Page 65 of Pray for Scars
Reverend Wilson.
The knife and the blood all over the bed where he’d shredded through my innocence, fucked my mind. The fires. The different homes and different families and the woman with glasses that slowly started to lose her pity of me and gain her fear.
No. No.No.
Jeremiah stiffens beneath me and I’m awake again, wondering how I’ve conjured my brother’s wrath so quickly, why he feels like he’s recoiling against me.
He pushes me away, holding me at arm’s length, his jaw clicking.
I sigh, swaying a little from what feels like the weight of the fucking world but is really only the weight of one girl’s past. How heavy should that ever be?
“You smell like him.”
I can’t stop the little laugh that bubbles from my lips, even though I know I should. I know I should clench my jaw so hard I break my own teeth rather than say what I’m about to say. But I’ve never been good at keeping quiet.
“No shit,” I mumble, my words slurred. I’m not drunk and I’m not high but I sure as fuck feel like it, running on no sleep, the psychedelic trip not that far back. I giggle again and I see the hate in Jeremiah’s green eyes. “He fucked me.”
I tilt my head back, looking up at the stars, not really wanting to see Jeremiah process that shit. Not really caring, either, if I’m being honest.
Not until he’s got me shoved up against the side of his car and his fingers are digging into my upper arms, his face up in mine.
“Sid,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “Did you not hear a fucking word Ria said to you? Are you really that fucking stupid?”
I shrug, meeting his gaze. “Could be.”
He shakes his head, looking away from me for a second, as if the sight of me disgusts him. He’s gripping my arms so hard I know it’s gonna leave a bruise. And something strange enters my spaced-out brain, a thought that I have trouble holding onto. That I let fly away, because I’m not sure if it scares me too much that itisreal, or that it might not be.
Lucifer isn’t going to like that. If he hurts me, Lucifer is not going to be very happy about that.
I giggle again, bringing my fingers to my mouth. They smell like him. Delicious and heady and masculine, and my toes curl in my boots.
I drop my hands, aware Jeremiah is watching me carefully. As if he thinks I might have lost my goddamn mind.
Maybe I have.
He shakes me a little, but he isn’t gripping me as hard. “Sid,” he says softly, and that makes the hairs on my neck stand on end. He’s not so dangerous when he’s loud.
When he’s loud, I can calm him down.
When he’s quiet, no one can reach him.
He steps closer to me, crowding me up against the car, and if I could slip right between the doorjamb, fly the fuck out of here, God I would.
He angles his head, his eyes finding my mouth. “Sid, why do you like to hurt yourself?”
I take a breath, trying to focus. Trying to shrug off the exhaustion. “I-I don’t.”
“Why do you like to let people hurt you?”
At this, I’m awake. Wide-fucking-awake, like a flip has switched. My nostrils flare. “You mean like you?” I snarl at him, jabbing him in his hard chest.
He doesn’t back down. His hands slide down my arms, to my waist. He pulls me against him. “I would never hurt you, Sid.” He presses a kiss to my brow. “Not unless it could save you from something worse.”
I stand on my tiptoes, my lips finding his ear. I feel him stiffen, feel his fingers dig into my sides, wondering what I’m going to do next.
Would he fuck me, right here on his car, if I wanted him to?
Ria said I wasn’t his sister.
