Broken Empire A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance - Callie Rose Page 0,11
my veins, the pain of my injuries ebbed and spiked as I waited impatiently for my next dose.
My leg and ankle hurt the worst, but the abrasions and stitches in my skin were a constant, nagging discomfort. As I became less exhausted, sleeping got harder.
And most of all, I was bored.
Whoever had set up this room had mounted a TV on the wall across from the bed, and I had access to every channel I could possibly want. I binged a few rom-coms, but nothing really held my focus.
I felt antsy.
I wanted to move.
After three days back at the house, I couldn’t take it anymore. Doctor Garrett had stressed that rest was very important during the first few weeks, but he hadn’t put me on strict bed rest or anything. My pain meds were going strong, and I felt better than I had in a while, so I scooted to the edge of the bed and grabbed my crutches.
The pads at the top dug into my armpits, and the bruises and cuts along the side of my body flared with pain at the movement, but I maneuvered my way to the door and pulled it open.
I did half a lap around the first floor, nodding to Avery when she saw me coming around a corner. She gave me a half-smile back, but worry flickered in her eyes.
Probably wondering if she should rat me out to Jacqueline for being up and about.
I was passing through the large entry foyer when a thought occurred to me. There had been one reason I’d wanted to come back to this house—something I’d wanted to look at.
The wide staircase felt about as challenging as scaling Everest, but I used my crutches and my good leg to work my way slowly up the steps to the third floor.
By the time I reached it, I was shaking and panting, my whole body strained by the exertion. But my limping footsteps evened out on solid ground, and I made it down the hallway without falling. When I reached the picture I’d been looking for, I stopped and turned to stare at it.
I had stumbled upon this photograph when I’d gone snooping around the house during my first semester at Oak Park, and I’d been dying to look at it again—to see it through new eyes, knowing everything I knew now.
The first thing I noticed was Adam Pierce.
He was in the picture. I hadn’t noticed him the first time I’d seen it because I hadn’t known to look for him, but now that I knew his face, I recognized him easily. He stood near the back of the group, smiling at the camera. Next to him was a woman I recognized as Mason’s mom, then Mason’s father, Edward, and then my mom. I squinted, leaning closer to the picture as my gaze flicked back and forth between the two women.
They both looked so… happy. So full of life, so unconcerned. None of the ugliness of their futures seemed to hang over them. In that captured moment, those futures didn’t exist yet.
How did it all go so bad?
My gaze flicked down to the child held in my mother’s arms. She had chubby cheeks and wore a bright yellow dress, and the sight of it made my heart squeeze.
A little girl dressed in sunshine.
Mason had known me then. They all had. And that was how he’d described the memory of me once.
Keeping my crutches pinned beneath my arms, I reached up awkwardly to brush my fingertips over the image, as if touching it could somehow connect me to the people inside, could transport me back to the moment the picture was taken.
“You shouldn’t be up here.”
Jacqueline’s firm voice startled me, and the crutch on my left side slipped out from under me, clattering to the pristine wood floor with a loud noise.
“Shit,” I muttered, adjusting my grip on my other crutch to try to bend and pick it up.
But before I could reach it, my grandmother strode forward, lifting the metal apparatus and helping me secure it under my arm again. As I’d come to expect, she didn’t look directly at me as she worked, and her expression was cool and businesslike.
“You should be resting. And you shouldn’t be taking stairs.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, resisting the urge to ask her why she cared at all. Instead, I jerked my chin toward the photograph on the wall. “Who’s that guy? In the middle?”
Reluctantly, Jacqueline’s gaze moved to the image, her face unreadable. “Oh.