C'mon, C'mon (TMH 1)

Chapter 9: I Couldn't Leave You

Bella's POV:

His fists lock around my arms, pinning me to the floor while his face glows purple with his burning rage only made worse by his drunkenness. He seizes me, banging my head against the floor, while I seal my lips shut to keep in my cries which I haven't been able to let out since I was a child and I learned to grit my teeth and bear it.

He rises to his feet, still clutching me by the collar of my tank top. My body feels so small in his heavy grip and next to his burly form as he swings me through the air like I weigh nothing more than twenty pounds, hurling me through the kitchen door and into the hallway.

I fall against the wall and collapse on the floor. The bruises and callouses on my back are so hard by now that I barely feel the crash. What I do feel, however, is the excruciating pain that snaps through my ankle as it twists under my weight. I squeeze my eyes shut and bend over in pain.

I hear another crashing sound in the kitchen and hope with all my heart that he's fallen in his drunken state, giving me the chance to conceal myself until he's sober. But when I hear a slew of curse words, followed by a heavy grunt and the thud of his lumbering footsteps, I know I'm not safe.

My ankle stings like fire, but I reach upward, grasping the wooden poles of the banister, and hoist myself onto my good foot, curling my sprained foot behind my ankle. I squeeze the bar, pressing my face against it and closing my eyes, waiting for the snap of pain that is sure to erupt once I move my foot.

I shift my ankle.

It comes.

Ignoring the burning agony shooting through my lower leg, I stagger forward, hugging the banister, and fall onto the bottom stair. In the kitchen, I can hear the sound of bottles shattering and my father swearing in the way he only does while heavily drunk. I know because riddled among his curse words are random references to my long-disappeared mother, my father, shot dead fifteen years ago; and someone I've never heard of whom he keeps referring to as "Richford."

"Richford!" he bellows in a voice so terrible I can almost feel the pain rippling through my ankle with every syllable. "Richford! You can have them! Take them and GO!"

Probably a meaningless drunken babble. It must be... and yet, every time I hear it, I notice how much his voice seems to change—alter from his normal drunken drawl. A strange passion seems to explode inside him, threatening to take over his entire being.

He staggers from the kitchen—I can hear his large body as it falls halfway against the wall, and then I glimpse his terrifying face, his scraggly dark brown hair matted over his eyes, which are greedy with malice.

He sees me, and his eyes are alight. I let out a little shriek and shrink back, but every time I try to move my body, pain snaps through my ankle, weakening me more and more every time. I press my face against the wall, squeezing my eyes shut against the tears which spring from the pain.

"Bella, babe," he slurs in a cool, icy drawl.

My eyes snap open and I dive to the side, away from him, falling down the bottom stair and nearly colliding with the cast-iron umbrella stand beside the front door. The side of my face presses against the floor and my ankle leaps with pain.

Without thought—without any consideration of what I'm about to do, or what the consequences could include, my arms lift above my head, my hands clamp around the cold metal of the stand.

He won't see it coming. Not while he's this out of his senses.

My forearm muscles, made thick from those endless hours of basketball, now tighten as I lie on the floor, pain shooting through my leg, lifting the umbrella stand into the air.