I moved fast and jumped in front of him. “Get out of here, Krit,” I yelled at him, and barely had time to prepare myself for the slap across my face.

“SHIT! Mom, stop it!” Krit demanded, and I felt his hands clasp around my arms.

“Stupid, stupid, ugly slut.” She hurled words at me that she thought hurt me. Coming from someone I cared about, maybe they would. But she’d been calling me names all my life. I didn’t care what she said about me.

She pulled back at first, and Krit tried to move me out of the way. But instead her swing hit my hurt ribs. The scream that erupted out of me sounded like it was coming from somewhere else as black spots formed in my vision and I crumpled to the ground, trying to breathe.

I heard Krit yelling, but I couldn’t move. The pain was paralyzing, and I hadn’t been able to draw a breath yet. The black spots all bonded together until there was just darkness.

***

“Dammit, Trish, wake up.” Krit’s desperate voice worried me.

I fought to open my eyes. The pain had started to subside. I was breathing again. Looking around, I tried to sit up in case the crazy woman we called Mother was getting ready to strike again.

“Be still. She’s gone,” Krit said, pressing a hand to my shoulder to keep me from getting up. “She probably won’t be back tonight.”

“You sure?” I asked, then winced because I had tried to shift. The pain was there, but if I didn’t move I was okay.

Krit looked angry as he nodded. “Yeah. I hit her. I’ve never hit her. I was scared because you weren’t moving, and so damn mad that you had to deal with her shit. I just lost it.” He sighed and hung his head. “She said she was calling the cops.”

Krit had hit his mother. Exactly what I’d been trying to protect him from. He’d feel guilty about it later. And he’d question himself.

“If the cops come here and see me like this, she’ll get locked up. She isn’t calling the cops. She was trying to scare you,” I assured him.

He nodded and straightened his shoulders like he was trying to be brave. “You need to see a doctor. Your ribs look bad, Trisha.”

If I went to the hospital, they’d take us away from her and we’d be split up in foster homes or group homes. I wasn’t letting that happen. I couldn’t protect him there. He needed me.

“Not chancing that. Just help me stand up, and then I’ll need help wrapping it tight,” I told him.

He stared down at me with a frustrated frown. Then growled angrily. “I’m not a little kid anymore. When are you gonna see I can take care of myself, Trisha? Stop getting hurt for me! I can protect us both. And I want you to see a doctor.”

“They will split us up,” I reminded him.

He looked defeated. “Maybe. But at least you won’t be beat on.”

“There is no promise of that if we escaped from here. At least here I know what to expect, and I have you.”

Krit leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “One day we won’t live like this. We will have a real life. We will be free.”

Tears burned my eyes. When had my little brother become the one who comforted me?

Chapter Nine

Rock

Trisha wasn’t at school today. I’d watched her brother and his friend get off the bus, but she hadn’t been with them. The kid studied me as he walked by where I was standing. As if he was trying decide something. His blue eyes were so much like his sister’s. And there was a haunted look in them that I remembered seeing in Preston’s when we were younger.

Something was wrong.

That feeling stayed with me all day. When the last bell rang, I didn’t head to the field house. I made my way to the eighth-grade hall. I was finding her brother.

Krit was walking toward the door leading outside when I got to his side of the building.

“Krit,” I called out. There was a crowd of kids between us, and I knew if he got out that door then I’d lose him in the rush.

He turned and his eyes found me immediately. Which probably had to do with the fact that I was more than a head taller than most of these kids.

After telling his friend something, he pushed through the crowd and made his way back toward me. Thankfully, his friend continued on outside. Krit pulled his book bag up higher on his shoulder and stood up straighter, making his tall, lanky frame seem even taller. “What do you want with her? She’s not some chick you can just screw and move on from. She’d never sleep with you. She’s a good girl. She’s also got shit to deal with, and a player like you wouldn’t understand. So back off her if you’re just after her as one to add to your many.”

I was impressed. Not once did he falter in his demand. He was standing up for his sister, and he wasn’t afraid of the fact that I could snap him in two. I liked this kid.

“Not after her to sleep with her. I like her. A lot,” I assured him. “Where was she today?”

Krit frowned like he wasn’t sure he believed me. But I could see there was hope in his eyes. He wanted me to like her. “She’s hurt,” he replied slowly, and I could tell he was holding something back.

“How is she hurt?” I asked, wishing I’d not waited all damn day to figure out why she wasn’t in school.

He looked away from me and his jaw clenched. After a few too many beats of silence, I was beginning to think he wasn’t going to tell me. Finally he turned his gaze back to me, and the pain in his eyes didn’t make me feel better.

“Mom hit her. She already had messed-up ribs. And she punched her there again. I tried to help her.” He stopped, and his eyes watered as a hardness came over his face.

Shit.

“She at home with your mom?” I asked, trying not to let the horror pounding inside my chest show on my face. The kid needed me to be strong. He was about to break down, and he was fighting it.

“I . . . I, uh, hit Mom. When Trisha crumpled to the ground, I lost it and I just . . .” He looked down and I saw him swallow hard.

