LOVE? NEVER | ✓

Chapter Nine - Rose's point of view

"Crying isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of having tried too hard to be strong for too long."

"It's when he smiles that I feel my whole world better."  - Raghad. 

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"Why the hell are you not ready yet?" my father basically growled in my ear.

"I don't know what I'm going to wear," I replied truthfully.

"Then find something," he said, grabbing a fistful of my hair and slamming my body towards the walk-in closet floor harshly.

A striking pain formed at the back of my head, but I made it my best not to show how much he pained me.

"You think what you did would help me?" I asked, with a venomous voice.

"Did I hear you reply?" he asked, walking closer to wear I was sitting and grabbing my hair again, this time with more force, and slapping my face with his other rough hand. "When I say something, Rose, you shut that little mouth of yours' and obey!"

His words were piercing and hurtful and I couldn't take it anymore.

It was enough.

Ignoring the coppery taste of blood that his slap created, and the pounding pain that was spreading in my body, I moved away from him.

"You keep getting what you want in the most wrong ways ever," I started; anger was rising and clear in his stormy eyes. "You can't treat me like this just because you think you're more powerful. I can't take it anymore! I can't stand you hitting and punching everyday and whenever I speak my own ideas! I'm not kind of your slave! I was never, and I will never be!"

And with that, he punched me square in my stomach and I remembered groaning and falling back into the floor, clutching my abdomen like there was no tomorrow, looking into his eyes to find a tiny bit of love he still has for his own daughter...but I didn't find.

It wasn't there.

My vision swirled and his loathe was the last thing I caught before I got...unconscious.

●●●

My eyes opened to the same view...my closet. I rubbed my eyes and stood up, wincing from the bruise forming on my stomach.

Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I picked a lavender blouse that my mom gave me before she died a year ago.

I guess she knew she'll leave us long before the doctors informed her. The care and love and passion I saw in her eyes were beautiful. She brought me a lot of things that I considered as good-bye-gifts. She used to stop my father from abusing me, but it didn't always work.

He'd hit her too, only she would go blind for a couple of seconds because of her arteries...and he, well he didn't like paying her treatment fees so he'd stop eventually.

Like a great husband he was.

Not.

He knows I suffer the same thing, but he doesn't care. He says that if I die, the world would be a better place to live in.

I used to cry every time he mutters how better he'll be of I died, but now, I don't bother.

I smile because he doesn't mean anything to me.

Nothing more than a person that I live with.

He doesn't pay for me anything.

I pay for my college from the money my mom left, because if the situation was under his hands, he'll be more that willingly, saving the money in his bank account.