I didn’t even realize I was shaking until I reached for a towel from the rack, wrapping it around her shoulders before pulling her up carefully. She swayed a little, but I steadied her, keeping a hand on her arm as she stepped out onto the mat. She wasn’t startled by my touch. Instead, she sank into it, her body leaning toward me as though I were the only thing holding her upright.

When her red, swollen eyes caught mine, a slow, terrible chill spread through my body.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice tight, my throat burning with a rage so raw it felt like I’d swallowed glass.

Beverly’s lips trembled, and her fingers curled around the edges of the towel like she could disappear into it. “He—he touched me, Blake.”

There are words a person hears in their life that never truly fade. They become ingrained in their very being, transforming them into something else entirely.

That was one of those words.

I knew damn well what anger was. I knew it like I knew the back of my own hand, like I knew the feeling of my pulse slamming against my skin, reminding me I was alive even when I wished I wasn’t. Anger had lived in me for years, simmering beneath the surface, coiled like a venomous snake, waiting for a reason to strike. I’d felt it locked away in rooms, in every bruise left on my body by hands that were supposed to care for me. I’d felt it since the first time someone hit me and called it love.

I’d clawed at my own skin in moments of solitude, trying to replace anger with pain, because pain was something I could understand. Something I could control.

But this? This wasn’t anger.

This was something else. Something I didn’t know how to control. Something black and consuming and limitless. It was an entity in itself, a beast roaring to be let out. It dug its claws into my ribs, tearing through my composure, whispering in my ear that violence was the only answer. I wanted to punch the wall with my fist just to feel my knuckles break. I felt as violent as every monster in my past. Maybe I had always been one, waiting for the right moment to show my teeth.

I swallowed it all down and kept my face passive, locked it all away behind a blank mask. I knew that if she saw what was rising inside me, she’d be terrified. Hell, I was terrifying myself.

My jaw was so tight I thought my teeth might shatter. My fists clenched, my fingers digging into my palms deep enough to leave half-moon cuts. I could feel my heartbeat everywhere—my head, my throat, my fingertips. It was erratic, violent, trying to break out of me.

“Who touched you, B?”