Page 53 of Taming Raptor

“Stop! You’ll mess my hair up!” I swatted at his hand, and he chuckled.

“You’re on a motorcycle, or did that escape your notice? On a serious note, are you feeling okay? Having you on the bike right now is the last place I wanted you, but I understand Venom’s reasoning. It’s a lot less suspicious with everyone coming and going on bikes all day long.” He tucked an escape piece of hair behind my ear and pulled me in for a hug.

“I’m going to do everything in my power to keep you safe,” he promised. Clutching the back of his shirt, I hugged him back.

He helped me get my helmet back on and fastened because my hands were shaking. The look he shot me told me that he didn’t believe I was okay.

“I promise, I’m fine,” I assured him. “Let’s get back on the road. We have a lot of miles to cover.”

We got back on the road. According to Blade’s GPS, it was an eleven-to-twelve-hour drive to Dallas. Though he’d offered to drive halfway and stay for the night, I declined. I wasn’t kidding when I told him I wanted to get the hell out of dodge.

Most of the time, I was a badass bitch. But seeing what they’d done to Fiona and the message left for me, added with the car accident and the shooting, I was unraveling. My desperate hold on my sanity was slipping.

Thinking about where we were heading and what we could find when we got there wasn’t helping either.

Unable to compartmentalize any longer, I cried silent tears as I relived our last escape on a bike.

Sage, almost sixteen years of age….

It’s extremely hard to eat when someone is staring at you. Especially if said person is glaring and smoking like a chimney. Yet I did it, because if I pissed her off, it would get taken away and it was unlikely that I’d get anything else the rest of the day.

So, I chewed what now tasted like wet cardboard as she had one arm crossed over her, holding the crook of her smoking elbow. Her left hand was always her smoking hand. That way she could mete out punishment to me as needed without having to put her cigarette out. Because God knew dragging a child down the hall by the hair and kicking her as you went was hard fucking work. Not that I believed in God.

God was a fucking made up thing to give people a reason to look down their nose at others and to collect money from other people that couldn’t afford it. Yet they were convinced if they didn’t slap that check in the collection plate every Sunday, they were going to hell. I had news for them—hell was right here, and I’d been in it my entire life.

Mama’s cheeks hollowed as she took a deep drag. Then she blew it out over her head. The smoke filtered up to the stained and dingy ceiling adding another layer of nicotine to the rest.

“You fucking that boy?”

A spoonful of cereal I hadn’t had a chance to chew sucked into my throat and I started to choke. Tears filled my eyes as I fought to breathe. The smoke-filled air didn’t help, and I fought gagging on top of choking. Finally, an especially rigorous cough broke it free and sent it back into my mouth. Shaking my head so I didn’t answer with my mouth shut, I moved my jaw as fast as I could. Mama didn’t like waiting for an answer.

“No, ma’am,” I rasped out, my throat raw and burning.

She narrowed her yellowed eyes at me as she sucked on her cancer stick that hadn’t in fifteen plus years given her cancer. Much to my disappointment.

“Good. Because it’s time you earned your keep. Uncle Luis is coming to see you tomorrow night. We need to get you cleaned up so you’re ready.”

My heart slammed against my ribs. Uncle Luis wasn’t my fucking uncle, and I was old enough to know that—I’d been old enough to know a lot of things I shouldn’t for a long damn time.

Mama had a lot of my uncles come to visit over the years. We only had a two-bedroom trailer so I had to share my room with them because she said they didn’t like her smoking, or she had to get up early and didn’t want to disturb them. When I was little, I didn’t understand what it meant when they snuggled up to me and they had a long lump on their leg. All I knew was that Mama said not to be rude.

I fucking knew now.

The first time one of them touched my “kitty”—that’s what Mama used to call my vagina—I was scared as fuck. People don’t know what fucked up is unless they’ve lived inside of a five-year-old’s head and seen the confusion there after they have their first orgasm. Even at that age, my mind knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t understand how it felt good if it was wrong.

“Prematurely sexualized”—that’s what my school counselor called it when I was ten and my teacher figured out what was going on because I slipped and said something I shouldn’t have. She called “Seepyess,” but I got scared and snuck out of her office before they got there.

I might’ve been young, but I wasn’t stupid. What I knew was that the last time someone called CPS, Mama beat me so bad I couldn’t go to school for two weeks. She told them I had the “flew” but again, I was young and thought I hadn’t been around a stupid bird once. Later, I learned what the flu meant and what CPS was—it wasn’t from flying and it wasn’t a woman’s name. It was an agency that failed kids like me every damn day.

The loyalty between a child and their parent can be a sick and twisted thing. Wanting to have the parent’s love and approval, even though they don’t deserve it. So, I ran home and told Mama. I figured if I warned her about that lady, she would be happy and not get so mad at me. Before they could get to our house, Mama had us packed up and gone quicker than I could take off my shoes.

I never went back to school after that. Like I said, I was smart though, and I read everything I could get my hands on. The cereal box, the toilet paper wrappers, magazines I found in the neighbor’s trash. If it had words, I read it—even if I didn’t understand all of them.

“That boy” was Finley. He lived in the same trailer park as we did, way at the back. One day, he caught me going through their trash when he was out on his porch smoking. He thought he was so cool because he was a year older than me, and he smoked. I told him it was disgusting. How we became friends after that I hadn’t a clue, but I supposed it started when he took me under his wing and helped me sound out the big words I didn’t understand and explained what they meant.

“He’s just my friend, Mama,” I promised. Maybe that was a teensy lie because he did kiss me once, but we separated with wrinkled noses and matching grimaces.

Finley worked for “uncle” Luis. He made deliveries for him.

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