TW FOR ABUSE (chapter one and two, feel free to skip)
Charlotte sat on the windowsill of her bedroom window, her legs hanging out and ever so often smacking against the wall as she swung her legs up and down. Slowly she drew her hand up, bringing the cigarette to her lips and deeply inhaling. She had never been a smoker, not until recently. Ever since her husband Theo had lost his job due to his temper he had completely and utterly lost it. Every night he would arrive home pissed out of his brain, stumbling through the door with something to complain about and blame on Charlotte. She would do her best to calm him down but her attempts were rarely successful.
That specific night he was furious, he had seen his ex work colleagues out on a night out so when he arrived home there was no possible way Charlotte could have calmed him down. Although she knew her attempts would remain unsuccessful she tried again to calm him but it somehow made him angrier. He would always scream insults at Charlotte and threats of violence but he never actually harmed her physically. Not until today.
When he arrived stumbling through the door shouting she cautiously walked up to him to warn him to be quiet as the children were asleep and not to wake them. Theo took this as a threat and began to grow angrier with Charlotte. He walked closer to her and grabbed her wrist before pinning her up against the wall.
"Was that a threat Charlotte?" he slurred all of his words it was almost inaudible
"No I swear please just quiet down, the girls are asleep they don't need to hear this" she tried so hard to diffuse the situation
"Watch your fucking MOUTH" he screamed the last word shaking the whole house.
"I SAID BE QUIET" char had lost her patience at this point and was done with his shit.
He stared at her for a moment with a perilous look in his eyes before lifting his hand from her wrist and punching her full force in the face. Char flew to the ground, gripping on to the corner of the wall with one hand as her other hand cradled her face.
Theo immediately ran over, stumbling as he did before profusely apologising and stating he would never hurt her again.
"I love you Charlotte, so much you know that right. I'd never hurt you" he said cradling her face.
Tears poured from her eyes as she wondered what to do. Deep down she knew she should walk away and never come back, take the kids and give them a better life. Unfortunately, this was not the case. She slowly looked up at him before embracing him in a hug. He was a nice man, he loved his kids, he was just struggling currently. It wasn't his fault. He's a good guy... right?
Charlotte blew out the smoke as she pressed the bag of ice to her swollen, black eye. She had no idea how she was going to cover this up for work tomorrow.
Slowly the door creaked open as Theo creeped in. Char immediately put out the cigarette and dropped it out the window before swinging her legs back inside.
"Let's go Char come on" this was what she hated the most out of it all. Not the insults or the threats, not the punch she had just received but that fact that every time she would come running back and get into bed with him like nothing had happened. She fell for his act again and again.
She gripped the windowsill and let out a huge sigh before trudging into bed. As Theo and her laid in bed together and he started to lay kisses all over her slowly getting further down, Charlotte stared at the ceiling completely zoned out. It was as if she wasn't even there or at least mentally. A single tear fell from her cheek as Theo continued to kiss her.
The next morning she woke up with her husband sprawled across the bed, his arms draped over her. She didn't want to wake him incase he woke up in a furious mood, so she took every precaution to be as quiet as possible as she got ready for work. Luckily, the kids were going to their grandmas so she didn't have to worry about keeping them quiet too as that was always a struggle. It is hard to keep a 10 year old and a 15 year old quiet for 5 minutes let alone an hour.
She trudged into the bathroom and switched the light on. When she lifted her head to look in the mirror she saw the huge, black bruise forming around her right eye. Theo was a fighter and was always boxing or strength training so the impact of his punch was severe. Her face hurt to move and all she wanted to do was go back to sleep to escape her own mind and escape this day. Sadly she knew she had to go to work, it was probably best for her anyways to be out of this house and specifically away from her husband. Although she knew today that at least she did not have to spend the day with Marjorie refusing to even look in her direction and leaving the room when she saw Charlotte appear as she had shipped her off to Reece's nursery. All she had to do was get on with work and go home no problems.
Although Charlotte hated to admit it, every day the one thing she held on to, to keep her going and the one thing she could not wait for everyday was seeing Mia. At least that's what she used to look forward to, before she got her fired. Everybody despised Mia, and she understood why as she had done some horrible things to almost everybody in the nursery but the one person she would never hurt was Charlotte. Mia truly wasn't a terrible person in Chars eyes, she was just a misunderstood, manipulated girl who got dealt a really shitty hand of cards. If anybody was the bad guy here it was Roger for using her for years on end and lying to her with promises of helping her find her dad.
Mia had forgiven what Charlotte had done to her, she was even proud of what she did. But Charlotte could not let go of the fact that she had betrayed the one person who truly knew what been going on with her husband and the one person that would listen to her. Despite Mia being off trying to find her dad, miles away, they still managed to speak every single day without fail no matter what. It was the one comfort that Char had during this time. The conversation would always end with Mia begging for Charlotte to tell somebody what had been going on with her husband and get some help but her attempts failed every time.
As she continued getting ready, attempting to cover her black eye the best she could her phone buzzed and lit up nearly falling off of the sink. Her heart raced as she thought of what could've happened if her phone had fallen off but once she had looked down to see who had messaged her and saw it was Mia, a huge smile grew on her face. She instantly put down her brush and opened her phone to read the message.
"Hey sweetheart, how was last night was he drunk again? I miss you so much x
She didn't know what to do, whether she should tell Mia what he had done or if she should keep it to herself. She didn't want to worry Mia too much on her trip but yet again she so badly wanted to get this off of her chest. Ultimately, Char opted to keep it to herself.
"Hi Mia, he was drunk again last night but nothing out of the ordinary, he wasn't too bad. I miss you so much more"
It hurt her heart to send that message. The urge to delete it and send a huge paragraph explaining what he did was almost unbearable but she knew she couldn't. It wasn't fair to Mia.
Time had flown by, with Charlotte processing everything that had happened and she realised that she was almost late for work. She practically flew down the stairs and into her car and sped down the road to work.
When she entered the building she was immediately met by Reece who had a concerned look spread across his face.
"I'm so sorry Reece I lost track of time this morning, i'm not too late though right?"
"Charlotte it's fine it's 10 minutes don't wo- what happened to your eye? Are you okay?"
Shit.
hey 🤭 i hope you enjoyed i'm kinda scared to publish this but wtv enjoy!
