Page 9 of Make Me Scream
I don’t like any of this.
How quickly it’s all changed. How he’s changed Ma, our home, our lives.
Me.
I want to go back to before, when I was living in denial and hate and bitter resentment… But I guess a part of me still is. It just doesn’t feel as unbearable anymore.
My feet stop mid-step up the front stairs to the house at the realization. The front door opens, and there’s my runt, looking back at me. As ugly and as pretty as ever.
What the fuck is happening to me?
CHAPTER 5
ABEL
Peris’s wordshave been echoing in my mind all day.Nothing’s going to change.
I scoff. He’s so fucking naïve. He has no idea what it’s like. To bounce from house to house, to never have a say when you stay and when you go. To never know who is safe and who isn’t—news flash, no one ever fucking is.
And now, I have to go from finally feeling… well,secure,to unguarded and unprotected. Because as much as Elise may try, she can’t do anything to stop Lucy.
I’ll have to give it all up.
I’ll have to go back to it all.
“Where thefuckhave you been?” Peris’s grating voice is music to my ears. I smile instinctually as his feet hammer the rest of the way up the stairs. Never mind his mom is just inside in the kitchen, he steps over the threshold and slams me back into the wall with his forearm across my throat.
Pressing his front to mine, our chests heave and touch with every heat-induced breath. I look up into his golden-green eyes, andfuck,he’s hot when he’s mad.
“Been b-busy,” I croak through his hold, relishing in the way his eyes darken when he notices how bloodshot my eyes are.
“Yeah, getting fuckinghigh,” he spits in my face—literally. I grin.This is exactly what I needed. His hate, his venom.
I pull my bottom lip between my crooked teeth. “What else was I supposed to do, Peris?” I ask, genuinely curious. “Lucy’s here.” Saying it aloud is sobering—for both of us. Peris seems to lose some of his heat, and he drops his arm, but he doesn’t step back, so we remain touching from our chests down to our groins.
“She’s fucking here. After all these years and I don’t know why. They’re going to take me away—” His grip tightens on my hip, so unyielding, my breath catches.
“Don’t say that,” he mutters against my cheek.
“It’s true. The courts always side with the birth mother, especially when she’s sober. And she is.”
“You don’t know that.” He tries to reason, which is so beyond insane, but I appreciate the effort, and I only laugh softly but dryly.
“I do, Peris. When you’ve been around addicts as much as I have, you learn when someone’s high, or has been, and when someone’s sober. She’s been sober for a minute, at the very least.” I frown at the thought, brows pinching together. “Which only means she probably has an ulterior motive.” My head falls back against the wall with a soft sigh. I’m so damn tired, but I know the exhaustion is only the beginning. The real fun is only about to begin. “But I don’t know what that could be.”
Peris takes a step back, giving me the space I think I should want, but I hate all the same.
“She doesn’t even know who you are,” he says quietly.
“No one does,” I say just as softly. Our eyes meet for a brief flash, and the moment is so quick but so intense, I feel my stomach flip and bile shoot up my throat. I swallow it down and rush the conversation along, desperate to forget it ever happened becausefuck that.
“I have no clue who she is either, apart from a worn, yellowed Polaroid, but that doesn’t seem to matter, does it?”
Two solid knocks rap against the door, startling us both. We pull apart just moments before Elise walks into the entryway. Her eyes bounce between us, a small frown pulling at her lips.
“Is everything all right, you two?” she asks, directing her question solely at me.
I give her a small smile but not before flicking my gaze to Peris and giving him a smartass grin all of his own. “Yeah, actually. We were just talking. He just got home.”
