Breathe Me (A 'Me' Novel) (16 page)

“I don’t know—”

Before I could say another word, her fist connected with my jaw, and I instantly tasted blood. She was always so careful not to hit me where it left a bruise. This hit told me she didn’t care anymore; things were getting more real than ever before.

“Don’t fucking lie to me, you fucking cunt!” she bellowed, pushing me hard and causing me to stumble against the sink. I gripped the edge of the sink as I watched her advance toward me. My brain told me to run, to not let this happen, but I couldn’t run. She liked it when I ran. So instead I just waited, not answering and not breathing while she got closer and yanked my hair back, hard.

“Your boss called, said you weren’t at work, so where the fuck where you?” She pulled my hair a little harder, making me gasp, and forced me to meet her eyes. This was what she would do when I was younger to get me to talk. I always confessed to whatever she wanted to hear, and as I got older, she added in slaps to the face for added measure. Tonight, though, I saw her fist flex open and close, like she was preparing it for the impact.

“I was just late. I was there, I promise.” I prayed that was enough, but I knew it wouldn’t be. It never was.

“You were out fucking around. I know it!” she screamed, her spit hitting my nose.

“No!” I pleaded. I didn’t know why I was even trying to argue with her. I knew better.

With a movement I thought was too quick for her, she grabbed me and spun me around, then shoved my face in the dishwater that was in the sink. I tried to push back and fight, but she was surprisingly strong and held fast to my head. I was under for only a few seconds, but it was enough for me to inhale a lungful of dirty dishwater and come up choking.

A punch to the tailbone caused me to fall to the floor, coughing and gasping for air. She towered over me and spit on me.

“What am I thinking? No one would fuck you. Look at you. You’re disgusting.” She leaned down and ripped my wet shirt down the middle, then punched me right in between my breasts, knocking what little breath I had regained out of me. I desperately wanted to black out, to go someplace else, to escape this, but I was stuck.

So I lay there and watched as she took a steak knife from the counter and proceeded to make small, shallow slices on my breasts and sternum. The more I moved or cried out, the deeper the cuts got, and after the seventh I stopped fighting, after the eight I stopped pleading, after the ninth I stopped crying, and after the tenth I stopped feeling and stopped counting.

I just stopped.

Chapter 23

Harley

Fifteen.

Five on the right breast, five on the left, and five on my sternum.

Fifteen.

I stared at the small, angry cuts and winced in pain. How could someone do this to another person? How could a mother do this?

After she was done, she left me there on the kitchen floor, bruised and bloodied, but not before stating, “I wouldn’t go out fucking again, because no one would want you now.” I was thankful when she left to allow me to clean myself up, but I lay there for a long time. I lay there and thought about things that were not unfamiliar to me.

Death, pain, release.

I wondered what would happen to me if I just lay there all night until she came home. Would she come check on me, see if I was alive? Probably not.

I slowly retreated to my room after making sure all my blood was cleaned up from the kitchen, because if it was still there when she came in, it might remind her of what she did and she would come at me again, and I couldn’t take any more tonight. I collapsed on my bedroom floor and pushed the door shut with my foot. I wanted to cry, to be a quintessential angst-ridden teenager and scream out how much I hated my life. But I wasn’t a teenager, and I could scream it until I was blue in the face, but it wouldn’t change anything, and I couldn’t leave.

I was in it. I lay on my floor, numb, and fell into a black abyss.

I awoke hours later to the familiar aches and pains after my usual run-ins with my monster and the tightness across my breasts where my mother had taken her anger out on me in a new way. I didn’t understand how she was so angry yet still so precise that none of the cuts was deep enough to warrant stitches or a trip to the emergency room, not that she would have taken me. Getting up, I went to the mirror, and knowing I would regret it, I lifted my shirt to stare at what I knew was going to break me. I was gross now. I knew that these fifteen marks would scar, and I would be forever stuck with them, with the reminder that not only did she hate me, but she also hated me enough to draw blood, to scar me forever. People could hate you and dislike you, but when they physically hurt you, damaged you, that took hating you to a whole new level. Looking at the marks, I didn’t know whether to cry, laugh, or be angry. I didn’t know what to feel, so I settled on the old standby emotion, if it could even be called that.

