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Tiles cracked, and his knees cracked as they hit them.
He laughed.
“You were always nothing. Listen to Alerion. Rockstar turned worthless junkie cunt.”
“Turned rockstar.” I laughed, too. “Haven’t you seen the fucking news?”
“Still just a junkie cunt to me.”
I shrugged, not giving a fuck what he thought of me.
And then I kicked him in his ugly face, knocking out the dental bridge that sat in the front of his mouth, making him toothless.
Chapter 6
Aribella
The woods were darker than the field, cast in shadows that put me on edge. The dogs were free, their earsplitting barking getting louder as they neared. The girls were nowhere to be seen when I sank deeper into the trees, finding a useless hiding spot behind a scrawny tree stump that wouldn’t conceal me.
I wasn’t sure if they’d be allies or enemies.
I couldn’t remember most of the time we’d shared.
But they’d lost their fight.
Darla, who apparently, had been here longer than me, would even openly admit that she felt something for Rothbart when he was in one of his false and friendly moods.
I couldn’t ever remember him being in one of those.
I felt something for him, too—hatred.
The same thing the girls felt for me. They hated me for being able to hold on to my fight. For their own weaknesses. For standing up for the little ones because it resulted in punishments.
Maybe I’d forgotten how to behave.
It was my fault that Penelope got away. My fault we were punished last night for interrupting Callie’s abuse.
But I couldn’t sit back and listen to her screams. Her small voice got louder as she begged for help and cried through her pain.
The care I gave to others kept me from breaking. I was strong for them, which gave me a purpose—a reason to fight for survival daily when I had nothing—literally—nothing else.
A head injury that Rothbart, Candee, and their demented family taunted me over had stolen my memories and true identity. I knew nothing about myself prior to a few weeks back. Nothing about the mysterious man, so beautiful and compassionate, whose fingers had kissed my cheek, feeling so different from any other touch.
He’d put his life at risk for me.
The girls probably hated him, too. Hated that he came for me because I didn’t cry for him the way they did their old lives and the people that were left there.
Aside from Callie, the only thing I remembered crying about was a pathetic excuse for a stuffed bear that Rothbart constantly threatened to destroy. All I had left of the little panda was its head, which had been left behind in my cage. Tears came to my eyes, hating that I’d left her—I thought of it as her—behind. She helped soothe all my low moods, brought by my shredded self-worth, ruined body, and general life here.
The urge to go back was intense. Go back and claim my panda head and help the man who’d saved me.
The house was a fair distance, dogs sniffing out the space between me and the white monument that looked so small from here.
I wouldn’t be fast enough to outrun them, but I couldn’t stay behind this pitiful stump. I just needed a moment for the ache between my legs to subside.
Another pain rattled through my body, starting at my shoulder, where blood was now running down my back.
I screamed, and the noise cut through the night, alerting the starving dogs and their appetites, and probably the girls and their weapons, to my position.
