Chapter 3
Ezra
The bottle tilts in Lukeman Gray’s hand. For a moment, I think he threatens to throw it at me, cut me open with the shards of glass. But it stays gripped in his calloused fingers. He stares daggers that pierce into my soul. His brow is furrowed with suspicion.
“You’ve been stealing my alcohol, you little shit?” Lukeman accuses as if it’s a question. He knows the answer.
Dazed, I don’t respond at first. I hug my violin to my chest.
“Answer me!” he bellows.
“What?” I finally say. “No! Thax must’ve—”
“Don’t you fucking lie to my face! Thomas sure as hell didn’t do this, the fucking pothead.”
I’m quiet. I let the insults hit me. The obscenities keep coming. After the shit day I had, I can’t take it. Not this time. I crack.
“No wonder he’s a pothead! You’re insufferable!” I exclaim.
“Excuse me, boy?” Lukeman hisses.
“I’ve had enough of your bullshit,” I say.
In a drunken rush, Lukeman Gray is on top of me.
I grip my violin case closer to my torso and know the moment I transform into my mother in self-defense—the only person my father refuses to abuse.
I let the familiarity of my ability overwhelm my body, let it shift into a body that is not my own.
It’s not a power I use often, but it comes as naturally as breathing.
“That won’t work on me again!” he says.
He keeps the bottle in his right hand while he lunges for the violin case.
I fight for it, glue it to my body, and wrap my wrist and fingers around the handle.
My grip is slipping. Lukeman twists the case at an awkward angle—I can feel my wrist start to tear.
I let go. He wins. In horror, I watch my father unclasp the case and fling the flap open.
With one last, final attempt to stop what he’s about to do, I close the distance between us and attempt to pry the violin from his grasp.
I’m decked in the chest, sent sprawling backward.
My vision blurs for a moment. He then releases the stringed instrument.
It splinters onto the floor with bone-crushing force.
The reverberation chills my body, and the fading echo of the violin trill diminishes entirely.
My world shatters. My heart plummets into the earth.
I stare at this person who’s supposed to be my father.
I see nothing but a violent man—someone unrecognizable, someone I couldn’t possibly be an offspring of.
I need to get out of here. I need to get out of here now.
“I should have registered you and your moronic brother!” Lukeman screams in finality.
He wouldn’t dare do that. Not only would the government find my parents complicit, but registering me and my brother would mean signing our death sentence.
Momentary regret flashes in Lukeman’s irises, but it’s gone a split second later.
I’m frozen, wondering if it was a trick. I don’t dare stick around to find out.
I could kill him, but what would that do? I’ve thought of it plenty of times. There are cops, laws to worry about, my abilities in danger of discovery. It would cause me more harm than my father ever could.
I flee into the drizzle that’s started to weep from the clouds.
I think of the violin remnants—the pieces of ebony scattered along the floor.
I think of class tomorrow and if I should even go.
And I realize then that I have nowhere to go now.
Nowhere to call home, because the house I left behind sure as hell was never a home for me.
I think of Mom and how I shifted to take on her appearance the moment Lukeman attacked me.
Like countless times before, I wonder why she never bothered to leave him.
“Your father is misunderstood,” I recall her saying once.
Misunderstood. No, he’s just a fucking terrible excuse of a human being.
And the rare attention I’d get from Mom would always leave me craving more.
It would be those brief, solitary moments when either Thax or Lukeman hurt me, when I needed to be patched up, that she’d be the attentive mother I craved—a mother who acknowledged my existence.
She was invariably silent. She never spoke up about the injustices—about the constant abuse.
I know that it did more harm than good in the long run.
I know that now. More importantly, I know that they never loved me.