agony and fear and self-hatred built so high, it felt like I was suffocating.
By the time I stepped onto the main road just off the property, I was running.
Running from my demons.
Running from the nightmare I was living in.
Trying to outrun the man I’d become—the man who had destroyed everything good and pure in my life—knowing I never could.
“I’m gonna kill you!”
Cayson took off, letting the bucket he’d used to dump mud over my head and down my back drop behind him.
Jerk was fast.
But when I was like this? When that gross feeling began in my chest and went all the way to my fingers and toes, making it so I was like someone else? There was no getting away from me.
But I kinda wished he could.
Because I didn’t like it. I didn’t like feeling like I couldn’t stop. Like there was something wrong with me or the way it always felt like I was gonna be sick once it was finally over.
Hated everything about it.
About me.
Hearing my parents when they thought they were alone. My momma crying, saying she didn’t know what to do with me anymore. That I was getting worse.
Calling me things like uncontrollable and violent. Saying I was hopeless.
I wanted to be better. Show them I wasn’t those things.
I tried. I really did.
But I couldn’t stop it.
Cayson cried out when I caught up to him and tackled him to the ground. Called out for help when I rolled him over and sank my fist into his stomach.
“Get off me!” he yelled as he tried to fight back.
But it never mattered if he fought back—if anyone did. It couldn’t slow me down.
I saw when he started crying. I heard his grunts and shouts with each hit. And it made me fight harder. Faster.
I yelled out when I was ripped away from him and slammed onto my back. My thrashing arms and legs pinned down. My dad’s face coming into view.
Talking and talking.
Saying things I couldn’t hear because I needed to move. I needed to fight. And he was stopping me.
I wrestled against my dad’s hold. My fingers clenched tight into fists as I tried to move him off me, a frustrated cry bursting free when I barely lifted my arms off the ground.
“Why are you so angry?”
I flinched and looked up and to the side. My chest shaking with deep, deep breaths as I searched for the voice that broke through everything. For the girl who’d washed away the anger and that sick feeling as soon as she’d spoken, in a way nothing ever had.
Staring down at me, eyebrows pinched together. Looking at me like she was worried for me instead of afraid of me.
“I’m sorry,” my dad was saying, sounding all kinds of embarrassed. “You probably shouldn’t be here.”
No.
“Who’re you?” I asked before my dad could send her away.
“Savannah, honey,” someone called out from farther away.
The girl looked behind her before skipping off in that direction, and I tried to go after her. Stop her. But I couldn’t move because my dad was still holding me in place.
“She can’t go. Dad, she can’t—who is she?”
When he didn’t say anything, I looked up. Heart racing like a stampede of wild horses because I needed to stop that girl before she disappeared.
But he was just staring at me. Eyes and mouth wide like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“I’m so sorry,” that same, distant voice called out, and we both looked in that direction, but I couldn’t see anything from where I was. “We wanted to come introduce ourselves, but we’ll come back another time.”
“Oh no,” Momma began, and Dad huffed out a soft laugh as he waved and said, “Just another day around here, ma’am. Sorry for the wild welcome wagon, but don’t feel like y’all have to run off. It was just clearin’ up here.”
Silence followed for a few seconds before that same voice said, “If you’re sure. We won’t take up much of your time.”
“’Course we’re sure,” Dad said, then gave me a look. Like he was making sure I wasn’t gonna go for Cayson again as soon as he let me up.
I didn’t say a thing. I just waited, needing to see that girl. To know I hadn’t imagined her.
As soon as he stood, I scrambled to follow. My eyes searching and landing on where she stood next to a real pretty lady.
Both were looking at me. Something about their stares had my stomach twisting up. But not like it did when I