Numbness.

That’s what I went with, because that was what I was used to feeling, numb.

I was numb to the pain as I went through my routine of getting dressed for work the next morning. I was numb as I added another half a pill to my stash. I was numb to my mother attempting to lure me into conversation like she always did, as if the previous night never happened. I was numb while I responded to a text from Ember, telling her I was too busy to have lunch with her on her off day today. I was numb while I mindlessly helped customer after customer and smiled my empty smile. I was numb to it all, stacking shelves and going through the motions, until I wasn’t. It was like the numbness bubble I was living in had crashed around me and I was suffocating from the weight of it.

I stood, frozen on the spot, looking at a woman curve her slender, perfect body around Deklan and throw her head back and laugh at something she’d said. I stood watching the twinkle in his eye that guys get when someone as beautiful as she was pays attention to them.

It was stupid of me to think that what happened with Deklan and me—what he did, how he made me feel—meant that he would like me or care for me as I did him in the short time we’d known each other. I knew deep down the reason why I was clinging to him, but I refused to try and self-diagnose myself any more than I already had. I was not pretty or outgoing and charismatic. I was a liar who didn’t love herself enough to be…herself. My hip bones stuck out, my thighs were gross, and now, after last night, I would have scars on my chest—the one thing I loved—that would probably never go away. Who wanted that? Not Deklan. Not anyone.

I stared long enough for him to look up and catch my eye and try and make his way over to me. I quickly bolted to the one place I knew he wouldn’t be able to come, the break room, which was empty at this time of day. I slid down to my knees and hid behind my locker. I acknowledged that the way I was feeling was insane. I shouldn’t have cared that he was flirting or being flirted with or whatever. I tried to rationalize with myself in an attempt to calm my racing heart. I knew this was going to happen. I mean, I couldn’t be happy, ever. It was just not what fate had in store for me. Lonely and unloved and a punching bag for the world—those were my cards.

But he had made me happy even if I didn’t mean to him what he meant to me. For the little while that I’d been with him, walking, kissing, smiling, I was happy. And if that was all I would ever have, then I was glad I’d had that. At least…at least I got to feel a little of what I so badly wanted all my life. To feel wanted. Loved.

“Harley,” he boomed, his voice outside the break room door, jarring me out of my self-pitying spiral. He raised his voice a notch. “You have it all warped.”

The break room wasn’t that big. He could have whispered and I would have heard him. I said nothing, though. I mean, what could I say? It’s cool, flirt with or sleep with whoever you want. It’s not like we had something. Only, we kinda did, or at least I thought we did. I knew what we had done was classified as “something,” but it wasn’t nothing either. He had said we weren’t done.

“Dammit, Har, answer me.” His fist connected with the door, making me jump. It was too much like I was hiding from her, and it made my blood pump double time to my heart. My chest tightened, and my palms started tingling, and I knew it was happening again. I felt my breathing start to labor and my vision start to blur. I should be used to this, the disabled feeling I got that was usually associated with panic attacks, but I wasn’t, and each time I had one, it took me longer and longer to be okay. I tried starting some breathing exercises that I read about in a self-help book that helped a few times in the past, but it wasn’t working. I was vaguely aware of the door opening, and I saw the scuffed-up black boots stop in front of me, but I couldn’t look up. I couldn’t look up at who I knew had scared me in both good and bad ways and see the look on his face.

“What was that shit out there about? I come to see you, and you take the fuck off?” he asked.

I said nothing. I focused on the pea-green paint splatter on the floor from repainting the break room three years ago and wondered why we never did try and remove it.

“Harley?” His tone was demanding. “Answer me.”

Still, I said nothing. Whatever we had, it had already gone to hell, so him seeing me like this only solidified it. Which was for the best. People like me, we didn’t get a happy-ever-after.

So I focused on those stupid-as-shit breathing techniques, hoping that they would kick in and I would calm down before I passed out. He knelt down and reached out, and not going against my nature, I flinched, hitting the back of my head on the locker.

