Page 224 of Did They Break You

I open my mouth and scream, shoving with all I have against the glass to push myself back and out of Chase’s grip. “Fuck you,Chase.” The words are slurred, but I get them out.I say it.I bang my fist on the shower door, so someone will hear me as I scream again.

His hand comes over my mouth.

I bite the skin of his palm hard enough to make him bleed. He hisses, moves his hand and wraps his fingers in my hair just as his other hand edges under the hem of my underwear.

“I’m gonna make you pay for that,” he snarls.

I open my mouth to scream again but he slams my head, hard, against the door.

Pain reverberates in my skull, the words leaving my lips, my ears ringing.

I try to breathe. To hold onto the anger. The fight. But as Chase touches me, I feel almost resigned.

Numb again.

Like before.

All the adrenaline leaves me.

I haven’t cut myself since Cort broke up with me. I haven’t thought too much about dying. I’ve said no to boys and while I’ve been drinking and smoking too much, I’m not lying to my friends anymore. I’m not living in fear of Silas.

But now it seems like it doesn’t matter.

Cortland ripped my heart in two and I tried to stay whole this time, but it’s all for nothing. Because Chase is slamming my head against the shower door again and his fingers are slipping between my thighs andit. Doesn’t. Matter.

Until I hear a voice.

See light spilling into the room as my eyes snap open.

“Chase?”

My head is against the shower door and Chase’s hands are still in my hair.

I straighten as Chase’s grip loosens, my mind hazy from the alcohol, or being slammed against the door, or maybe that voice.

All I know is that one second Chase is touching me and the next... he isn’t.

I look up, my palms still on the shower door.

Cortland is staring at me.

He’s dressed in a black sweater, a collared white shirt underneath.

I furrow my brow, confused.Am I seeing things?

But then I’m distracted. He’s got a baseball bat in his hand.

Before I can wonder why, before I can question it, he steps more fully into the bathroom.

And he swings.

He shatters the mirror above the sink, and I flinch, stumbling back in my heels, leaning against the wall, trying to breathe. Glass falls to the white countertops, all over the tile floor.

Chase scrambles back too, reaching behind him, yanking up his pants and pulling something I can’t see from his back pocket.

My vision is blurry and Cortland is coming closer, glass crunching under his black boots, and?—

“Cort?” I whisper, my heart hammering.

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