I Have Lived and I Have Loved - Willow Winters Page 0,221

takes another step closer to me. I don’t move. I don’t know what to do or where I am, but deep down inside of me I know this boy isn’t going to hurt me. There’s something about him. Something broken and scared and angry even, but it’s pure.

“What’s going to happen to us?” I ask him weakly.

“He won’t touch you. It’s not about you.”

“What?” I don’t understand. I’m so confused.

“He’s using you.” He looks past me, anger evident as he clenches his jaw. “It’s about him making me do what he wants. He knows I won’t...,” his voice drifts off, and the anger changes to something else. Something I can’t see because he turns away from me.

I reach out to him, grabbing his arm to keep him from leaving me, moving purely out of instinct. The touch feels like a spark. As if I’ve put my hand to a flame, but before I can even process it, he whips back to me, a scowl of anger on his face as he stares at me. “I won’t let him hurt you like he does me. All you are is a tool for him to use against me.”

He takes another step closer to me, and it’s the first time I really get a good look in his eyes. The intensity almost makes me scoot back, but then I’d be against the wall. Trapped and cornered.

He parts his lips to tell me something, but no words come out. Time passes, and the only thing I can hear is my heartbeat as he stares at me. His eyes won’t break from mine, and I’m too scared to look away.

“I’m sorry,” he says flatly, but then he turns away as if the sentiment were genuine.

For some reason, just hearing those words is what breaks me. The tears fall and as I wipe them away, he looks at me with distaste. I half expect him to tell me to stop, but he doesn’t.

I struggle to calm myself and somehow I do. Maybe it’s because I don’t really believe him. I don’t believe it’s hopeless. My mother will find me, and she’ll make that man pay for what he’s done. Both to me and to this boy. I know she will.

“What’s your name?” I ask to keep him from leaving me as he turns. I lick my lips, tasting the salty tears and wiping my cheeks. I don’t want to cry. I want to get out of here.

“J-” he starts to answer me, but we both whip around and face the door as it opens, silencing us and making me instinctively back away.

I grab onto the boy’s arm and force myself behind him. I don’t know a thing about him and the look he gives me nearly makes me run from both him and the man stalking into the room, but I don’t get the chance. The boy grips my wrist with his other hand and pulls me closer to him, my front to his back and my back to the wall. He keeps himself deliberately positioned in between me and the man.

It’s only when I grab onto the boy, my small fingers digging into the rough denim of his jeans at his hip and my cheek pressed against his back, that he lets go of me.

The boy may scare me some, but the man terrifies me.

Chapter 5

That night

“I want to go home,” the girl whimpers. Her wide doe eyes dart from mine every time I look at her. We’re on opposite sides of the room, and that’s how it’s been since I came back. That’s all she keeps saying as she’s bundled up in the corner and crying.

She’s terrified, and has every right to be. But after what my father’s done to me, I don’t want to look at her. Partly out of shame. Partly out of hate. I was only gone for an hour, but an hour is enough.

He did it on purpose. Taking me the moment she woke up, and showing her how easily he can break me. He knew what he was doing, and it worked. And I did nothing to stop him. No fight in me… for her. And now, I can’t even look at her.

I can feel the bags under my eyes, the desperate need for sleep. But I can’t. Not with her here and not knowing what my father will do next. I force my dry throat to swallow, the pain still present and lean my head against the cold