Reign of Brayshaw (Brayshaw High #3)(3)

The second I push up on my elbows, my head starts to pound, my stomach both growling and turning at the same time.

Alcohol and being drugged by a dumb bitch doesn’t mix.

I lick my dry lips, cringing at the bad taste in my mouth.

“Uh, fuck.”

I toss my blankets off and strip my bed bare – I was sweating like crazy. Thank God Maddoc’s not in here, I’m fucking disgusting.

Clammy and queasy, probably have puke in my hair.

Clothes in hand, I drag myself into the hall bathroom, locking the door behind me just in case Daddy Bray is still home and for some reason comes back this way.

Why was he in Maddoc’s room?

I sigh as the steaming water hits me, but my body is still so heavy, so I quickly wash my hair, leaving the conditioner in it, and plug the tub.

I’ve never taken a bath before, but this oversized one is calling my name right now.

The water on my feet is too hot when it’s pouring like it is, so I turn down the heat, grab some shampoo and pour it against the running water like you would in a bucket for a carwash. Instantly, the bubbles start forming.

A small grin takes over my lips as I watch it fill, and finally, I lower myself into the warm water.

I reach over, grab a towel from the rack and roll it up behind my head like a pillow.

After a few minutes, the tub is full, so I turn off the water and close my eyes.

Wow. This is the shit.

My muscles instantly start to calm, the tautness vomiting created finally soothing out.

It’s simple things like this people from my neighborhood will never experience. Not that this tub is any kind of simple, but still.

Bathtubs, in general, aren’t something you find in low-grade trailers. We were lucky to have running water, let alone a working water heater.

A few blocks from the trailer park, where the railroad tracks meet the highway, there’s a small truck stop with showers.

The city keeps the water running for the sinks and toilets and things, so a cold shower is free, but you can pay extra for heat. A lot of the people from the park go there to clean up and fill jugs for drinking. Wheeling it back is a pain in the fucking ass, but most have shopping carts or beat up strollers stashed behind their places for shit like that. Of course, cans or random shit found along the way that could potentially bring in money was priority over water.

I smile to myself at the thought of Gio making it out of there.

He was good to me, would hang out in the broken train carts until my mom’s louder clients would leave. I would never invite him in, though.

He may have only been older than me by a few years, but that didn’t stop her from trying to entice him.

I told her he was gay once when she wouldn’t let up, kept trying to convince me it was time for me to ‘grow up’ – she wanted me fucking my friend at eleven years old – but she said his sexual preference didn’t matter, that he was still a horny boy who would love the feel of his dick inside a “fresh vagina.” Sick bitch.

Wait...

I try and shake off the thought, but it’s useless and already growing deeper.

Ever since the day I started my period in fifth grade, my mother would push and push and push, constantly hounding me about being a prude.

She’d tell me to “get it over with already” talking about my virginity, said hanging on to it so tight would only cause me problems later.

She failed to see I wasn’t holding on to anything – I was simply a fucking kid who wanted no part of the things I hated her for.

I knew what she was doing, saw people fucking on movies and even on picnic tables or in backseats of cars in our lot.

Grown men would walk out of her room naked, not sparing me a glance – if I was lucky – as they’d come fish a beer or what the fuck ever from the mini-fridge, so I’d seen dick before, pussy, too, for that matter.

I was disgusted by it.

The sounds they’d make, the smells. The way they acted as if my mother was a fucking queen while their wives or husbands sat at home probably wondering where the fuck their partners were. Betrayal and disregard for any and everything around.

So, no. Sex wasn’t something I wanted.

For a long time I saw sex as a tool for manipulation, and I had no reason to use it. It wasn’t until I was desperate to erase what I knew sex to be, dirty and shameful, painful, that I was interested.

Crazy thing about all the shit popping up, my mom trading me for money in her pocket doesn’t surprise me in the least. There were tons of times I thought she would, and honestly, if it didn’t offend her when her men would make sleazy comments about me, she probably would have.

Or maybe not since I was technically already owned by another – bought by a rich man who posed as a commoner, who used to bring me ice cream and movies to keep me busy while he spent an hour in my mother’s room, supposedly talking about me. A man I knew to be good as far as good went in my world, who gave me my knife for protection before he was gone, only to make his way back into my life as my man’s dad eleven years later.

How much more twisted can this shit get?

With a sigh, I sit up and reach for the body wash, but the second I pop it open, my senses are assaulted with the overpowering aroma of coconut and something else as equally disgusting.

I quickly shift to my knees, open the shower door, and lean over the toilet.

My stomach is damn near empty, so liquids and dry heaving it is. A chill runs through my body as sweat beads form at the crown of my head.