my mom says. I don’t recognize his voice, but it’s hard to hear much with my heart pounding in my ears.
“I’ll do the chores now,” I repeat quickly.
I’m so busy panicking inside my own head, keeping one eye on the bedroom, that I miss Terry taking another step toward me until he is gripping my hair by the root and shoving my body into the wall.
“Don’t talk back to me, you ungrateful little shit.”
He yanks my hair again, and I suck in a sharp breath. I know he wants me to cry out, but now I refuse. I shrunk back when he hit me. I whimpered like it hurt. It didn’t make a difference. He wants my tears? He’s not going to get them.
Instead, I grit my teeth and I stare right into his bloodshot, dead looking eyes. Milky blue and sickly, with yellow tinged around his irises. I looked it up once. The yellow means there’s something wrong with his liver. I used to hope it would kill him but now I think he’ll never die.
My nostrils flare with the thought, and his eyebrows narrow at my defiance.
Levi thinks I have a death wish. Maybe I do. Or maybe I just refuse to bow down to the devil.
“You got somethin’ to say, girl?”
The way his breath slithers over my skin makes me want to vomit. The place where his hand is fisted at my scalp burns like a thousand ant bites. My stomach churns with the absolute hatred I feel for this man. For my mom. For this house.
I should kill him in his sleep. I should wait until he’s passed out with a needle in his arm and then set the whole damn house on fire. It would be doing the world a favor.
There are so many things I want to say to him, but instead of responding, I bring my knee up hard into his balls. He grunts and doubles over while his fingers stay clenched around my hair, and he yanks hard enough that I can feel some strands get ripped from my scalp.
I hear my mom screech from somewhere behind Terry’s hunched over, growling form as I use my elbow to jab upward into his face. It hurts like hell, a shock of pain shooting from my elbow up through my shoulder, but I manage to get him good. He screamsfuck, and releases my hair, falling backward a step before lunging at me.
“Fuckin’ cunt,” he shouts, and I scramble backward. “I’ll fuckin’ kill you, you little bitch. You little fuckin’ cunt.”
My hip slams into the small table next to our couch. Glasses and cans clank together, some crash to the floor, and I reach behind myself blindly and wrap my hand around the thick neck of a liquor bottle, just as Terry closes the distance between us.
I don’t think. I just swing.
The sound of my mom’s yelling blends with the strange thudding sound of the bottle connecting with Terry’s head. The way the impact ricochets from the bottle, up my arm, and down my legs is something I know I’ll never forget. The way his blood feels as it spatters my face is something I hope to god I do.
To my horror and disappointment, Terry doesn’t drop immediately to the ground. He staggers and sways. Brings his hand to his head and covers the ugly gash. Blood gushes through his fingers and flows quickly down his face. When he sneers in my direction, it paints his teeth and lips red.
I don’t wait to see what happens next. I just turn and run out the front door and down the block. I ignore the shooting pain in my side and the throbbing at my scalp, and I don’t stop running until I’m hurling myself into one of the bathroom stalls at the park and shoving my body between the toilet and the wall.
Then I start to cry uncontrollably.
I can’t stop, and when I realize I can’t stop, I start to laugh. It’s maniacal and terrifying, a sound that makes me burst into goosebumps and cry harder. My fingers are cold and shaking. When I wipe tears off my cheeks, my hands come back stained with blood, and I turn my body just in time to vomit my pathetic lunch into the toilet. I heave until nothing comes up but bile, until my throat burns the same way my scalp does and the pounding in my head doubles.
