Prologue
Once upon a time, he picked me up and put me back together again.
Piece by piece until I was whole again.
But now I know he did it to watch me fall.
And fall I did, crashing to the ground into little shards again.
But this time, no one came to put me back together again.
And I know he’d do it again; he’d put me back together
Just to watch me fall.
I loved him.
I loathed him.
I wanted to bring him close, and I wanted to push him away.
The warring of emotions inside of me made me feel like I was caught up in a whirlwind of hate and love. But which was overpowering the other?
Only time would tell.
He pressed my face down against the mattress as he swiftly undid his belt. I shook with need and cried with desperation. If I could only just look at him again… I’d choose ignorance over truth, if only I could look at him the way I used to.
He threw my skirt up over my hips and took me hard and fast. My mouth opened and my eyes glazed over as the feeling of pleasure swept me away into a place I’d reserved deep inside of me. A place where, once upon a time, he made me feel cherished and loved.
Tears burned down my face.
The truth.
That disgusting bitch of a thing called truth.
I’d do anything to hide from it. Because its grip was cold as death around my neck, and it was choking the life right out of me.
He was going to be the death of me.
Chapter One
A Dare
The sky didn’t look promising. Dark clouds rolled in and the smell of incoming rain was heavy in the air.
Well, this sucked.
We hurried into the Transperth train and I practically had to shove a middle-aged woman out of my way to get to a few empty seats. Emily just managed to secure one and, to my dismay, someone had settled down into what was supposed to be my seat right next to her.
I glared at the sinister old lady settling into my seat comfortably. Using her old, withered age to get her way and then smiling sweetly at me. The audacity! I smiled back, knowing my downcast spirit was irrational. I didn’t walk five blocks in the cold so I could be standing uncomfortably among a sea of people.
It wasn’t usually this busy, but that was because the Royal Show was only on for one week a year, attracting over four hundred thousand people from all across Australia. Not many people drove to the Showgrounds due to lack of parking. In fact, the neighbourhoods surrounding the grounds had multiple cars parked in driveways and front yards. Residents had auctioned off their space for a sum of money to goers who wanted to use it as a parking spot. Meanwhile, the rest of us unfortunate souls resorted to public transportation and all the smells that accompanied it.
I closed my eyes and gripped the bar in front of me as a large person pressed against my back and pushed me forward to get through. I looked down at my purse and made sure it was closed. I put my phone in my jacket pocket and zipped it up, leaving a tiny hole for the cord of my earphones to slip through. It was blasting ACDC’s “Highway to Hell” in my right ear, half drowning out the sounds of crying babies and obnoxious teens making jokes that weren’t funny.
“Oh, my fucking God,” Emily yelped, pulling her earphones out of her ears. The decrepit old lady next to her snarled at her language. “I totally forgot, Claire!”
“Forgot what?” I asked, leaning forward to hear her better.
“The dare cards! I got them in my purse. We’re like four days overdue.”
I suppressed an annoyed grunt. I had hoped she would forget about those stupid cards we made a year ago.
“It’s your turn, too!” she cackled loudly. Her mouth was wide open, revealing the white glob of gum in the corner of her mouth.
I gave her a playful slap on the face. “Fuck off.”
“You want to do it now?”
“Hell no!”
“You will pick one now, skank.”
The glare from the elderly lady intensified as she watched the both of us swear at each other. Thankfully, we didn’t have to withstand her biblical scowls any longer. She got up and hobbled out of the door at the next stop. Two of the seats were available. I slid in beside Emily as more people stepped in. The empty seat beside me was occupied just as quickly. Facing Emily, I could feel the warmth of someone’s presence against my back.
The air was thick and swarming with all kinds of scents: colognes and hairspray, and an unpleasant musky smell that only sweaty men could expel. I shuddered and leaned into Emily, inhaling her jacket. She smelled like lavender.
“What are you doing, you weirdo?” She nudged me back the second I settled my nose into her bleached blonde hair.
“It stinks in here, and you smell delectable,” I said, mustering the creepiest voice I could while wiggling my eyebrows suggestively at her.
“Fucking psycho,” she muttered.
I watched her open her mammoth purse and stir the contents around in search of something. I already knew what she was looking for. I darted evil eyes at her as she took out a stack of white cards that were securely bound together by a thick blue elastic band. She had a giddy smile on her face, blowing giant bubbles of her gum. She shuffled the cards looking clearly proud for remembering.
I dreaded to think what my card was going to be. This was ironic, considering I was the idiot to come up with the dare game in the first place a year ago while we were bored one night watching reality shows. I didn’t remember the show in particular, but it was toting the message of living each day as if it were the last. Like usual, the sappiness found its way into my heart, and I wanted to prove myself by doing something exhilarating.
“We should dare each other to do something once every month,” I’d told Emily. “Like something crazy!” What a fool I was. Emily, being the creative one between us, thought up the cards. We bought blank flash cards from a dollar store and conjured up dares without each other’s knowledge of what was written on them. We’d take turns every month pulling out a card from the stack. Last month she was ordered to put up a video on Facebook dressed in hobo attire, pretending to snort a line of coke (it was really sugar, and it never made it to her nose) while dancing the Macarena.
Nobody appreciated the joke.
And her parents were especially unimpressed. Bunch of holier than thou snobs…
The month before that, I had to run two laps around the park beside our apartment complex in the dead of night with a Scream mask on. Naked. I was unaware of the homeless man sleeping beneath a tree until he wolf whistled at me.