Page 28 of Lunar Diamonds (Celestial Magic #1)

DRAKE

V isions of my childhood flashed before me, clicking from one awful moment to the next. A slide presentation of sadness and cruelty. Unrelenting, with the ferocity to break me into a million pieces.

I screamed.

These memories were supposed to be locked in a box and buried deep.

The death of my parents. The crash. The darkness. The aftermath.

The children’s home, the sorrow, the adoption.

The suffering of living with her . Sandra. My adopted mother. A wicked woman, now a dead woman with her claws buried deep into the fabric of my being.

She’s dead.

She’s dead?—

She liked locking me in the basement for being a bad boy. No food or water or hope. Told me I’d ruined her life, my adoption was a mistake. Told me how useless I was.

Trash. Trash. Trash.

I closed my eyes, covering my ears as the familiar sounds of leather on my skin cracked around me.

Go away. Go away. Go away.

I heard him , the beast she married when I turned sixteen. Bryan. Handy with his fists. One day, he hit me so hard he broke my jaw.

They hurt me because I was unworthy of love. My birth parents left me, taking love with them.

“Died to get away from you,” Sandra would spit at me.

I believed her. I always believed her because there was nothing in that house and my life but hate and pain.

Trash. Trash. Trash.

Darkness closed in around me as I wept. I hid my face, not wanting to see it crush me, bury me, take me away from the light.

Useless.

Unworthy.

Fading.