Page 1 of Lovesick

PROLOGUE

Iwas thirteen when I felt the first sting of love.

My mother, who often fell face-first into the bottom of the bottle, had cracked entirely. Not a day went by that she didn’t curse her name or our bloodline. She didn’t speak much of the Greenes except to say they were created by monsters and how grateful I should be to her for taking me away from her life, her family. I didn’t push her. I learned very young to keep my mouth shut and my eyes on the floor, but the more she shared about our lineage, the more I wanted them.

I didn’t get my wish until the first day of my thirteenth birthday. Mother, who had been pacing for two nights before, scratching rivers into her arms with shakes violent enough to rattle the house, packed me a single bag, took me by the hand, and drove me hours away, far, far from our shack of a home. We didn’t speak. She never even looked at me as the alcohol flowed down her throat, and the world disappeared behind me.

“Mommy. Where are we going?”

“Hush. It’s only for a little while. Just so I get a break. Mommy needs a break…”

Wherever we were going, we arrived hours later. The night was growing around us, blanketing our surroundings in blackening shadows. Before the world went dark, I saw him. He stood there on the front porch, watching with a fiery glint in his eyes.

Mommy stopped before we reached him, parking and pulling me out of the car before looking me in the eye.

“Don’t fall for his tricks, Maude. He may be my brother, your uncle, but he’s the most wicked of them all.”

Those are the words she left me with, looking at him once over my head before vanishing for almost a year.

His deep voice followed her as she turned away from us. “You can run all you want, Tessa. It won’t change a thing.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I do know that no amount of running or hiding would take away what he gave me. No matter how hard my mother tried.

CHAPTER ONE

Iwatch the blood trickle down my skin. The deep maroon color appears black against the stark ivory of my flesh. I toy with it, ignoring the blistering sting rippling through my veins when my fingers scrape against the open wound. It took more force than usual to rip open the scar inside my wrist. It’s become thick after five years, raised a couple of millimeters due to all the scar tissue built up. I should leave it alone, stop slicing through it to give it a proper chance to heal, but these wounds, this blood, it’s all I have left.

For years, I relied on my memories to keep my uncle and the love he gave me alive. It worked for a while, but once I turnedfifteen, two years after my mother returned to snatch me out of his arms, those memories weren’t enough anymore. I needed to feel him. In my heart, in every nerve ending, dancing along my flesh as the tip of his tongue would, I needed tofeelhim. The only way to make that possible was to do what he did, cut where he did…. peel away at myself. All just as he did.

I have many scars to choose from. They all remind me of him, but the one on my wrist is my favorite.

“It hurts, doesn’t it, Maude? It used to hurt your mother too, but she wasn’t smart like you.” His breath wafts across my cheeks, warming the streaks of tears running down my face.

It’s only my second month. I’ve long stopped crying for my mother. Instead, the tears I shed are for him. They’re full of agony, heavy with my begging. He kisses them away from my skin, licking softly at my pain while the chains shackled around my wrists rattle against the bedframe. “You’re a good girl, so still for me. I think you deserve a gift for that.”

Wrapping my fingers underneath the slit in my wrist, I squeeze, smiling as the stream of blood turns into a gush. That’s exactly how it looked that night. While I lay chained to the bed, the rusted, jagged edge of the cuff dug into my flesh, a geyser of blood poured from me. He was right; I didn’t move. With his sharp, piercing eyes boring into mine, I hung onto every word he said, and when he ordered me not to twitch, not even an inch, I listened. There was something about my uncle that I couldn’t resist. Even at such a young age, I didn’t want to deny him anything, unlike my mother.

When she came back for me, she practically had to tear me from my uncle's side. I hid behind him, my fingers digging into the thick material of his pants to pierce his flesh. He didn’t move, only laughed when my mother hesitantly crept around him to snatch my arm. I cried as the distance between us grew, desperately seeking his presence along with his touch.

My mother didn’t care, not about my tears or my pain. I tried to explain to her that I needed him, that my uncle had given me something I had never had before, a love unlike any other. She refused to listen. Growing tired of my begging, she attempted to beat the words out of my mouth with a closed fist and pointed shoes. It worked, but only until my throat stopped bleeding and my words didn’t sound like hoarse gurgles.

I refused to give in to my mother’s demands. After everything I endured by his hands, I couldn’t go back to the emptiness in my soul. That’s when her punishment began, where I spend most of my days. Like today.

It’s raining.

The cellar only drips like this when a storm is heavy above us. Sitting on the dewy ground, with my arms resting on top of my knees, I rock against the mildewy concrete walls. Over my wheezing breath, I can faintly hear the rain pattering against the house, saturating the soil enough that the foundation groans under its pressure. The cold hurts my bones, making the fractures and wounds that never healed quite right, throb endlessly. Typically, when I’m down here, those pains are hard to ignore, but now, with my blood pooling around my feet and numbness spreading through my arm, I have something better to focus on.

In the beginning, it was impossible to see through the impenetrable darkness of the room, but after years, I can make out whatever is within reach. Scooting to my left, away from all the boxes stored against the wall, I release my wrist, searching for the tattered, old blanket to act as a bandage for my bleeding vein. Unfortunately, the thin fabric wasn’t much help last time. All it did was tear, and whatever I was able to press against my weeping skin just aggravated the wound.

Wooziness takes hold of me. Maybe I cut too deep this time. Sneering at the dull rock I used to slice open my wrist, I tie the blanket around the opening, cracking my skull against the concrete wall until I feel the thick, oozing slow, scabbing finally against the fabric. Suddenly sleepy, I gaze in the direction of the stairs, hoping my mother comes home soon.

She doesn’t want me upstairs alone when she isn’t home, claims it’s because she doesn’t trust the family across the street, not after they called the police on us for too much screaming in the middle of the night. There may be a sprinkle of truth to that, but I know what she really fears. Without the thick, aged oak door and impenetrable concrete walls keeping me contained, there would be nothing stopping me from racing out of this house and scouring the earth for the uncle who was taken from me.

A couple of hours later, when there’s a thin layer of water covering the ground and my body shivers so harshly, I feel the earth rocking beneath me, I hear the floorboards above me groan under the weight of feet. I know her stomps like I know my heartbeat. They have the same rhythm. Thump. Thump. Thump.Thump. Growing louder and stronger the closer she gets to me, but there’s something different about her movements today. They aren’t as forceful, not as angry, or panicked.

Dread collects in the pit of my stomach, and I cradle my blood-caked wound to my chest, scooting my spine as far into the wall as possible in a weak defense against her mood. The creaking of the opening door echoes in the empty chamber, bouncing across the wet stone until it shatters my nerves. I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until it gasps out of me, blurring the space before me with an opaque cloud. But then, a vibrant light assaults my vision, drawing out an involuntary hiss from between my teeth as I hide my face in the shadows.

I haven’t seen a bright light in what feels like days, so the sudden flare of the long, halogen strips dangling above my head sears my retinas to tears. I battle my senses, adjusting to the sharp glow while the airy tune of her whistle cuts through the ringing in my ears. “You alive, girl? It smells like fucking mold down here. Can’t be good for your lungs.” It isn’t. Every visit down here, the harder it is to breathe.

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