Free Didn't I Warn You by Amber Bardan Page B

worn photograph.
    “Don’t touch that.” I reached for it.
    He held the photo higher, rising off the bed and examining it. His lips thinned, and he looked at me. “What’s this?”
    I knew what he saw, and my heart rushed, my chest squeezed and pain echoed through my limbs. Me and a boy. Me and a boy, embracing inside a blue Mustang. My hair wild from a ride with the top down. Joy in my eyes and in my heart.
    “None of your fucking business.”
    He sank to his knee beside me. “You have a boyfriend, Angel?” Under other circumstances, the nickname might have been an endearment, but he spoke it now as though it were a curse. “You have a boyfriend yet kiss men in elevators, meet them on yachts?” He leaned down. “Is this the responsibility you were talking about?”
    My pain exploded into rage, and I snatched the photo from his hand. He let me take it.
    “Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” My eyes burned, my lungs burned, my skin burned. I could have caught fire, but the scariest part was the sobs building behind my ribs. Sobs I could never let out. Sobs I’d held back a year. I pressed the photo against my collarbone and rolled away from him. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
    I felt him watching me. Felt him staring, judging, weighing my truthfulness. He moved, and the slap of cards against wood sounded next to my head. Bank card, library card... I listed them in my head.
    The sounds stopped. His movements stopped. He muttered something foreign.
    I rolled onto my back. He held my driver’s license in his hand, staring at it as though it had singed his fingers. He glanced from it to me. His expression flattened. “You’re only twenty?”
    I frowned and nodded. “Yes.”
    He stood, dropping the card, and stared at me so long I became painfully aware of my entire external self. Aware of every hair on my head, of my eyelashes, of the split that had developed in the middle of my bottom lip.
    I ran my tongue along the crack. “May I call my parents, please?”
    He continued looking at me, staring. “No.”
    No ?
    The skip, skip, skip of my heart became a bang, bang, bang.
    “I need to let them know I’m okay. They’ll be freaking out.” I sat, leaning up on one hand. I needed to get home. Needed to get as far away from him as possible. “I won’t mention you...if that’s what you’re worried about.”
    “You’re learning,” he said, and sat next to me. “I’m glad you understand you can never, ever speak about me.” He placed a hand on my arm, his grip firm and inescapable. “Tell me you understand, Angelina?” He tugged me closer and looked into my face. “For your own good, agree that I don’t exist.”
    I didn’t try to pull away from him. Not that he’d have let me. There was zero give in his grip. I panted. It was almost as if the lining on my lungs had thickened. Thank fuck he didn’t know the other reason I’d come here. I wiped words like article and magazine from my mind. No matter what happened, I could never tell him now. I’d say whatever I needed to say, whatever he wanted me to say to get him to let me go. “You. Don’t. Exist.”
    He smiled, but it was cold and jagged. Then he reached out and smudged the sweat above my mouth with his thumb.
    My lips parted.
    He watched my lips too long. “Good girl.” His hand stayed on me, moving to my cheek. “Where are you then, Angel? If I don’t exist?”
    I blinked. What was he doing? Goose bumps managed to spring along my arms despite my internal furnace. This was a game. A game with rules I had to learn or I’d lose before it even started. I couldn’t lose this game.
    “I ran off with a boy from the party.”
    He traced the outside of my jaw, but his fingertips curled, and his knuckles bumped my chin.
    “We’re staying in a caravan park,” I whispered. My gaze traveled to his mouth. He had such a compelling mouth. Pink smooth lips, but the stubble around them was hard and sharp. His teeth were large