The Search For Shattered Pieces *Complete*

Chapter Thirty-Six: Truths and Turnabouts

Lyra:

   "How long Lyra?" Trent asks me when we're seated at the kitchen table with an ice pack on my cheek.

   "What?"

   "Don't, don't do that.  Don't try to shove this off.  How long has that bastard been abusing you?"

   "He hasn't been abusing me he has been training—"

   Trent slams his hand down on the table and shouts, "BULLSHIT!" His eyes are filled with furious fire.  "What I witnessed down there was clear abuse.  Coaches do not hit, they don't slap, they don't fucking abuse their students!"

   I slump down.  "It's all I've ever known."

   "What do you mean, Lyra," Tal asks softly.

   "My first coach was just as bad, if not worse, because he would...do things to me.  Maksim made me uncomfortable but never did anything.  And his training was no harder than it was with him. This is how training is.  This is what goes into competition level training.  It's all I've ever known."

   "That's sick, Lyra." Tal says and he looks almost about to cry.

   "Don't you see, it doesn't have to be that way?" Trent says.  "Did Coach Rancic hit you, beat you, hurt you?"

   "Well no, but I was only with her for a very short time...I was just waiting for it to come, actually."

   "Lyra, oh god, Lyra." Trent puts his hands into his heads.

   "Lyra, there is no way you will go back to training with that monster." Tal says resolutely.

   "But..."

   "You'll Coach with Coach Rancic.  She seemed to do well for you, right?"

   "Well...yes...but Stefan..."

   "Stefan can go to hell."

   "He won't be happy."

   "Again I said your fucking father can go to fucking hell for all I care," Trent says angrily.  "If he takes that piece of shits word over he own daughter than he doesn't deserve to have you as a damn daughter.  Actually he's never deserved you as a daughter, Lyra.  You're all goodness and light.  And he has a piece of metal where his heart should be.  He hit me when I was a kid, and slapped me around, did you know that, Lyra?  I'm sharing this with you because I want you to see that we all have broken pieces and that we find those pieces and put them back together again."

   "He hit you, Stefan hit you?" I'm enraged.  "I'll kill him", I jump up off the loveseat and Trent pushes me down.

   "Easy slugger.  I took care of of years ago.  He hasn't done anything to me in years, not since I grew bigger than him."

   "I...but...oh my god, he hit you, he had no right to hit you, Trent."

   "And the Russke had no right to hit you.  Can you see that? Can you actually see it's the same thing, Lyra."

   "But training..."

   "That's not training.  That intimidation, fear, brutality, and plain up abuse."

   "I don't like that word." I mutter.

   "What, abuse?"

   I nod.

   "Why not, Nightingale?"

   I swallow and look away from them.  "Because admitting it means that I let it happen.  That I allowed it to happen and didn't stop it."
"Oh pigeon," Trent pulls me into his lap and places the ice pack on the table and cups my stinging cheek gently, so gently. "You didn't allow anything to happen you were a kid, a damn kid. He took advantage of you. He held onto you with fear and brutality and you were just a damn little kid."