“Someone go to the bar, get Oscar’s body if they didn’t take it with ’em,” Hazard ordered. “Where’s Tyre?”
“Denny took him to the hospital.”
“Where’s Rooster?” someone asked. “He’ll want to punish her.”
“Rooster had to make a trip to Alberta, but he left me in charge,” Hazard said, stepping closer so his boot nudged my nose. “And this is my wife, in case any’a you forgot that and thought to touch her.”
There was a vibrating pause where every man tried to stay as still as possible to avoid Hazard’s wrath and scrutiny.
“Were you a bad girl, Faith?” he asked me in that sinuous voice that coiled around me like a hissing cobra, choking my neck.
My mind fell back eight years when I was sixteen again, begging him not to hurt me, obsessing over being meek and quiet enough to avoid his ire.
It hadn’t worked well, but it was my only tactic.
I had spent the last near decade trying to grow through the cracks in the foundation Hazard and Rooster had poured over my soul, and suddenly, it was all for nothing.
Because here I was on the ground beneath a boot, being ridiculed and abused as if it was my destiny.
And the thought of Aaron, his dark eyes bright with humour like a star-filled night sky, his quick smile and unfailing kindness, felt like a great cosmic joke. Cruelty so painful it cracked my bones into pieces beneath my skin.
“I don’t care what she did at the bar,” Hazard declared into the silence as the toe of his boot lifted off the ground andresettled over my hand. “Everything else pales in comparison to the true betrayal. You left me, Faith. Without a word. Do you think I can let that slide?”
“Hazard,” Cedar’s said. Hope sparked briefly like the flame from a broken lighter. “Rooster won’t be happy if you damage his daughter too badly.”
Hazard’s laughter was jagged and rusty. “Rooster’s not here, and she’ll heal. She always does.”
“Still––”
“Shut up,” he snapped as he dropped slowly into a crouch. It had to hurt his knee, he’d always avoided the position when I was with him, but he clearly wanted to make a point.
And it was made the second the cold edge of a knife skimmed my cheek and pushed my hair away from my face. Fear sluiced through me like frigid water, freezing every inch of me until even my heart seemed to cease beating.
He leaned closer, the hot breath of his voice against my cold cheek.
“I heard you’re a workin’ girl now. You know I don’t like my woman doin’ anythin’ but servin’ my needs, so you’ll be stoppin’ that right…now.”
The crack and crunch of bone registered a curious moment before the pain flared lava-hot beneath my skin. A scream ripped from my lungs as pain brutalized my hand, shooting up my arm into my chest and throat.
Hazard’s boot was crushing my hand, breaking the bones in at least three fingers, though the hurt encompassed so much more than that.
Neon colours burst behind my eyes, splashes of bright pain painting the inside of my brain. It did something to short-circuit my brain, transmuting that broken, frail teenage girl into the woman I’d strived hard to become in her absence.
As I writhed, pinned to the floor like a bug, agony collapsing my chest in that long, brutalized scream, I resolved that this was it.
This was the lastfuckingtime they hurt me.
The last time they took something precious from me.
Because without my hand, even my left one, I couldn’t do hair or nails or even makeup. I couldn’t do any of the things that brought me joy, any of the talents I’d worked so hard to learn, any of the things that made meme.
“Fuck you,” I shouted through the pain.
“Fuck me?” he hissed, grinding down so hard I thought I might black out from the pain.
“You’re a fucking monster!” I screamed, loosening the door on the years of hatred buried inside my heart.
I thought of the sign Aaron made Cleo.
