Page 105 of Did They Break You

I’m being used, but I’m not even here. It’s someone else he’s driving into. Someone else whose hands are dirty, nails clawed into the ground. The scent of the night, hot and sticky around us, it’s all… vanished.

The only person I can feel is right in front of me, kneeling before me.

Cortland’s grip around my face tightens, his thumb pressing against my bottom lip as his pinky finger brushes away a lock of hair sticking to my forehead. “You’re okay, Remi,” he whispers, and I hear Chase laugh again.

Before him, Brinklin pushed his dick into my mouth.

I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t know what to do.

He took care of himself. Grabbed my face, told me to stick out my tongue. I can still taste him, past the iron of my own blood. I don’t think I minded.

It wasn’t until Chase that I started to feel sick. My knees hurt.

The night seems to spin around me, and everything is just so dead.

I feel heavy.

I just want to sleep.

“Cortland,” I whisper in the dark.

He presses his temple to mine. “Yeah, baby?”

Make him stop.

Take me home.

But I don’t say the words.

Here,in the library, I try to jerk out of his grip, and he loosens his hold on me, but when I back up, I hit the wall.

He steps forward, crowding me against it. In the dark, I still can’t see anything. But I feel his hand skimming my arm, over my hoodie.

I close my eyes a second, swallow down the rest of the tears. I wonder when I’ll be able to face all of it, or when I’ll justget the fuck over it.I wonder if having him so close makes it hurt that much more. Like a reminder every time I see his face.

But I thought I was growing stronger, that night in the woods. Facing all of them. I spoke up. I used my voice. Even the times he cornered me in the cemetery. Or when I took a shot as I stared him down.

I thought I was getting better.

Maybe it’s not him that broke you,a voice in my head says.

The same one that answered Silas in that car, after the hospital.

“Did they break you?”

I force the answer back and open my eyes in the dark of the library. “Get out,” I whisper, embarrassed over my panic attack, hurting over the past, and feeling angry.At everything.

There’s silence, then, “You don’t want that.” His voice is a low, quiet rumble.

My heart sounds loud in my head, my pulse pounding through my brain, heat spooling in my core from anger and maybe desire, too, but my body can feel what it likes. My brain knows better.

“I do,” I tell him, my voice strong now. “Stop fucking with me, Cortland.”

“Or what?” he presses, stepping closer, his body so close to mine, if I just inhale a little deeper, my chest will brush his abdomen. “What if I don’t?What if I can’t?”

I swallow down the tightness in my throat, my hands by my sides, my head resting against the wall. His scent is overwhelming, and I hate that I don’t hate it.

That feeling of warmth grows.

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