that empty, stony expression. If he wants to make my life hell, I’ll return the favor. Let’s see how he likes having to sit with my naked body for a few hours.
I stay standing as he walks forward with his first-aid kit and places it down on the bed, pulling out some white cloth, some sort of spray, and some bandages. He sprays the cloth and then steps over to me, murmuring, “This’ll sting.”
He pats the aching wounds on my back from where I fell onto the dirt as he captured me. They aren’t deep, but there are a lot of them and they’re sore. I grit my teeth and stare straight ahead, trying to fight back the urge to cry out in pain when he continues to clean them up.
“Didn’t mean to hurt you so bad,” he says, moving around my body, finding all the locations where I’m hurt.
He stops when he reaches my hips and his fingers run over the skin there. I shudder and jerk away, knowing what he can see. Scars, plenty of them. All the years of abuse left behind their marks. The whipping, the hitting, the kicking, there was no way they were going to let me walk away without forever being reminded of the damage they did to my body.
I have a deep scar on my hip from a gash that was given to me by a very sharp knife when I was fighting to get away. It wasn’t intentionally meant to hit me there, but it did. The wound then got infected and I got very sick. Eventually, it healed. Not before leaving a hideous scar in its place.
“What happened here?”
I clench my teeth together.
“What did he do to you, Aviana?”
No worse than you, Cohen.
Okay, that’s a lie. He was far worse.
“You’re goin’ to ignore me like I’m not here? I get that. You’re angry. Get that, too. But if this was your family, your club, wouldn’t you be doing the same thing if you were in our shoes?”
They were my family.
That’s what he told me once. That they’d always have my back.
He lied.
They all did.
I say nothing, even though he makes a point.
“You can hate me if it makes you feel better, but you’re refusin’ to fuckin’ face what’s really goin’ on here. You’re livin’ in the shoes of a victim, swimmin’ in blame, and you’re lookin’ for someone to take that out on. That person is me, because I’m the one who sent you away. Get that, but it ain’t on my club what happened to you, Aviana.”
He’s right, but he’s also wrong.
It is on them, too.
King had a lot to do with the goings down of that day, even though they maintain he didn’t.
He often asked questions about my family.
Wanting to know the ins and outs of what they were doing.
They could have looked for me, could have helped me.
They chose not to.
I simply wasn’t important enough.
“One day, you’ll have to move on from this. Remember that before you do anythin’ stupid. If you do somethin’ you can’t come back from, you’ll have to live with that for the rest of your days. Can you do that? Can you live with that kind of weight on your shoulders?”
I stare blankly at the wall.
He’ll not get anything out of me.
Not now.
None of them will.
I’ve spoken the last of my words.
I’ve pleaded for the final time.
I’ve given them everything, and yet not quite enough.
I’m done. Finally done.
Tonight, tonight I’ll leave.
Only this time, I’ll not return.
But they’ll remember me this time.
I’ll make sure of that.
I MOVE SLOWLY. OH, so slowly.
I push to my hands out of the bed and glance over to where Cohen is sleeping in the chair beside the door. He has made sure I can’t go out that front door without waking him. It’s squeaky and loud, and there would be absolutely no way I can get through it. That’s fine by me, he didn’t consider the other option—the window.
There is a small window in the bathroom, it’s above the sink, but it has no screen. It’ll be a tight squeeze, but I’ll get through it. I will escape this madness. Where I’ll go after that, I don’t know. I have no money, no job and, currently, no phone. Still, I’ll find a way. I always do.
My feet land on the old school red carpet, and I glance over at Cohen again. He’s still sleeping, head tipped to the side, and when he looks like that, I can’t help