Chapter 28
DRAKE
V isions of my childhood flashed before me, clicking from one awful moment to the next. A slide presentation of sadness and cruelty. Unrelenting, with the ferocity to break me into a million pieces.
I screamed.
These memories were supposed to be locked in a box and buried deep.
The death of my parents. The crash. The darkness. The aftermath.
The children’s home, the sorrow, the adoption.
The suffering of living with her . Sandra. My adopted mother. A wicked woman, now a dead woman with her claws buried deep into the fabric of my being.
She’s dead.
She’s dead?—
She liked locking me in the basement for being a bad boy. No food or water or hope. Told me I’d ruined her life, my adoption was a mistake. Told me how useless I was.
Trash. Trash. Trash.
I closed my eyes, covering my ears as the familiar sounds of leather on my skin cracked around me.
Go away. Go away. Go away.
I heard him , the beast she married when I turned sixteen. Bryan. Handy with his fists. One day, he hit me so hard he broke my jaw.
They hurt me because I was unworthy of love. My birth parents left me, taking love with them.
“Died to get away from you,” Sandra would spit at me.
I believed her. I always believed her because there was nothing in that house and my life but hate and pain.
Trash. Trash. Trash.
Darkness closed in around me as I wept. I hid my face, not wanting to see it crush me, bury me, take me away from the light.
Useless.
Unworthy.
Fading.