“Shit, Harley, are you okay?” He reached out again, and I was back to the night two years ago when I had been hiding in the closet from my monster’s rampage and she’d found me and, in a similar squat as Deklan, reached out and squeezed her hands around my windpipe until I started to see black spots.

I shrank back against the lockers and wrapped my arms protectively around myself. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I whispered like a broken record.
The doorbell will ring, making her stop like before. The doorbell will ring and she’ll let go. I know she will.

“Harley?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the cold look in her eyes as my apology for whatever I had done to anger her went unheard. It was the look that I saw every time and reminded me that no one loved me, no one wanted me, least of all the person who was supposed to be guaranteed to love me and didn’t.

I might as well be dead.

That was the first time I’d thought about it, the first time I’d entertained the thought for more than a minute, because before that night, I’d had some thought that my mother was the way she was because she didn’t have anyone to love her, and that if I just loved her, she would love me. But that was before she was cutting off my airway and something in her snapped. I knew she would have kept squeezing until I passed out, until I stopped fighting, until I was dead. So I thought,
I might as well be
.

“Harley, breathe, baby, relax.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I could almost feel her fingers closing around my neck, squeezing what she thought was defiance out of me. I wanted to give up, let her win, let the darkness overtake me. I wanted to just let go.

“Harley, snap out of it.”

I squeezed my eyes tighter, blocking out everything and praying that this would all be over soon. This fear, this rapid-heartbeat, panic-inducing, paralyzing fear would be over and I could breathe again because I was sure my body couldn’t last much longer in this state. I tried to conjure up my happy moments—Deklan’s smile, the feel of his lips on mine, his stormy eyes—but it was too late. I let her win. But not before hearing the “Fuck!” roar in the distance.

Chapter 24

Deklan

Fucking shit!

These last few days were turning out to be a real shit stain. I wished I could get a fucking do-over. Shit.

Yesterday, after leaving Harley at work, I went back to see my mother since Matty had pissed me off, which had caused me to dip out early. I was too jazzed from that fucking kiss to try and find anyone else to match that shit. I didn’t want to forget myself in just anyone’s pussy. I wanted it to be Harley’s, not because I knew she was a virgin and that pumped my ego. Nah, I had de-virginized a few of those; it was nothing special to me now. No, Harley brought out something in me that I didn’t even know was there—feelings. I had some kind of feelings for this girl that I couldn’t really explain to myself and didn’t really want to. All I knew was that the feelings I had for her went far beyond my dick and me smashing her, owning her, for the night. I wanted to own her for much, much longer, to protect her. I wanted to keep her.

That feeling caused me to text her like a fucking school kid with a crush asking about book recommendations like a pussy. I didn’t tell her that I already read that series she was talking about. Instead, I said what I was thinking, like a dumbass, and figured I went too far when she didn’t respond. I was being too fucking eager. I needed to ease up, but fuck, with her it was hard. I wanted her.

Matty’s voice floated up the stairs just as I reached Mom’s door. Fuck, I’d hoped I popped his ass hard enough yesterday that he would still be unable to flap his lips. Shit, shouldn’t have held back.

“Dek, we need to talk.” He rounded the last corner and landed on the top step, standing tall like he was about to square up and shit like he didn’t remember that throat punch.

“About?” I asked, shooting him a message by not turning around. Let him get one in if he was going to rush me. It’d be the last fucking hit he got.

“Today, for starters.”

“Said what I had to say already.” I reached for the door again, but he kept fucking talking.

“Think about this. You’re a Kane. You can’t just bring anyone in here. I like Har, I do, but from what Ember has told me about her, you’re better off, and me telling
you
of all people this is saying something.” He moved closer as I tracked him out of the corner of my eye.

A muscle ticked in my jaw. I knew that muscle; it usually went wild when I was about to lose my fucking temper. It came out often in this house. I breathed in deeply, then turned to face my little brother, the same little brother who would come into my room at night when it would storm and would sleep curled up next to me. Yeah, he turned out to be a dick and a fucking traitor.