“You won’t lay a finger on my daughter. Do you hear me?”
D.J. snickered. “And that’s the issue. Like mother, like daughter. You’re an ungrateful bitch, just like she is.”
Mom screamed out as she raked her nails across D.J.’s face. I rushed over to her and pried her off his body, praying for all of this to stop. I couldn't take it any longer. The chaos. The confusion. The insanity. It would drain my next paycheck just to replace all this shit in the house he’d already broken.
Because God knows Mom couldn't afford it without D.J. funneling money into her purse.
“She’s just as fucked up as you are, Lucy.”
Mom shrieked. “Don’t you talk about my daughter that way!”
I shook my head. “Mom. Stop. It isn’t worth it.”
D.J. grinned. “Yeah, Lucy. It’s not worth it.”
I pushed my mother behind me and leveled my eyes with the bullshit excuse of a man on the floor. He stood up and dusted himself off, but I saw his arm and the side of his face bleeding, where the little shards of glass he had splintered all over the ground had come to wreak havoc on his body. I snarled at him and picked up a knife off the kitchen table. He chuckled at me as his eyes fell to the dull instrument in my hand. Then he quirked an eyebrow.
“I have to admit, your mother wouldn't have the guts.”
My eye twitched. “Get out, or I will.”
Mom hissed. “Raelynn.”
I held my hand up to her. “Get the hell out of this house and don’t you ever come back.”
D.J. grinned. “I take it you’re not calling the police, then?”
I shook my head. “I never said that. I only said to get out. I’m more than willing to give you a headstart.”
Mom panicked. “She’s not calling. D.J., I promise she’s not calling.”
I rolled my eyes. Mom sounded pathetic, but I wasn’t afraid of this loser. I hated him. Every ounce of him. And I didn’t care if I had to carve his fucking eyes out with a spoon.
I’d do it just to get him out of our home.
D.J. chuckled. “Think your mom still loves me.”
I nodded. “Maybe so. But she won’t be getting back with you. Not this time. You’ve got five minutes before I call the police. Whether you’re here, or there, it doesn’t matter.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t have the balls, kid.”
I dropped the knife, reaching for my phone. “Want to bet?”
I felt my mother’s hand around my wrist and I had to resist the urge to smack her. To push her down. Because she had endured enough of that in her life. Instead, I wrenched away from her grasp. Stepped away from her and held my finger against the red button on the front of my phone. D.J.’s eyes darted from my finger to my eyes. Again and again. Almost as if he were testing me.
Then I pressed it.
“No! Rae!”
D.J. backed up. “Fuck you both. I’m out.”
“No, D.J. Come back. We can talk this out, please!”
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
I held the phone to my ear as Mom collapsed on the ground. She sobbed against the glass, not caring that it gouged her knees. Her shins. The palms of her hands. I stared at a carcass of my mother. Unlike the woman I used to know.
Or maybe the mother I thought I had never existed. And I simply grew up.