“Did your mom leave?” I asked him.

He nodded.

Motherfucker. Why did her mother hit her? Sick f**ks didn’t need to reproduce. God should have made that a rule.

“Yeah. She was angry but she was bleeding. She left and wasn’t back this morning. Trisha was in a lot of pain and I convinced her to stay in bed. She needs to get better.”

“I’m taking you home,” I told him, and grabbed his arm and headed for the exit doors. I wouldn’t get any f**king sleep tonight if I didn’t see Trisha with my own eyes.

Krit tried to jerk his arm free. “Dude, let go. I’ve already missed my bus. I need the ride. You don’t have to break my arm.”

I wasn’t aware my grip was so tight. I let go of him.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

He shook his arm as if to get feeling back in it, but he continued to walk beside me.

“Don’t you have football practice?” he asked, glancing back at the field I had been due at twenty minutes ago.

“Yeah,” I replied, jerking open the door to my dad’s beat-up truck. I only got to drive it when he was working nights and sleeping all day. That was this week. I just had to fill it with gas and wash it.

“You gonna get to play Friday night if you miss? I heard that you had scouts watching you all season.”

If my dad found out I’d missed a practice, he’d be furious. The only reason he hadn’t kicked me out was because I could play football. He liked knowing his boy was going to be something.

When I was younger, he had left me with my mom and had barely come to visit me. Then one day in middle school I had begged him to let me play football and he’d been excited about it. When the coaches praised me and I became the star of the team, Dad had taken me away from my mother more and more.

The day I had come home from school to find all my things packed up in the back of his truck, my mother had been standing on the porch with the man she was dating. She explained that she needed a life and it was my dad’s turn to take care of me. Plus, she couldn’t afford it anymore.

The next month she moved to another state, and I hadn’t heard from her since.

So Dad was all I had. A man who only loved what I could do. Not me.

“If you don’t get to play, everyone’s gonna be pissed. We can’t beat the Dolphins without you.”

I would get to play. Coach would be mad and he’d make me pay for it with longer practices. But he’d let me play.

“I’ll play. Tell me how to get to your house.”

Krit pointed to the left. “Take the main street until you’re almost out of town. Then turn right onto Forts Road. Fifth trailer on the left.”

Forts Road was in the bad area of Sea Breeze. I’d been on that road once before with my mother when I was a kid. She’d been buying pot from someone there. We didn’t live in a great part of town, but it wasn’t this bad. And Dad had an apartment that wasn’t so bad. It was better than the house I’d lived in with Mom.

But Forts Road . . . Shit. Trisha shouldn’t be there by herself.

“It ain’t all that bad. Stop looking so damn horrified,” Krit grumbled.

I started to argue with him, but I let it go. No need to make him feel bad.

Chapter Ten

Trisha

From my bed, where I had lain all day, I could hear the school bus pull up by the road. Mommie Dearest came home sometime after noon. She stumbled down the hall, and I heard her door slam. Then nothing else. She was hungover or still high and sleeping it off. The door to my room was closed, so she never thought to look inside.

I waited for the front door to open and Krit to come in, but I never heard it. Once the bus was gone and he still hadn’t come inside, I knew I had to get up. Something was wrong. If he missed the bus, he’d need me. I held my breath and tried not to groan as I sat up and slowly moved my legs off the bed. Once I had them both on the carpet, I stood up and took short breaths.

Today I had babied my side. Tomorrow I couldn’t do that. For starters, the wicked witch was now home. Then, of course, if I missed more school, they’d start calling here. That would be bad. Very bad.

Just as I took a step toward the door, I heard someone pull up outside. I froze and waited. Krit’s voice drifted through the window. I let out a sigh of relief. He’d gotten a ride. I continued to walk to the door, but then I heard another voice.

Once again . . . I froze.

Rock Taylor was here. Oh no. What had Krit done?

“That’s Mom’s car. She’s home,” I heard Krit tell Rock freaking Taylor! What was he doing?

Forgetting the pain, I opened my door and made my way down the hall and into the living room just as the front door opened up and in walked my brother, followed by Rock. Holy crap.

He was so big. Stepping into our trailer, he looked so out of place.

“Krit,” I croaked out, while my eyes were locked on Rock.

His gaze dropped to my ribs, and I remembered what I had on. Wrapping my arms around my waist, I tried to hide the tape we had used on my ribs. I hadn’t wanted my clothes to touch my injured ribs, so I was wearing a sports bra and a pair of cutoff sweatpants.

“I missed the bus. He gave me a ride,” Krit started to explain.

That didn’t make sense. “Why did you miss the bus?” I asked, still trying to figure out why Rock was here. In our trailer.

“He asked about you. When you didn’t show up at school. I told him . . .”

I snapped my gaze off Rock and glared at my brother. Surely he hadn’t told Rock what had happened. “You told him what?”

Krit shuffled his feet nervously. He had told him about Mom. Why would he do that? Rock Taylor wasn’t going to run in and save the day. He was interested in me. Now that he’d seen me like this, I hoped his fascination with getting in my pants would go away. My hair wasn’t washed and I looked awful.