It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. I felt unworthy, rejected, pushed aside. I knew those things weren’t entirely true, but in that moment, I didn’t care about logic. I was raw with pain, and all I could see was every insecurity staring back at me, laughing, proving themselves right.

I shook my head and let my back slide down the wall until I hit the ground, burying my face in my hands.

I couldn’t even look at him anymore. He didn’t understand us.

No, a voice whispered in my head, he understands you perfectly, and he’s right. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the thought away, but it clung to me like a shadow.

I was too angry to speak. Too exhausted to keep fighting.

It felt like an hour had passed in that position.

People came and went through the doors, oblivious to the wreckage inside me. I watched them pass, watched them exist in their simple little lives, and for the first time in my life, I wished I had never left the foster care system.

If I had stayed, if I had never let myself believe in something better, maybe I wouldn’t be feeling this way now. Maybe I would have met Beverly on a different path in life. Maybe, in another life, we could have been easy.

But this wasn’t another life. And my father was still standing beside me, silent, while everything inside me splintered.

I was so focused on my own misery that I almost didn’t hear the shouting over the rush of blood pounding in my ears.

“Get out of my way!” A man’s voice, sharp with fury.

I lifted my head and watched as a bald-headed man stormed toward his car. His wife stood between him and the backseat, shielding a little boy who was sobbing uncontrollably.

“He spilled ketchup in my goddamn car!” he bellowed.

“He’s just a kid, he didn’t mean⁠—”

The slap was so fast, so violent, that I couldn’t process it in time. The woman’s head snapped sideways. The boy’s wailing reached a fever pitch, his tiny hands clutching at his mother’s leg.

“Get out of the way,” the man spat, his tone a deadly threat. But the woman didn’t move.

The moment he reached under his shirt, my world split into two—the present and the past colliding so violently that I could no longer tell which one I was in. I heard the screams before they even left the woman’s mouth.

Dad’s hand clamped around my arm, tight enough to bruise. “Don’t,” he warned, his voice low but carrying an edge of panic I had never heard before. “I’m off duty. I don’t have my gear, Blake. Just let me call the department. I’ll get backup.”

“He’s going to hurt them,” I said through my teeth.