Needed You

Chapter Seven

Trigger warnings - injury, mention of domestic abuse, mention of suicide
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I sit on the floor, shaking like a leaf in the wind, holding in the cries of pain, and anguish, and sheer mortification.

Whatever healing had progressed in my ribs, the damage of his actions has unravelled it all. New bruises already sprout along my arms and legs, my back and torso. My face is bloody, a cut to my brow and a dried up river of it twisting below my nose and over my lip. My hair hangs knotted and limp, half pulled from my pony tail and curled over my shoulder. My hands sting - I tried to fight him off today, hitting him back as hard as I could. It didn't work. I knew it'd make him angrier.

He kicked me so hard in the back that I'd wet myself.

I knew, from the look in his eyes at the bar, what waited for me at home. It was worse, because I had to pretend all was well when I waved Addison off. Worse still, because I had to put Freya to bed with a smile on my face, knowing I had hours to wait before deliverance came. Nothing is worse than knowing I have to be quiet while he beats me, for fear that my sister will wake and come to see that I'm okay.

He'd said nothing as he came in, laying down his files on the side table, and loosening his tie. I'd launched into an explanation as quickly as I could. That they were just friends, and we were playing around, and that, though it didn't make it right, I would never have acted such a way if I'd have known he was there.

He silenced me with a slap around the mouth. He dragged me to the kitchen by my hair, all put pulling me along the floor. There was no way of keeping track of the blows. All I could hear were his venomous words, how he was so embarrassed to call me his daughter, how I'd sullied our family name associating with Slips, and Keren's, no less. He threw me against the wall when I tried to stand, my brow splitting as I hit the shelving. He shoved me into the centre island when I'd tried to run.

I'd swung around to hit him then, hardly connecting with his chest, when he tossed me to the floor and delivered his kick. It had winded me, no air left to deliver the scream that tried to break free from me. My underwear dampened, my ribs searing with a renewed pain, barely even mended from his last assault.

He still hit me after that. No matter how many times I slapped him, or tried to punch him. The side of his hand across my face burst my nose, and when he saw the blood run free, coating the side of my face and the floor, only then did he stop. He walked away after a final word of his disappointment, and disappeared upstairs.

It took me twenty minutes sit up. A further ten for me to quieten my sobbing.

And after it all, after cleaning the floor, and my face, and throwing my soiled bottoms into the wash, I still check on Freya, to make sure she sleeps, and hope to God that she won't notice the bruising on my face tomorrow morning.

*****

"Jesus, Fliss." Addison lifts a hand to my face, thumb coasting over the start of my black eye. "What the fuck happened?"

Laughing brings me so much pain, but I force it out anyway. I shake my head, rolling my lips as though embarrassed with myself. "Apparently, I drank a little more than I thought. Only went and headbutted the frame of my bed when I tried to climb in to it last night."

Her brows draw close. "And made that much of a mess? Do you still have a bed frame?"

I pat my eye, downplaying the tenderness. "It looks worse than it is. I'm sure if I ice it, it'll be hardly noticeable in a couple days."

Her scepticism is clear, but she doesn't push it, picking up Freya's school bag and lunch off the side table. "Hope it was a damn good night, for that to be what you wake up to."