Pretty Little Savage (Sick Boys #1) - Lucy Smoke Page 0,4
… delivery for her.”
Dread sinks into my guts, twisting something foul and sharp into my abdomen and making it bleed on the inside. “She’s inside,” I say without inflection, “wake her up if you want. I don’t care.” I finish my way down the concrete steps and take slow measured strides towards the end of the driveway. “I’ve gotta get to school.”
Don’t look at him, I tell myself. Keep walking.
Roger’s hand reaches out and grabs ahold of my arm as I move to pass by him. My body stiffens. Rage seeps from my pores. He's touching me. Fucking touching me and I don't like it. I look down at where his hand rests against my bicep. “Actually,” he starts, “I think we should go wake her up together, don’t you? I want to make sure my other payment is cleared up.”
I try to jerk my arm from his grasp, and when I fail to break his grip, something electric moves through me—a stinging sensation. Fear. I push it down. Shoving it deep into the recesses of my soul and stomping it into submission. I'm Avalon Manning, I tell myself. I fear nothing and no one. Doesn’t matter if the words are a lie, they make my back straighten and my nerves stop jumping around beneath my skin. “No, I don’t,” I say through gritted teeth. “And I don’t have any money. Patricia does. Figure it out with her.”
He eyes me for a moment. “Ya know, li’l runt,” he says, his fingers growing lax on my upper arm. “I ain’t ever met another kid who talks ‘bout their mom like that. Yer pretty grown, ain’t ya. Ya actin’ all womanly now. Telling me what to do and shit. Only bitches who ever do that are the ones suckin’ my cock.”
I grimace in disgust. That will never be me, I think.
“How old is you again?” he asks.
“Fourteen.” Too fucking young for his old eyes to be looking at me the way that he is.
He uses his free hand to once again stroke his beard as he hums in his throat. I want nothing more than to rip myself away from him, but I'm not stupid enough to think that he didn't loosen his grip on purpose. He's waiting for something. Is he waiting for me to do exactly what I want to do? Pry myself from his grasp and run? The screen door behind me squeaks as it's pushed open. Against my will, relief pours through me. Hope. Patricia is a shit mom, but if she’s here, maybe she’ll make sure he doesn’t force me back inside.
I look back, but her gaze isn’t on me. It’s on Roger and her eyes are alive with something grotesque. All at once, my relief shrivels into nothing along with my hope. She’s not out here to fucking save me. She’s here for what he can give her. And if he offered her enough drugs, she’d probably offer me up to him like a fat turkey on Thanksgiving Day. It’s a wonder she hasn’t forced the issue yet. Disgust whips through me.
“Roger?” Patricia’s voice is a repulsive purr, but finally, Roger’s hand drops away from me completely and I’m able to push back the urge to gouge his eyes out with my dull fingernails until it doesn’t even register anymore. “Do you have what I need?”
Roger looks me over once more and slides his fat tongue along the length of his bottom lip before lifting his gaze to meet hers. “Yeah, baby,” he says, striding forward. “I’ve got everything ya need.”
“Avalon.” I stop when my mother calls my name and look back. “No more crawling in through your window. If you’re coming home tonight, use the front door. If you break the window, you’re paying for it.”
Come through the front door and see her in all her naked disgusting glory, she means, while Roger or one of his friends pounds into her dried out pussy. In response, I flip her off and keep walking. But even as Roger goes into the trailer and the door shuts behind both him and Patricia, my heart still beats rapidly, an unsteady tune in my chest. Fear is the presence of powerlessness, and for girls like me—without a single fucking person to give a shit if they live or die—it’s always present.
I hate it. I hate it with every fiber of my being. It makes something sinister and disgusting curdle in my gut. A wrath unlike any other. It makes