Flawed by Kate Avelynn Page B

standing in the middle of the beer puddle in his holey tube socks. I drop to my knees at his feet and mop the spill up as best I can, trying to ignore the fact that James stood with his arms folded the exact same way an hour ago on the trail.
    My father’s socks soak up a lot of the beer, but he makes no move to take them off. Maybe he’s waiting for me to offer? I won’t. No matter what he says, I’ll never touch him willingly. With the floor mostly dry and all the condiments cleaned off, I scramble to my feet hoping to escape to the garage where I’ll toss the dripping towel in the washer.
    His hand snakes out and catches my elbow, bloodshot eyes fighting to focus on my hair.
    “So, you’re tryin’ to look like your slut ma now, huh?”
    I’m close enough to the living room to make out his rust-orange armchair and the pyramid of crushed beer cans on the coffee table in front of it. I can always gauge his mood by the number of cans in the pyramid. He’s already through two six-packs.
    This is going to be very, very bad.
    “It’s summer,” I say feebly. “Short hair is comfortable in the summer.”
    The fifth round begins. Pausing in the foyer, my father watches his younger, blonder self land a wicked right hook that sends the other guy, a sinewy Hispanic that looks way too small to be fighting my father, to the ground in a shower of spit and blood. Shortest final round ever, my father always brags. I mouth the words along with him and hope he leaves it at that tonight.
    He doesn’t.
    Deceit, loss, rage. It’s all there in his glassy eyes when he turns to me. “Your ma used to keep her hair short like that.” He reaches for me, his meaty fingers digging into the soft flesh of my upper arm. If I try to run before he’s gotten in his first blow, or do anything to draw attention to the fact that I’m wearing a boy’s sweatshirt, this will be much worse. “She’d do anything to get a man to look at her.”
    Coppery blood explodes inside my mouth when he knocks me to the ground. I’ve bitten something—my tongue, my cheek, my lip, probably all three. Now I can try to escape because he loves the chase. It’s like I’m a little girl all over again, scrambling backward across the faded carpet into the dining room as he stalks toward me and I plead for mercy that’s never going to come. He loves it when I beg.
    I’m sick of begging.
    Staggering to my feet, I focus all my fear and anger on his grim face. “Leave me alone, Daddy. I’m serious.”
    He ignores me. “So where’d you whore yourself out tonight? The Armory? Those little shits they got fightin’ might talk big, but they ain’t never gonna be as good as me. How much they payin’ you girls nowadays? Twenty bucks? Thirty? Your ma used to let me screw her for a pack of cigarettes.”
    The thought of him paying our mother for sex in cigarettes sends me over the edge. “I would never whore myself out to an Armory loser!”
    My words hang like fumes in the eerily silent room.
    I forget to breathe. My heart forgets to beat.
    There are no bratwurst commercials to save me—the video is over.
    My father already won.
    When his eyes narrow and he takes a hesitant step closer, I know I’ve provoked the monster that lives inside of him. He follows when I back away.
    My back hits the wall. In my frantic scrambling across the kitchen, I missed the hallway by three feet. Instead of the relative safety of my locked bedroom, I’m in the shadows of the entryway. Shadows that aren’t dark enough to hide the way my father’s eyes flash when his hand moves to his belt.
    “Seems to me we’ve got a problem,” he says. “No way am I gonna let you sass me, and no way are you gonna ruin my reputation whorin’ yourself all over town. Maybe I oughta teach you a lesson. That’d be the honorable thing to do, and I’m honorable head to toe.”
    No. No, no, no. I’ve heard him say the same thing to our mother. Heard the “lessons” he’s taught her.
    I