Broken Together

Chapter One: Hope

(Please be advised this book is currently being rewritten and heavily edited. If the chapter has been rewritten and edited, it will state the following, ***Edited/Rewritten. Each chapter will also be placed in Neobook. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy!)

***Edited/Rewritten

~AURORA~

For as long as I can remember, I have been in pain. Everything hurts, everything always hurts. I miss my mom. My free-spirited, fearless, loving, mom.

I miss my life before all of this. I still dream of those six years with her. Six years without him. My mom was beautiful. My mom was genuine and kind. It has never made sense to me, how she could have loved a man like him. A man she left me with. A man she had to leave me with.

When I was six, my mom died in a car accident. She went to pick up my birthday cake from the bakery. She said she would be right back. The next thing I knew, policemen were at our door, trying to convince me that she was gone and that she would not be coming back. They told me, that they were sorry for my loss. I have wondered for years If she saw it coming. If she felt pain. If she felt anything in that moment at all.

Every time he hits me...hurts me, I think of her pain. I think of how my pain could be nothing in comparison to hers.

So I take the pain because I have to. Because I know nothing else.

I am brought out of my thoughts when I hear Tom yelling at me. I look up to see him storming towards me. Discomforting chills run through my body and I freeze. I just freeze. The same way I always have and probably always will.

"Where the fuck is my beer? I fucking told you to bring me my beer and here you are doing nothing like you always do!" His hand raises and I flinch.

"Weak, just like your mother," He spits out as he backhands me, sending my body back a few steps as I hold my cheek with my hand.

He grunts and storms off back to the living room, muttering harshly at me.

I tell myself not to listen, not to hear his harsh and cruel words. But I do, I always do.

As I turn to go get his beer from the fridge, I wince and instinctively go to hold my side. My ribs must be sore from last night.

I lift my shirt a little to see my skin bruised in dark purple shades.

Each color reminds me that I cannot do anything right. Even If I did, I am sure he would still hurt me. He always hurts me.

As I look around the house I refer to as home, I see empty walls. Walls that used to hold memories, and photographs of my mom. Of our happy family.

At first, when my mom died, Tom was just angry. Always drinking, and storming around the house, breaking things. I could handle that. I could handle the sharp sounds at night from shattered glass. I could handle the grunts he would make as he made it through the door drunk. I could handle it, until I couldn't.

One day his anger was put on me.

I remember how unreal it felt. How wrong and ill it made me feel.

I told him I missed my mom, and that living without her was painful. He became upset with my confession and grabbed my arm roughly as he pushed me on the floor. He told me how he wished it was me in that car. He told me it was my fault she died. My fault.

Then gradually, it got worse.

When I did anything at all, sometimes if I just spoke, he would hit me.