Page 5

FOUR

WESLEY

My chest burns the entire trip home, the guitar on my shoulder weighing me down as much as my emotions. Fucking Jaxon. He should have kept his mouth shut. Now I can’t escape. I have nowhere else to go when shit gets bad.

I’m glad I haven’t told him about what else Perry has done to me.

He would have told his mother, shown my weakness, and him telling her wouldn’t have done any good.

Nothing would happen to Perry, and he’d be free to take advantage of me again.

And if not him, someone else. A constant cycle I wouldn’t be able to escape.

I pray to a god I no longer believe in that Perry and my mom aren’t in the living room when I push the door open. For once, my prayers are answered, the room blissfully empty.

Shutting the door behind me as quietly as I can, I hurry to my room to stash my guitar. I don’t want my mother or Perry to see it and take it from me, maybe pawn it for drug money. It’ll be all I have from Jaxon.

Fuck.

Jaxon .

I knew we could never be together, but I didn’t think he’d torch our friendship like this. He’s the only person I had, the only person that made me feel safe. Sure I have other friends, but none of them are like him. That was taken away when he couldn’t keep his word.

I push thoughts of Jaxon from my head, not wanting another fissure to lance through my heart at the thought of him.

Everything hurts. My head, my body, my heart, my soul.

It all aches. I need something to make me forget.

My mother has more pills, so I head to her room, opening the door on creaky hinges.

I wince at the noise, but she doesn’t stir.

Her and Perry are stretched out across the bed, both naked and snoring.

I don’t pay attention to their nudity. I’m here for their drugs.

My eyes ping-pong around the room until they land on the foil packet with two small pills visible. I tiptoe inside and take the entire packet. I’m not sure when I’ll need more, and I don’t want to depend on my mom to give them to me.

As soon as I get back to my room, I push three pills into my mouth and sigh when they ease down my dry throat. Just a few minutes, and I’ll feel better. I won’t be broken, weak, alone.

I can forget.

It takes less time than last night—maybe because I swallowed three pills instead of two—but soon, that feeling of weightlessness overtakes me. My mind empties of thoughts, and all I can focus on is breathing in and out. I grab on tight to the sensation, holding it close to the vest.

Lying on my bed, I pull my tattered blanket around me, clenching the pills in a tight fist. Even though I’m warm all over and don’t need to be covered, I like how the material of the blanket feels against my skin.

Like zaps of electricity flowing all over me.

I wish I had known pills would affect me like this. I would have taken them sooner.

Closing my eyes, I let euphoria settle over me as I drift off to sleep.

A boot to my ribs wakes me up, and I roll over and cry out before I’m fully aware of my surroundings. “Fuck,” I groan, the pain dull but still intense.

“You stealing from me, motherfucker?” Perry roars.

I try to run, but he climbs across the bed, pulling me back before I can take more than a few steps. “You took my fucking stash!” He holds up the empty foil packet. I woke up an hour ago and swallowed the last two before I went back to sleep, not wanting the pain to return.

Perry straddles me, putting his hands around my throat and squeezing hard. I try to fight him off, but my movements are blundering and awkward. The pills have made me sluggish, and for a moment, my heart races, fear lancing through me.

He removes one hand, then swats me across the face. My head kicks back, and blood fills my mouth. I grunt around his tight hold, tears filling my eyes.

“You fucking owe me for those pills, bitch!” he screams in my face.

With all the strength I can muster, I roll to my left, catching Perry off guard.

He topples over, falling onto the floor.

I lean to the side and vomit, the force making my eyes bulge.

I purge my stomach until there is nothing left, and it clears my head from the effects of the pills.

I can’t be high while Perry is after me like this. I need to protect myself.

Once my stomach is empty, I clamber off the bed, weaving over to the door. Perry catches me by my ankle and pulls, making me fall on my face. A crunch in my nose has me howling, blood dripping down my mouth and chin.

He climbs onto my back, putting his elbow against the nape of my neck to immobilize me.

Leaning close to my ear, he says, “I’ll have to take that payment out on your ass.

Then maybe I’ll get some of my friends to get some too.

Run a train on you until I get my money’s worth.

I know you like what I do to you. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t flaunt your ass around me so much. ”

Bile rises in my throat, threatening to choke me. I try to buck him off me, but he’s too heavy, his body weight distributed so he can’t be dislodged. “I don’t.”

His chuckle sends fear skittering down my spine. He means it. He already makes my mom use her body to get a fix—I’m just her annoying son that just stole from him. He wouldn’t hesitate to have his friends come take advantage of me.

I fight against him as hard as I can as he uses his free hand to lower my pants enough for my ass to be exposed.

He grinds his disgusting crotch against me, laughing when I start to cry.

The pills are gone and so is the high. All feelings of disgust, panic, and terror well up inside me as his fingers sliding into my crack and push into me.

No! This shouldn’t be happening. He can’t do this to me. I won’t let him. Not anymore.

Rage gives me strength, and I knock my head back into his mouth, making Perry yelp in pain and collapse beside me, holding his own nose as blood oozes between his fingers.

I only have seconds to act before he has me on my stomach, raping me until he feels like I’ve paid him back for the pills I stole.

I don’t know where my mom is, but even if she was in the room, she wouldn’t lift a finger against him.

She’d let me deal with Perry on my own so she wouldn’t have to swallow his fists herself.

Frantically, I look around for something to defend myself, then my eyes land on a snow globe that Jaxon got for me when he and his family went to an amusement park last year. It’s the only thing my mom let me keep since she couldn’t pawn it or sell it for any money.

I snatch it up just as Perry’s bloody fingers grab the back of my shirt. Whirling around, I crash the snow globe against his skull with so much force it breaks, the liquid spilling out over my hands and all over Perry.

He doesn’t even cry out; he simply topples to the floor, blood leaking from his head wound.

I scramble back, tossing the broken snow globe away from me. My chest rises and falls in quick pants as I stare down at Perry. Is he dead? Did I kill him? Fuck. Fuck!

Banging sounds at the door, and I turn wide eyes in that direction, wondering what?—

“Police, open up!”

My breath freezes in my lungs. Oh fuck! How did they get here so fast? Who called them? Did they know I just killed somebody? How do they know? It just fucking happened!

A door in the hallway opens, and my mom stumbles to my room, scratching her rat’s nest of hair.

“What did ya do? Why are cops—” She stops talking when she looks down at Perry’s prone body, blood pooling around his head.

Then she lets out a shrill scream and runs over to him, throwing herself over him .

I cover my ears to protect them from the noise of her anguish and the splintering of the front door.

The next few hours are a whirl of activity, and I block most of it out, only brief flashes piercing the veil of shock that covers me.

Flash: Being put in handcuffs and carted away from the house as my mother screams at me, calling me a murderer, even though Perry isn’t dead.

Flash : The cops questioning me as to why I attacked Perry.

Flash: Them looking shocked when I finally admit he attacked me first.

Flash : The cops lifting my shirt to find the bruises that mar my body.

Flash : A doctor asking me if I’m hurt anywhere else.

Flash : Getting shot after shot and handfuls of antibiotics to protect me from sexually transmitted infections.

Flash : Fighting off the doctor before he can check me for semen samples in my rectum.

Flash: My father pushing past police officers to get to me, planting a rough palm on the side of my face as he cries, saying he’s sorry he wasn’t there for me. Telling me he didn’t know where my mom moved us. That he’ll make sure nothing else happens to me ever again.

Flash …the nurse giving me pain meds, helping me float away from my shitty existence.