Page 95 of Broken by my Bully
I wish I’d had some kind of warning. Kai would have come up with a plan. We could have run away to the beach and gotten married like we’d always said we would.
But maybe my dad knew somewhere in the still-functioning parts of his meth-addled brain that, given any notice, I’d run for the hills.
Hillside, to be exact.
Because that’s where Kai was living by then.
The Jordans got lucky. Somehow, they escaped Riverside’s sticky web.
I thought I’d escaped too when we moved to Ashwood.
Who knew hell had a basement?
I tried to stay in touch with Kai, even after I sent that awful letter. Told him where I’d moved to, and how much I hated the tiny one-bedroom apartment. How the stink of fried fish from the corner shop below got into every inch of that place, even my clothes.
I told him about my dad ODing. Twice.
I hated my new school. Sleepless nights meant I struggled to concentrate during class, and everyone kept calling me Fish for Brains.
But I didn’t tell him what my uncle tried to do every time my father left the two of us alone. How it got so bad that I stopped coming home after school. That I would wait at the bus stop until midnight, hoping everyone would be asleep when I let myself inside the apartment.
That, on some nights, my wish came true. But not always.
Not always.
All those letters. All those apologies.
And Kai only ever wrote backonce. An angry reply to my angry letter, written right below my own angry words. Two lines scrawled so savagely, it almost tore the paper.
He wanted to make sure I’d never forget how much he hated me.
FUCK ME???
FUCK YOU!
So, yeah, when Kai calls me a fucking slut and wants to walk away like he’s dusting his hands of me…I get mad.
I get so mad, I don’t even know what I’m doing until it’s done.
Jerking his ankle, sending him sprawling to the grass, getting even more stains on his expensive white sweater.
Scrambling over to him on hands and knees like a crazy person.
Clawing at him. Possessed.
He probably thinks he looks so hot with his sleeves pushed up like that.
And he does.
He looks fucking gorgeous in white, with his corded muscles, and tanned skin. AndGod,he smells good. Some rich-ass cologne that’s spicy and sexy and much too sophisticated for him, but he somehow still pulls it off. The only part of his scent I recognize is his sweat and the smell of the sun baking his hair.
Even though I know there’s nothing left of old Kai—myKai—my brain can’t seem to stop comparing this guy to that boy.
I think of every letter I sent that he never answered. How my heart would flutter when I got to the mailbox, and how my stomach would sink when I found it empty.
“Fuck you, Kai!” I wail in a strangled, choking voice. “I hate you!”
I think he was too surprised to react when I pulled him onto the grass, but now he’s coming back to reality.
