Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 59120 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59120 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
“We have to take her now.”
Then, as quickly as he was there, he is gone.
A warmth slowly washes over me, and I know they’ve injected the drug to make my body go limp, my eyes go heavy, and my world go dark.
I pray for it.
At least, for now.
1
“She’s coming with me, Caden—end of story.”
“Please, Mandy, don’t fuckin’ do this. I need to make it right.”
Chief’s voice is pained, broken, unlike anything I have ever heard from him before.
“Look at her,” Mom whispers, her voice steady and unwavering. “She doesn’t want that. Not now.”
Their words slam into me, ricocheting off plaster walls. Bright fluorescent lights burn my eyes every single time I open them, and every single beep of the multiple machines attached to me is enough to make my skull throb. My body thrums with painkillers—each pill a promise to dull the agony. But it’s still there, a living thing writhing beneath my ribs.
The blissful numbness is now gone.
I shift slightly on the crisp, white sheet, heartbeat echoing in my ears. My chest aches from each breath, punctuated by memories. Jeremy’s soulless smile as he pointed the gun and shot me. Travis pleading with me not to leave. The thought of his daughter, out there alone, in a broken system. My father, his lies. It’s all too much.
The blast of that gun tore everything apart, it ripped every painful reality out and splattered it over the sidewalk. My stomach twists. I close my eyes and a wave of bile rises. I swallow it down, but it claws at my throat, begging to escape. My mind feels chaotic under the weight of all this. I can’t sort it. I can’t heal it. I just... need to run.
I need to turn and never look back.
“Mischief!” Chief’s voice has my eyes opening again. “Baby, look at me.”
I don’t.
It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that I can’t.
Everything in my body is screaming at me to run from all of them, every single ounce of pain they have all brought to my life. Including him. He is my father, but right now, I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to see anyone but my mom. I just want it all to stop.
I turn my head away, trying to smother the sound of his pain. Tears are gone; I can’t find the energy to let them out anymore. My heart is protecting itself. If I stay, I’ll drown in their lies. I have to leave this place, leave them, leave everything that hurts.
“We’re ready to move her now,” the nurse informs them.
My mother is having me moved to a hospital a thousand miles away, in a place where none of them can reach me. She is protecting me, she is protecting us, and I am grateful to her for that. They wheel me toward the back door. Chief is bellowing my name, and it hurts, it does.
There is a deep pain in his voice that will haunt me.
As they load me into the ambulance for transport, another voice fills my ears. Travis.
“Mischief!”
His voice rips through me and makes my body rigid. I made sure he couldn’t see me in the hospital. I know Mom gave him updates, but she respected me when I said not to let him in. Hearing his voice now brings it all back. Every single fucking lie he told me.
Every broken promise.
“Violet, look at me,” he bellows.
I don’t turn my head, but the tears I was so sure were dried up start rolling down my cheeks. Someone is holding him back, I don’t know who, but I am grateful.
“Don’t fucking leave,” he goes on, his voice cracking. “I love you. Do you hear me? I love you.”
I clench my eyes shut, my jaw so tight it hurts.
“Travis, just let us go,” my mother’s voice is careful, but firm. “She needs time, do you understand that?”
“I can’t live without her, Mandy,” he grinds out, his words so full of pain it is soul-crushing. “I can’t fucking watch her go.”
“You have no choice. If you love her, you will let us leave.”
The ambulance doors thud shut. The world tilts as the engine roars to life. Through the small window, I see him drop to his knees. His head slumps and his shoulders sag as he watches the ambulance disappear down the road.
I let the tears fall, knowing it will be my last.
These, these will be the last tears I cry for Travis Phoenix.
The hospital I am transferred to is less brutal but more foreign than the ER I left behind. There’s a glass wall between me and the nurses’ station. There are no cops, no angry dads. Instead, it’s the low, white-noise hum of climate control and the clinical blue of the night light washed across every surface. You could eat a meal off these floors. It’s so goddamned clean.