Love Stamps

5 ~ Playing with Fire

"Ava! Ava honey, wake up." Mandy's voice brings me out of my excruciating nightmare.

My eyes fly open and dart around the room, looking for the white walls, but they were just in my head. I'm in my room, with Mandy's eyes wide as saucers; she's dressed in shorts and t-shirt with her dark hair up in a messy bun.

"What time is it?" I croak, using my elbows to sit up.

"Three am." She says in a soft tone, sitting down on the edge of my bed.

Mandy looks at me in concern, as she lifts a perfectly manicured hand up to my face, gently wiping a tear away that I didn't even know was there.

"Ava..." She begins and I sigh, closing my eyes. Mandy has been very sweet and understanding through this whole ordeal, but she can be very annoying and persistent when she wants information.

"What did that bastard do to you? To make you so weak?" Ouch. Also very blunt.

"Mands...we've been over this. It doesn't matter." I mumbled, trying my best not to upset her, but having the opposite effect. She rags her hand away.

"So you'll tell some random stranger but not me?" she quips. I struggle to find the right words to explain it to her without causing her further distress. Her moods can change from sympathy to anger in a second.

"Its not like that-"

"Yes, Avery, it is like that." I clench my teeth.

"Just let me explain!"

"No, I will not. I've been there for you every step of this whole thing. I held your hand all the way through the legal battle with you and Flynn, I even gave up Lilac and moved to a different fucking state for you! I was there by your side through Dawson's funeral, and yet you can't tell me why you refuse to get a job, or why you wake me up nearly every fucking night!" Mandy rages.

I'm taken aback. I've almost never seen my big sister angry like this. After a minutes silence its obvious that she wants me to be the first person to say something, probably to defend myself, but the truth is I don't know what she wants to hear from me.

"I don't know what to say." I half whisper. I'm suddenly cold and I wrap the duvet around my shoulders.

"Please, just tell me how it happened." she says quietly, staring at the wooden floor.

I know what she's referring to.

The night Dawson died.

The night I nearly died along with him.

"Who is he?" Flynn shouts in my face. His features have contorted into rage like I've never seen."Are you cheating on me?" The bottle of vodka in his hand is sent flying across the room, smashing on the wall not far from the shelf that he had sent up a week ago. Glass shards sprinkle the floor.

Dawson begins to cry at the commotion; but luckily, he is laid in his car seat on the couch, far from the range of the shattered bottle.

My eyes widen and I shake my head rapidly. He towers over me, caging me while I sit on the chair, fear coursing through my veins.

This time is different from the times before. This time he will not feel sorry afterwards.

"Answer me, woman!" he bellows, and I yelp when he reaches out and rags me by my hair and throws me to the floor. I land on my arm the wrong way and I hear a crack. I cry out in pain, tears streaming down my face.

"Please." I beg, but he doesn't listen.

"Oh, so now your fucking crying! Boohoo. I caught you out with your new boy toy, how the fuck did you expect me to react?"

"I wasn't!" I whimper and I see red flash in his eyes. He storms towards me, and I desperately back myself up into the corner; I grit my teeth at the searing pain shooting up my right arm. His hands grip my clothes, his face close enough to mine that he spits in my face when he speaks.

"I fucking saw you! What do you take me for, an idiot?"

With brute force, he yanks me up off the floor and hurls me into the table, the wood jabbing into my side, and I hear my back crack slightly from the impact.

I need to lead Flynn away from Dawson.

I'm surprised my work shirt hasn't ripped when I crawl on my stomach towards the other side of the room, sobbing. My arm is on fire and I'm pretty sure its broken.

"I'm not finished with you yet." Flynn growls, and I hear his feet stomp against wood, and then I feel his hand jerk my hair back and cry out in pain.

"Tell me, did you fuck that prick?" He whispers menacingly beside my head, sending shivers through my body.

"Because," he licks the inside of my ear, and I freeze. "You know I can give it to you much better than any other man."

Oh no. No no no. Not again.

"You don't understand!" I sob, even though I know my efforts to make him listen are wasted. He releases my hair and I collapse on the floor for a brief second before he wrenches the back of my shirt up.

"Get up you whore." Flynn glares at me, and I see nothing of the sweet, considerate man that I fell in love with two years ago. If you think that I would birth a child into this kind of environment, you would be wrong.

He raises a hand and I flinch, but I prepare myself when he brings it down sharply on my face, jerking it to the side, which sends me stumbling. My hands cling to my stinging flesh.

Dawson's cries become louder and more unbearable. My knees give out but before I collapse to the floor Flynn grabs me.

"I told you I'm not fucking stupid!" He roars, brutally shoving me up against the shelf, jabbing into my delicate back, sending the objects on top of it falling to the glass and alcohol covered floor.

A lit candle was amongst those objects.

When I come back to the present, Mandy is still staring at me, waiting for an answer.

I uncurl my fisted hands and look down at my palms - I am not surprised to see the eight crescent scars have reopened.

"Well?" Mandy prods. My head snaps up to greet her angry glare. I know she is upset about Dawson's death, but she doesn't have to be so insincere about it. She has no idea what hell I've been through.

"There was a fire." I finally reply, which makes her roll her eyes in frustration. She inhales deeply through her nose, rubbing her hands over her sleep-drunken face, like you would when dealing with an annoying child.

"I know there was a fire." She sighs softly, "But how did it start?"

I hesitate before answering. I couldn't tell her what happened with Marco.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Nobody did. Flynn was always this kind, considerate guy in front of other people - that's one of the things that led me to fall for him.

Mandy rests her head on her hand, obviously exhausted from working all day, and now I'm keeping her away from her bed with my short, undetailed answers. Guilt pangs my gut.

"Try me." She looks into my eyes, and I can almost see her desperation when I shake my head in response.

She stands up abruptly in frustration and storms out of the door, purposely slamming it behind her.

I understand, she needs to know how her nephew died, but saying it out loud would be admitting it to myself.

That it's all my fault. I was the one that had let it get that far.

I did this to the only thing that was truly important in my life.

I killed my own son.