I watched her take the pills and drink some of the shake.
I continued to comfort her, holding her hands and rubbing her back when I suddenly caught glimpse of a bruise on her neck, covered with a turtle neck.
"Is that a bruise?" I asked and she instantly scooted away from me, adjusting the collar of her sweater.
"That's nothing." She mumbled.
"Briley-" "it's a hickey, okay?"
I didn't believe her.
She knew I didn't, but she didn't question into it.
One week later
Ben.
I listened as Briley sang quietly along to my radio, us sitting in the school parking lot due to us being extremely early to school today.
I thought back to what happened yesterday afternoon and night.
The afternoon started well, Briley cooking, Roy coming home in a decent mood, but clearly intoxicated.
Something broke out while I was in the bathroom and all I know is, I came back into the kitchen to Briley screaming louder than I've ever heard and Roy holding her hand to the stove top.
"You will learn to fucking respect me!" He finally let her go.
"What the Fuck?" I screamed, running to her, immediately turning on cold water to run it over her hand as she continued to scream, tears flying down her cheeks.
He ignored me, acted as if I didn't come into the room at all.
He listened to me asking her multiple questions about whether she could feel her hand or not, and he just calmly fixed his plate and then left the room. I wrapped her hand, making sure it had antibiotic medicine on it and such.
I thought that would be the worst of the night
But then
I woke up to Briley bloody murder screaming
I instantly ran into her room and he was choking her, telling her to shut the fuck up.
She was continuing to scream over him, which made me know that it was bad, because normally she wouldn't make a noise if he told her to shut up.
I shoved him off of her, which earned myself a good few hits, but nothing I've never felt before.
I hit him back, which he laughed at before just simply leaving the room.
I told her to grab her stuff for school and we left right then, at four am.
She didn't want to talk about what he did to her before I was in the room, but I was honestly scared to know.
We hadn't slept anymore and I could tell she was tired, but she never told me.
"What are you doing about tonight?" She spoke quietly.
I didn't know.
"We have to go home, Briley" I mumbled.
"No" she spoke firmly.
"I'm not going back there." She was even firmer with her speaking.
"What did he do to you?" I asked again.
"I don't want to talk about it" she instantly started crying, avoiding even looking at me.
"Ben- you can't go back, we can't go back there." She sobbed to me.
And for the first time ever, I started crying with her.
I cried into my hands, trying to piece this all together in my head.
"I have to go" she soon spoke, moving to get out of the car.
"Briley- let's just skip" I cried out to her.
"Let's take today off of school and figure out what the fuck we are supposed to do." I spoke.
"Ben, I know what I'm doing." She mumbled.
"Running away isn't going to make any of this better-" "do you remember the doctors from a few weeks ago?" She asked me.
"Yes- why?"
"One of them comes and gives me medicine everyday, and he's been doing this since the blood work. He's like my best friend now. I'm going to tell him and he's going to get us both somewhere safe."
"Briley- absolutely not, you can not just trust those men, you don't even know them!" I panicked, getting out the car and running to her.
"What happens if you tell him and all he does is get the cops involved- we have no proof-" "we absolutely do have proof." She spoke, tears rolling down her face.
She motioned to her hand, to the bruises on her neck.
"And I don't know if you've looked in a mirror today or not, but your face is screaming abuse." She spoke firmly.
"Briley- this is too soon, You can't tell them. You can't trust that they will actually help you out of this." I panicked to her, almost begging her.
"Ben- I have no choice."
