7
Skye
Ifidget on the bed and let the rough fabric of my jeans rub my new cuts. I tug down the waistband and look at the scars. They cover my hips and crisscross the skin beneath the notch of my hip bone. No matter where I cut, I’ll ride over a healed or healing slash, and when I penetrate the thick scar tissue, it hurts even worse. Pain as I split the fibrous tissue once more.
The newest cut starts to bleed, and I run my finger through it. A crimson line marks my fingertip. The pain is a pleasant reminder that therapy only stresses me out to the point of needing release. Hearing everyone’s fucked-up stories about their fucked-up lives just made me bitter. How could someone understand a fraction of what I feel? Not in that room. Maybe not even in this life.
Therapy also makes me feel uncomfortable and judged. My last name signifies money and power. I saw how some of them looked at me—like they think I’m just some spoiled brat. Even that dude who drove me home had a change of expression when I told him where I live. It’s a transformation from sympathy to judgment.
Yes, Ronald Sarotta, the mayor, is my sperm donor—the devil that lurks in this home—but his prestige didn’t stop me from being raped, beaten, and driven to madness. The wealth didn’t make any of the assaults hurt less. If we’re going to split hairs, his status makes it easier for him to be more of a garbage fucking human being. Without the constraints of the law, he can do anything he wants to do. I am his puppet. I’m also the black mark smudging the perfect image he creates for himself.
When he does shit like keep me from jail, it’s not for me. It’s not because he cares about me. He just doesn’t want me to make him look bad. He’s scared that I’ll expose his double life. He wishes I would be complacent like my mother, but I never want to be like her. I want to love myself enough to leave a man even half as horrible as my father. I don’t love myself, but it’s still more than my mother loves herself. At least I know I don’t deserve this.
Daddy Dearest appears in my doorway. His shadow spreads across the floor like a monster crawling along the hardwood. I pull off my headphones and drop them beside me on the bed.
“How was therapy?” he asks.
“Stupid.”
“What did you tell them?”
There it is. He doesn’t give a shit if therapy helps me. He just wants to make sure I didn’t say anything to tarnish his name—that I didn’t tell anyone who he really is.
“Literally nothing,” I say with a roll of my eyes.
Before I can even curse myself for the gesture, he’s on me. He grips my arm and snatches me from the bed. My bones strain in his rough grasp. My arm fits in his fist with room to spare.
“Don’t you roll your eyes at me!” He spits his words at me as he jerks my arm again.
“I didn’t say a goddamn thing about you or anyone. Not even myself.” I try to shake my arm away, but his fingers only dig deeper into my skin. Pain rips through my shoulder with every attempt I make to free myself.
My heart races, and I hear it in my ears, pounding against my head with a tidal wave of force. Sweat bubbles on my skin as heat washes over me. Memories flood my head until my vision darkens. At the worst moment, my brain takes me back to my childhood.
Grunts. A ceiling fan above my head. Pain radiates between my legs. Panic claws through my chest, and my stomach squeezes against the flood of emotions. The nauseating sounds of a body against mine. Skin against skin. A taunting memory that overcomes me at the worst moments. It surfaces from somewhere deep in my mind, where I once placed it and hoped it would stay. It’s an opportunistic memory that feeds on my fear.
“Skye!” he yells, shaking me fiercely.
His words rip me from the awful memory and spit me back into the present. From one pain to another.
“Look at me when I talk to you!”
Frustration can only boil beneath the surface for so long before it explodes out of someone’s mouth like a fucking geyser. “Go fuck yourself!” I yell.
My face burns from the impact of his fist on my cheek. I’d have fallen backward if his hand wasn’t still firmly wrapped around my arm, threatening me with more promises of violence. I don’t scream or cry. I won’t give him that satisfaction again. I’ll let the tears flow later when they can mingle with the blood flowing from the razor.
His face twists with anger, and I wonder if he might actually kill me this time. He draws his arm back again but stops himself mid-swing. It’s the first time I’ve seen an act of restraint on his part.
Pain radiates from my cheek, nose, and eye. He probably fears he’s broken my nose. He can’t risk putting me in the hospital. Not with the mouth I have now, and most definitely not with all the old and new bruises on my body. He can only hide a dirty secret like this for so long. One day he’ll meet a medical provider, police officer, or judge who refuses a bribe in exchange for silence. Someone with enough of a conscience to speak out.
One day.
He throws me on the ground, and I arch my back in silent pain. Blood drips from my nose and pools on the hardwood floors. He leaves the room as silently as he entered, and I check the bridge of my nose with my fingertips. Nothing feels broken. The bump in my nose is from a prior fracture. He didn’t break me this time. Because I’m already broken. My self-worth, my home life . . . everything.
My body trembles with explosions of anger and pain as if I might combust. I need to defuse myself. I fumble in the drawer for the razor, anticipating the metallic release. My chest rises and falls with excitement as I dig for it. Things shuffle and spread in the drawer until I finally grip the one thing I need to feel: pain that I created.
I tug down my jeans. Without hesitation, I glide the razor along the fat of my thigh and suck in a breath. The blood pools to the surface, creating a path for the frustration to pour out of me. I cut again and focus on the stinging warmth as I sink the metal deeper—the spread of my skin as the blade parts it.
Blood drips between my legs and hits the floor. I relax against the wall, satiated with release. Now I begin the second part of my ritual. Guilt.
I’m annoyed with myself. Shit, even I’m sick of my attitude.
One way or another, I will get out of here. That’s the only way I can figure out who Skye is. Not just the hollowed, bitter shell that shares her name, but the Skye who isn’t scarred and bruised. What is she like? I doubt therapy will introduce her to me, but I’m willing to try.