Page 15

A heavy stream of coldness hammers the top of my head, and I’m taken back.

Far back. Inside the pebbled walls of the bathroom, home number thirty-two—I counted.

What’s wrong with you?His voice etched itself into my mind that day.

The vision hit in the kitchen as I helped my foster mother prepare dinner, my tiny ten-year-old fingers slicing and dicing vegetables with a knife. It took me from the paisley wallpaper and colorful foods to somewhere dark, to suffering and death. But it was the slip of the blade while I was stuck in the nightmare inside my head that caused the problem, the piece of my finger that came right off, the blood on the counter. On the floor. In the food.

My foster mother screamed, the pain and her piercing cry bringing me back to the moment. Then my foster father came stomping toward the sound and looked at me. And the blood. His veins popped.I told you to get out of your damn head!

He took my arm and hauled me across the tiled floor, through the bedroom and into the bathroom, leaving a trail of blood behind us. He tore the curtains down and shoved me under the showerhead. I couldn’t escape when he turned the knob, when he put a violent hand on my chest and kept me pinned to the wall as the cold water pounded down on me, my clothes growing heavy, cold rippling through me.

Stop,I tried to say.It was an accident.But my words never found a voice. They went down the drain with the blood and the water.

I was left only with silence. And the sting in my finger.

Even as he shook me, as he scolded me—this is my house, and I decide who stays and who goes—I focused on the hair on his arms, the roll of fat around his neck, the bulging belly. Anything but his face and those raging, hateful eyes.No one will ever care about you.He lashed out at me when I closed my eyes at his words, taking in the truth of them.Look at me!

Hot tears streamed down my face, lost in the spray of the shower, but I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t move at all, not an arm, a leg, a foot, not even a damn toe to get away from him. My legs couldn’t hold me. The bones had gone soft.

You’re a waste of space.

I claw my way out of the memory, wishing for my visions instead—of blood and gore, of final breaths and hard-earned deaths, much less painful than rejection and no one caring. I pry my eyes open, the gush of cold water massaging my skull and cascading over my forehead. Elivander stands in front of me, studying my face as the water soaks my shirt.

Through the darkness he carries, I swear I see a flash of concern way deep within, behind the black and brown of his eyes. I doubt it though when I feel those fingers on my neck again, reminding me of my precarious state of mind. They walk down my wet back, sliding with the falling water. He hands me a slippery, bubbling green bar like the soap back home, but squishy and slimy and clearly a plant.

“Wake up and wash, little thief.” He moves away and sits on a low stool, not half a foot from the floor. His knees reach his chest, clothes bunched in his lap. “We don’t have all day.”

I work past the lump in my throat, swallowing down the memories over and over until they burn in my stomach acid,and I can move again. My body is stiff with cold as my mind constructs wall after wall, but I betray myself, tearing them down one after another and letting memories slip back in.

I scrub every bruise and cut—real scars, soul scars—and every bit of tired, exposed skin, then I face the wall and clean beneath the fabric shielding me. I turn back to catch Elivander shifting on the stool, adjusting the crotch of his jumpsuit. He gets up and holds the pile of clothes to his stomach as he approaches. I try not to look down at what he thinks of me…or let on to what I think of him.

My heart is louder than the water slamming into the back of my neck. I cover my nipples with a hand on each and pinch my thighs together. He leans past me, his chest brushing mine. Drops splatter onto the front of his jumpsuit, wetting the triangle of skin below his collarbones, and he shuts off the water…and the memories. I can’t quite ignore the hardness against my side, can’t dismiss it as another sensation that isn’t real.

“Could you keep your cock to yourself?”

He snaps his gaze to mine, eyes predatory. “It’s not my fault you’re all wet and fuckable.”

My nipples harden to a new painful degree beneath my hands. “Itisyour fault I’m wet.”

He grins. “Then I’m doing something right.”

I empty my lungs. “How are you so damn insufferable?”

“Get dressed,” he says, his voice a little higher than usual. He hands me the clothes and pulls away. “Or do I need to do it for you again?”

I bite down on my lip at the thought of what he did while I was passed out, at those man hands and the lump of my wadded up underwear still in his pocket, and I’m wetter than before. Fuck. “Turn around.”

“Don’t worry.” He smiles then turns toward the shelves. “I’ve seen enough of you to keep me entertained every night for the rest of the year.”

“I hope it lasts through every lonely hand fuck, because you’re never seeing me again.”

“So far it has.”

I make faces at the back of his head, shoving down the rage-lust as I pull off the camisole and replace it with a curious bra. An embroidered mountain path and rushing waterfall scene travels from one cup to the other. The bra loops behind my neck and ties in the back instead of fastening with metal clasps like the one he took off my unconscious body.

I go to put on the shirt…but it’s a dress.

I don’t do dresses. It’s not that no one wears them in Caldera. They do—but I don’t. I hike. And make maps. And run when I’m supposed to walk.