Page 5 of Did They Break You

Cortland groans again, his mouth along my back. “You’re so good, baby. You’re so fucking perfect.”

“Yeah,” Chase sneers, shifting his grip to cup my jaw again, forcing me to face him. “A perfect fucking slut.”

Tears stream down my face.

Cortland doesn’t let up.

I hear the slick sounds of him fucking me and humiliation burns hot in my face.

Chase laughs. “That’s what a slut sounds like, Remi. Dirty and disgusting.”

Cortland runs his tongue over the side of my face, and Chase releases me as Cortland jerks my head to the side so he can kiss my cheek, his chest nearly to my back, the pressure painful. “You’re so good to me, pretty baby.” He licks a line along my jaw. “So fucking good.”

“I wanna know if you made her bleed,” Chase asks as he gets to his feet, pulling down his zipper. “And if you did,make her taste it.”

I look up at him, see his teal and black hoodie.

A wolf on it.

West River High.

And the words beneath it.“Welcome to pack territory.”

CHAPTER

ONE

REMI

Stupid fucking skank should go ahead and off herself.

What a waste of a scholarship. Give it to someone who isn’t fucked in the head.

Sympathy for her? What about THEM!? She ruined THEIR LIVES!!!

“How many timeshave you checked your phone today?” Dr. Ravi asks me, her tone gentle. I almost wish she’d scream it at me. Then I could tell her the truth.

That I’m a weak bitch.

“Not many,” I lie in answer, my tone flat. I lean back in my chair, popping my gum, my chewed, black-painted fingers clenched tight around the phone in the pocket of my hoodie. Despite my lie, I can see the messages in my head. It’s funny, the ones with all caps are the easiest ones to swallow.

The other comments, those delivered with a sort of calculating coldness, they make my spine stiffen, my throat close up. And the ones with the appropriate grammar, for some reason, those get to me, although I’d never admit it out loud.

If someone can’t bother using correct spelling when they attack people in cyberspace, it’s easier to dismiss them. It’s the rational person behind the keyboard that really guts me.

Dr. Ravi’s brown eyes, a few shades darker than mine, soften as she leans back in her office chair, picking up a pen and tapping it against a notepad. Today, she hasn’t scrawled anything down. I don’t feel much better about that.

“Just over a year, huh?” she asks softly, letting the phone thing go.

For a second, that night flashes in my mind, the box of memories I keep buried in a basement in my brain opening up. But I force it all back inside that box.

And I run far the fuck away from it.

“Yep, just over a year,” I agree with Dr. Ravi.

My second year at Ely U starts on Monday, and even though over three hundred and sixty-five days have passed since that night, I’m not sure I’m any better.

At least I found a way to stop feeling numb.

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