I was sixteen the year everything collapsed — the year I became a mother, the year I became homeless, the year five men on motorcycles refused to walk away from a girl dying under a bridge. My name is Ashley, and back then I was surviving on nothing but fear, instinct, and the tiny heartbeat of the newborn I named Hope. I had been in foster care since I was a kid, bouncing between houses until I ended up with the man who destroyed what little childhood I had left. He had been abusing me since I was fourteen, and...
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