Page 130 of My Revenant
As if my thoughts summoned him, I heard the creak of my bedroom door. Eyes as pale and pointed as blades flickered from me to beyond me, to the house that Jonah had transformed from a cage to a home again. “Go away,” I told her.
Her gaze cut into me again, the monster beneath her skin twisted in fury. She looked older, more withered than the last time I’d seenher, but that beast still lurked there, just as bloodthirsty. I’d be its willing target if it protected my rabbit.
“This is my fucking house!” she roared, each word doubling in volume.
A heavy bag thudded to the floor, and then she attacked, sinking her claws into my arms as she tried to pull me aside, but I still didn’t budge—still didn’t let her past me—so she went for my face. She always liked going for my face. It was how I’d lost the eyebrow piercing Jonah had asked about. Ripped from my skin for reasons I couldn’t even remember.
I grabbed for her wrists to stop her, but lingering fear made me slower than I needed to be, her nails sinking into skin as she swiped, a sharp sting from my eyebrow to my cheek. Still, I wouldn’t move out of her way.
“Dex?” Jonah’s heavy footfalls pounded down the stairs behind me.
“Go back upstairs, Rabbit,” I told him without turning to face him.
“Let go of me!” my mother shrieked, as if she hadn’t been the one to attack first. No, she was the victim. Always the victim.
Holding on to her meant I couldn’t hold the door closed, and she kicked at it, the force slamming it open only for it to ricochet off the wall with a bang and slam back into my side. I grunted, but I didn’t let it sway me. Not with Jonah at my back.
“Go back upstairs, Jonah!” I raised my voice, but he didn’t listen, of course he didn’t.
His toned body slipped between me and the door frame, and then she was ripped away from me, her wrists leaving my hold as Jonah threw her backward, off the porch and into a pile of junk she kept on the front lawn.
Jonah stood tall between us. My rabbit protecting me when I should have been protecting him. “Who the fuck is this bitch?” he snarled.
“My mom,” I admitted, and he turned to face me, honey eyes wide with shock before he saw what she’d done, the red of my blood as it dripped from the fresh cut on my face igniting something red in him. Something big and destructive. Fire ten times larger than any I’d seen burn inside him before.
“Jonah!” I grabbed at his arm as he tried to march forward, tried to follow the woman he’d thrown off the porch before he’d even fully grasped the situation. I didn’t know what he’d do to her, and I didn’t care about her, but I wouldn’t let him taint his perfect hands on my behalf.
Then she started screaming. “How fucking dare you! You fucking bitch! Who the fuck do you think you are throwing me out of my own fucking home? I’ll call the fucking cops!”
Jonah tensed in my hold, and I used his pause to pull him to my side, desperate to get him behind me. He wouldn’t let me, fighting to do the same thing to me, both of us trying to put ourselves between her and each other.
“Get out!” she screeched. “I’ll call the cops for real. I’ll tell them you’re assaulting me in my own fucking home! I’ll tell them what you did to Pierce, Dexter.”
Ice in my veins, and I was suddenly sixteen again, staring at a mangled corpse in the kitchen. “Y-you did that.”
“You think they’ll believe you over me? You’re the one who knows where he is, not me. You’re the one mixed up in all sorts of shit.” She waved her hands, gesturing vaguely at everything, because she didn’t know the first thing about me or what I was mixed up in. But if she called the police, it wouldn’t take them long to find out. If she told them I was the one to kill Pierce, especially with the recent murders already connected to the gang,they wouldn’t believe me over her. I’d be charged over the murder of my abuser without any of the satisfaction that would have come with actually committing the crime.
“You disgusting fucking maggot of a fucking—” Jonah tried to go for her again but I pulled him back, because I didn’t doubt she’d follow through with her threats.
“Let’s just go, Rabbit.”
He halted, turning to look at me. “What do you mean? Go where?”
“Somewhere. Anywhere. Away from here.”
“This is your home.”
“No, you’re my home. Let’s go.” I turned to my mother, to the person who should have been a safe space for me but never had been. “We’ll go.”
“Damn right you’ll fucking go,” she sneered, happy in her victory. “’Cause you’re a fucking coward, aren’t you? Just like your dad was a fucking coward.”
Her words cut deeper than her nails ever had, than anything else she’d ever thrown at me, and Jonah fought to get free from my grasp to go for her again.
“Just… I’ll get my stuff.”
“You’ve got five fucking minutes before I’m calling the cops.” She held her phone up in her hand, waving it at us to emphasize her point.
I pulled Jonah along with me back into the house, because I wasn’t ever leaving him alone with her. He fought me each step of the way. I had to put my hands on his shoulders, physically turn him around, and march him forward in front of me. She followed right behind us, not letting the front door close with her outside again.
