Page 35 of Baby Girl
I need him to leave.
I can’t handle seeing him, in my space, every single day. It hurts too fucking much. Not to mention, all the sweet and caringlittle things I keep noticing around the dorm. Like the fact that I haven’t done a load of laundry since I got out of the hospital, but I haven’t run out of clean clothes.
Or that neither Oakley nor I have done any grocery shopping, yet somehow we still have a constant supply of fresh food. The way my room is always clean.
The way I don’t feel quite so alone.
Tears manage to escape and my lungs burn as I fight the sobs.
Why the hell did I let this happen to me?
The bed dips behind me and cool fingertips brush against my temple, smoothing my hair away from my face, before a cloth-wrapped ice pack is gently placed on my temple, immediately bringing me back from the edge.
They shift around until they are the big spoon to my little but remain above the blankets, warmth and weight tucking me deeper into my bed, easing some of the ache that feels like a permanent bruise on my soul.
“I’m not going anywhere, little dove.”
The tears soak my pillow until I tumble back into darkness.
Chapter 19
Emery
Waking up to an empty room in the middle of the night should be a bare minimum expectation for a person who is single. It should instill a feeling of safety and comfort that your personal space was not intruded upon while you were sleeping.
So why the fuck am I disappointed, and honestly, the tiniest bit irritated that my room is empty when I open my eyes andfind that the chair has been pushed back under the desk and the space beside me is cool? Did he wait until I was asleep again to leave me here, alone? Or did he get bored and go looking for something to entertain him?
Flopping onto my back, I let out a puff of air. Now I’m irritating myself.
Pissed off because he is in my room. Pissed off because he isn’t. I need to pick a fucking side and stay on it. How can I want someone who betrayed me the way they all did?
They took my autonomy away.
They kept a massive fucking secret from me, left me locked in a dark room, with no hope of ever finding the key, then expected me to be delighted when they unlocked the door. All because they didn’t think I could handle myself if I was included in the plan.
When they were the ones who couldn’t handle themselves. All it had taken was the smallest amount of temptation from me and they cracked like crayons.
It’s fucking laughable, really.
And now I’m playing this ridiculous back-and-forth game with myself. The problem is that I’m so goddamn confused.
My body still wants them. I crave them, and not just physically. For that one weekend, I felt safe, treasured, like I’d found my place in this world. And knowing they wanted to keep me for even longer had started to cement my confidence in them.
But when shit got complicated, like so many foster families before them, they’d—metaphorically— shipped me back to the group home. Abandoned me with very few details about what I had done wrong and what the new plan was.
Which is where my brain steps in to remind me that they can’t be trusted, especially if they couldn’t trust me. How canI possibly put my well-being in their hands when they were so careless with it once already?
The issue with this tug-of-war between my body and my head is that my heart is the rope.
I miss them. I’ve missed them for weeks. Deep down, in the very pit of my soul, I know they are supposed to be mine. All four of them.
Derek.
Hudson.
Darcy.
Xavier.
