Read Cut Me Free for Free Online Page A

coming from Sam. Sitting up, I drag the pillow off my head and blink in the brilliantly bright light pouring through my window. My fingers run across the small electric blanket. I’ve had it for nearly a year, but it still looks new. I guess when you don’t use it the normal way, it shows. I didn’t need it for the cold—I’m used to being cold. What I couldn’t ever get used to was sleeping without the heat of my little brother curled up by my side. I never lie under it, but lying next to it is the only way I can get comfortable enough to sleep.
    The pounding starts again and it takes almost a full minute for my brain to realize the noise is someone knocking on the door. My heart thuds hard against the wall of my chest in time with the knocking and I can’t quite breathe. He’s found me. He’s finally found me.
    I should’ve known he couldn’t be killed. Something as evil as the Father wouldn’t surrender to a simple end like death.
    It doesn’t matter. I will not give up now. Stumbling to the kitchen, I pull a knife from the drawer as silently as possible. I grip the cold handle with trembling fingers and inch toward the door. One step—two steps—three, and then I hear Cam muttering on the other side before I even get my eye to the peephole.
    â€œYou better be okay.”
    Every bit of air in my body pushes out like a gale, and I place the knife back in the drawer.
    â€œHold on.” My voice is lost somewhere in my throat and what comes out is unintelligible. I hear a thump and when I look through the peephole I see Cam pressing his ear against the other side of the door.
    â€œCharlotte?” His voice is soft now and he waits. When I unlock the first of my seven locks—one of my favorite things about this apartment—I hear him release his breath. I look at the door to the fire escape and remind myself again to buy more locks for it. With only two, the fire escape is vulnerable. I refuse to be vulnerable, not anymore. Whoever lived here last obviously didn’t consider it a risk.
    They weren’t me.
    By the time I get the door open, his angry glare could melt glass and he doesn’t wait for me to invite him in.
    â€œWhere were you last night?”
    The other half of the payment—I’d forgotten about it when I saw the girl.
    â€œI’m sorry.” My voice feels scratchy, like a cat has been set loose in my throat.
    Cam frowns and walks into my kitchen. When he returns a moment later with a glass of water I’m so stunned I don’t know what to say. He pulls out a chair and waits for me to sit before handing me the drink. I take a sip while I try to find an appropriate response to his kindness. A simple thank-you doesn’t seem like enough.
    â€œAre you sick? Is something wrong?” At the shake of my head he says, “You don’t look well.”
    I rub my eyes and sigh. “You keep telling me that.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œIt was a rough night.” I stand up, wanting to avoid more questions. “Wait here. I’ll get your money.”
    â€œNo. That’s not…” When I pause and wait for him to finish, he only shrugs. “Fine.”
    My first day in the apartment, I put a safe behind a panel in my closet. Under the mattress or in my suitcase didn’t seem like good places to store the money—my money now. It was Nana’s before she got sick, and she told me where the Parents kept it, under a loose board beneath their bed. My safe feels like a wiser choice.
    Digging through my closet, I push aside the only thing besides my bolt that I brought with me from my old home, Sam’s favorite puppet. Just seeing it sends a wave of sadness and regret crashing down on me. It’s tangled in its own strings, and it takes me a moment to gently move it completely out of the way. There’d been a few puppets stuffed up in the attic with us. Sam was afraid of all