Altered. [Harry Styles]

03.

TW: Domestic Abuse, mention of blood & minor medical procedure (stitches)

Josie.

"Go to bed." Cole murmurs under his breath as we're exiting Evie's room. Exhaustion pools under his eyes in dark circles, regret of his actions deepening the frown lines on his face.

"I will in a little while." I close Evie's door behind me and try to push past him to head into the kitchen, but he uses his broad shoulder to block my pathway.

"Go to bed, Josie." He repeats, elevating the volume of his voice. "I've had enough of you for one goddamn day."

"Enough of me?" My brows magnetize together, confusion dumbstruck on my face. "I didn't do anything."

"That's the problem here, Josie." He narrows his eyes, burning them into me. "You never do anything. You sit on your ass all day and complain about the live I'm giving you." He shoves his tongue in his cheek, biting back his condescending laughter. "If you would've done something, anything, Evie would be fine, but you sat there and let her fall."

He's falling into the only defense mechanism he knows outside of violence, and that's manipulation. He's throwing the guilt my way to deflect from his own responsibility.

"You're right. Maybe if I played the role of both mother and father, then Evie wouldn't have gotten hurt." I snap, my tongue faster than my mind. The extreme highs and lows of today took over, pushing me to my breaking point. "Maybe all she needed to prevent any of this was a good father figure, because clearly, you're doing a shitty job." My eyes widen when my ears caught up to my voice and processed what I was saying.

Regret immediately plummets in the pit of my stomach. Anger wrecks havoc over Cole's face, redness hazing over his cheeks. His eyes darken, pupils canceling out the rich brown color of his irises. The scariest part about Cole's abuse is that he sits in silence and plans his attack. It's not instinctive or reactionary, it's calculated and cruel.

I'm cornered in the hallway, the only place to run was into our bedroom, but that isolation would only make me more accessible to his harm. He won't hurt me right outside of Evie's bedroom, he couldn't live with himself if his daughter saw him for the monster that he is.

Or maybe he could.

My cheek burns to the third degree, an unexpected swing knocking me back a few steps. My back collides with our bedroom door, the wood rattling from the impact. Tears brim my eyes out of reflex and nothing more. I don't cry out of pity for myself or as a plea to get him to stop, because he's never stopped before and I still chose to stay.

Love makes you do crazy things.

Clarification: my love for Evie.

"Hear me when I say this, because you know damn well that I don't repeat myself, Josie." His calloused fingers dig into my cheek bones as he grabs my face and forced eye contact with a harsh yank. "You will never be a mother to my child. You haven't been so far, and as long as I live, no legal document will ever say otherwise."

I feel my heart break into a million pieces. Not in the way it breaks when a relationship comes to an end, but in the self critical way that makes you stare at yourself in the mirror during the middle of the night just to pinpoint all of the ways you aren't perfect.

I haven't been a motherly figure to Evie so far?

What about all of the doctors appointments where she's sitting on my lap to get a vaccine shot? Where was Cole?

Or all of the letters we've traced together just so she could learn how to hold a pencil? The prideful smiles she sent my way every time she mastered a new uppercase letter weren't empty...