Page 98 of Drown My Sorrow

My heart is smashing against my ribcage. I sag but catch myself before I hit the floor.

The kitchen! I have to check the kitchen. Maybe there will be a note.

This can’t be real.

I check the kitchen and find she’s left the food. It’s a small mercy, but I will be lucky if it will last me a week. I look over the meagre supplies and try to think about what to do.

My papers! I rush to the spot under the cutlery drawer where she hid the folder. She took the cutlery, I notice, and that enrages me more than anything else.

I sob as I throw the drawer across the room, sticking my hand into the hole and searching, even though I know they aren’t there. It’s all gone.

All our personal documents are gone. My passport is gone, my birth certificate, and my ID card. But so is all the money that we had left over.

I sink down to the floor, my whole body is trembling.

She left me. She didn’t just leave me. My mum left me to die.

PresentDay

I don’t know why being up there on top of that cliff and seeing that incredible view brought back the day my mother left, but it did. It was the start of the second worst time in my life, second only to waking up in hospital and finding out my entire life had changed and half my family was dead. On this plane though, leaving the island hell behind, I am dragged, drowning in the memories that won't be denied much.

The endless blue sky and glittering ocean made me think of her. How hard she tried to keep us afloat, the things she did to make money. All the men she claimed she hated that she laughed with, joked with. She resented me because she had to stay with me. I resented her because she stopped being a mum and became a hostile stranger. The harder things got, the more we struggled, and the angrier and more desperate she became.

And staring out at that view of possibilities, I could clearly see it from her view, without the bias of also being her daughter. And maybe, maybe, I could get a glimmering of understanding. I’ve been so focused on surviving in that tiny village that the rest of the world became a dream, but she remembered.

She remembered a family and love and a life where she didn’t have to whore herself out for food. A time where she had something better. And she went out and found it again. I can’t blame her for that.

But I can blame her for leaving me with nothing and no way to escape. Even in the plane, finally escaping everything, I can’t let go of the feeling of that day. The way she forced me to leave Kelly.

Nat didn’t come with us, and that is eating at me, too. She met someone, and not having her here to talk to or bounce things off is killing me. Still, I worry about her, who is this person she met? Is she okay? Why isn’t she answering her phone?

“Enough! I can’t take it anymore. Shale do something or I will.”

Shale reaches out and drags me out of the chair I’m perched on, looking out at the view of the vast, horrifying ocean.

He pulls me so I’m awkwardly straddling his lap.

“Do you have a change of clothes?”

I nod, confused.

“Good,” Shale purrs. “Cut it off.”

I gasp as Keagan pins me from behind and carefully starts cutting my clothes off me.

I don’t move because I don’t want to get cut, but I let out a tirade of furious words that are ignored by everyone on the plane, and why wouldn’t they? I’m perfuming all over the joint.

Shale pulls his cock out, and I catch a glint of light. I peer between us and see it again and realise in shock that he is pierced. How did I never notice that during the heats?

“For your pleasure, love. And I took it out during the heats so I didn’t hurt you.”

I try to suck in air, but it’s so hard; I mean, not hard, but it is hard. It’s just…pierced. Holy crap, I can’t stop looking at it. Why can I stop looking at it? It moved. Oh, shit.

Wait, how freaking big is that thing? I’ve already had it. I know I’ve had it, but it’s so freaking big.

I let out a whine that only makes Shale laugh.

If there’s an abort button, I need to find it quickly, except Shale seems to sense this and leans in, ghosting his lips across my collarbone.

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