I could no longer feel my limbs.

Owen suddenly pulled out of me, scraping my insides like sandpaper, flipping me over onto my stomach like I was a rag doll. With one hand on the back of my head, he shoved my face into the wet sand. “That’s what you fucking get for trying to scream.” His next thrust sent painful shockwaves through my body, I’m pretty sure I lost consciousness for a minute or two.

I was being torn apart from the inside.

I didn’t know how much more I could take. My body was shutting down. I wasn’t gasping for breath anymore. Only small pulls of air kept my heart pulsing slowly, deep within my chest.

“It fucking hurts, doesn’t it?” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Bet Jake didn’t fuck you in the ass!” Taking fistfuls of hair, he yanked and pulled for leverage until he yanked hard enough to rip out patches of hair and scalp. It made the same sound as a stubborn zipper. “You see now, don’t you? A part of you is mine now.” He almost giggled when he whispered those words. I could smell him even through the sand. I could smell and taste my own blood and vomit. I could actually feel my insides coming apart as every grain of sand ground against them.

My mind wandered to the news reels I’ve seen where people describe the aftermath of a tornado: It was a surprise… sounded like a death train… left everything broken and twisted in it’s wake… almost killed…scared to death…lost everything…would never be the same…

I’m not going to survive this.

I opened my mouth to scream into the ground. Instead, I welcomed wet sand into my lungs, gagging until I dry heaved and forced even more of the beach into my throat.

I’m going to die.

I was never going to see Jake again. Just when I thought I finally had something I could trust, something real, it was all being taken from me.

By force.

How stupid I was to think I could ever be happy. I was being punished for wanting more than what I had been dealt. I was going to die here. I lifted my head from the sand in one last attempt to stay alive.

Owen flipped me back over and pressed his hands into my chest forcefully to steady himself. I felt the crack of my ribs and heard bones snap. He kept talking, but now, his voice was just a muffled sound in the distance.

Smaller background noises seemed amplified. A nearby cricket chirping. The rustle of palm fronds in the wind. The splash of mullet jumping into the canal.

Help, please someone... help.

Instead of help, I received only more blunt force, more blinding agony across my battered face.

And then, I died.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

DEATH DIDN’T DRAW ME INTO ITS EMBRACE that night, although I truly believed that it had. I’d rather have been dead than have to be the fucking victim again. I'd rather have been dead than hold the knowledge of what happened, to have the power to see those images whenever my thoughts felt like wondering beyond the walls I’d built. All the reminders of the blows to my face and body would come with them, the revisiting of the horrific intrusion inside of me.

It was too much to ever think that I could be happy.

I wasn’t the happy ending type, after all. I was the fucked-up kid that fucked-up shit happened to. Why had I ever thought I deserved more?

I didn’t know how long I’d lain there, didn’t know if it was day or night. I didn’t open my eyes for hours. I kept them shut and wished for a quick death. I thought if I concentrated hard enough I could will myself into oblivion. People like me were only meant to feel pain and suffering, I opened my eyes —or, I should say, I opened my eye.

And pain I felt.

I was in my room. Jake’s room. Our room. That was all I could make out before having to shut out the harsh rays of daylight. My mouth was dry and cracked, and seemed glued shut. One of my nostrils was clogged. I couldn’t catch my breath. I used my swollen purple fingers to pick the dried blood and scabbing from my lips so I could open my mouth to take a deep breath. It felt like glass shattering inside me.

How did I get back here?

Did someone save me?

No, someone hadn’t saved me. Someone moved me.

He moved me.

A wave of nausea came over me. Unable to stand and run to the bathroom, I tried to wretch onto the floor beside the bed, in the process unclogging a dried blood-filled nostril, sending chunks of black and streams of fresh red into the bile on the side of the mattress.

So much for puking on the floor.

Exhausted from what couldn't have been more than a few minutes of consciousness, I drifted back off to sleep lying upon the mess I just created.

The next time I awoke, it was night, and I needed to use the bathroom. My legs wouldn’t cooperate. The second I tried to stand, I started to go down again. I tried to catch myself on the nightstand, but my arms weren’t strong enough. I fell chest-first onto the floor. A tingling sensation in my spine erupted into a tearing sensation from my neck to my ass. There was no way I was going to be able to walk the twenty feet or so to the bathroom.