With All My Heart - Emilia Finn Page 0,35
I get off on arguing.”
“But not with her.” I laugh. “Are you a battered man, Reilly? Do you need help getting out? We’re your friends. We can help.”
He chokes on his beer and wipes a muscular arm along his chin. “Don’t joke. This is how it begins. She’ll start hitting soon.”
I giggle and press a kiss to Bry’s chest. “I sometimes hit.”
He snorts. “Yup.”
“I’d also murder you in your sleep if you left me.”
He nods and plays with my fingers. “You’re fuckin’ crazy, Bert. I already knew that. But you’re my kinda crazy. I wanna keep you forever, and ever, and ever…”
Reilly pokes a finger into his mouth and pretends to gag. “You guys are just so… fucking gross.”
Geo snorts. “I gotta live with this shit. They’re always making out, then I gotta make myself scarce and hide in my room like a virgin no-friends. Trust me, you’ll be fine.”
“Yeah. But he’s gotta live with the crazy bitch, so really, who’s got it worse?”
“Who you calling a bitch, bitch?”
Like fire ants sting every follicle on my head, sharp nails dig into my hair, and a strong hand tugs and snaps my neck back. My eyes meet hers – green, swimming, feral – for half a beat, before Bryan flies from the chair and pulls me from her; even at the expense of a large chunk of my hair.
She dives for us.
Like she’s possessed by the devil, she lunges for my face with her teeth bared and her nails aiming for my eyes. “You don’t get to talk shit about me unless you’re gonna back it up, bitch!”
Reilly flies out of his chair and grabs Ann-Marie as she scratches at my face. Buzzing fills my ears and deafen me, and dots float in my vision as she slams an open palm across my face and pivots my head around.
Grabbing her around the waist, Reilly picks her up and spins her around, but her heeled foot snaps across my jaw with a painful crack that’ll leave me with a nasty case of whiplash tomorrow.
Roaring like a wild animal as my body falls limp in his arms, Bryan holds me against him with one arm, then snatches Ann-Marie with the other and slams her against the wall.
Pinning her with a strong hand on her throat, veins bulge in his neck and his breath comes out like a pissed off bull. “Get. The fuck. Out.”
“Bry!” Reilly pushes at Bryan’s unrelenting arm. “Let her go, man!”
Nausea rolls in my belly and my jaw throbs. People speak around me. Shouted instructions, angry demands, a baby crying. But it all sounds as though I have water in my ears.
“Kincaid! Put her down!”
I’ve been hurt a lot in my life.
My daddy made it a fun weekly routine the way others might make church their thing, so by the time I was eighteen, I’d become used to it.
Conditioned, even.
It didn’t hurt so much, because I was used to it.
But six years of pure gentleness from my loving giant has healed me… and left me unequipped for a fresh beating.
A single tap to my jaw has tears burning my eyes.
A single yank of my hair, something I endured almost daily as a kid, now sends me down a long tunnel almost like PTSD and sends my spotty vision to a cloudy black.
“Nelly?” With his hand still on her throat, Bryan’s eyes come to mine. His mouth moves like he’s shouting, but the air sits stale in my chest and my ears don’t work. My lungs refuse to inhale. They refuse to exhale.
My body simply refuses to do.
“Baby! Hey!” Releasing the red-faced Ann-Marie into Reilly’s waiting arms, Bry turns as my knees buckle and my brain starts swimming. His terror-filled eyes bore into mine. “Hey. You’re safe now, baby. Are you okay?” His strong hand strokes my aching jaw.
Geo sprints to us from the front door and stops mere inches from my face.
A hand strokes my belly.
Another strokes my jaw.
A third squeezes my hand.
And a fourth presses over my chest to find my heart pounding.
The guys shout at me, they shout at each other, but their noise is just noise drowned out by the sounds of my father’s rage. “Next time you’ll do as you’re fucking told, bitch!”
“You bring this on yourself.”
“If you’d just keep the house cleaner…”
“If your mother was still here, Pumpkin…”
“Being a slut won’t get Shane Tosky and his family to marry you, will it?”
“Bert! Come back now. Come back to me, baby. Geo, get my keys.”
“No.” I