Liberation [completed]

Love- Asher

Eighteen. 

That was the number of places I have fucked- had sex with Mia in my apartment. I wanted her memory on every surface of the house. There were still so many other places I could think of doing it with her but I didn't want to push her.

Twenty-five days

That's how long it took for me to know that Mia was it for me. I didn't know if it was just how good she was or if it was cause I was emotionally connected to her but as I watched her move around my kitchen wearing my shirt and her panties while she made me coffee, I knew I had to keep her with me for the rest of my life. I loved her and her damn coffee. Mia was amazing. She was slowly opening up and becoming more of a human than a zombie or someone about to run awa. 

Coming home to her every day was the best part of my day. She greeted me at the door and we spent the night together either watching a movie of her choice or mine or just having sex. There was a lot of talking in between too. I was learning so much about her and she was telling me about them willingly.

She told me about her mother who died giving birth to her, she told me how her father had raised her but was always drunk or working. He tried to make it seem fine for a while but one day he brought her to the park to play and just left. That was the day her whole life shattered. She cried so hard that night when she finally told me about it. It tore my heart and soul when she said she would have taken a drunkard father and having to support the two of them on her own over being in the foster system. I cried with her that night. I couldn't imagine the pain she must feel. She loved her father so deeply and dearly. Even as she told her story, I could tell she'd forgive him in an instant if he came back to her. He was after all the only blood relative she ever had.

Her life in foster care was terrible. I was learning that Mia had not only been hurt physically but also mentally and emotionally. And I wanted to lock her up in my apartment and protect her from the world as I heard some of her stories. There were marks on her body that showed the physical assault but I knew the emotional and mental scares would be worse and I wouldn't be able to see them. Each time I saw a scar, I kissed it and tried to erase the memory of the scar. She had told me how she was gaining more happy memories with me and she was slowly forgetting. I wanted to give her so many good memories that she felt like that part of her life was just a dream or from another life.

"What's your last name, Mia? You never told me that" I ask her as we lie in bed before breakfast one morning.

"Clayton," She says "It's Mia Clayton."

"Mia Clayton" I repeat after her, the surname sounded familiar, "That's your family name, right? Not your father's name" I ask her.

"Yeah," She says, "I think...I want to get rid of it, just be Mia."

"My family's and firm's lawyer has a surname Clayton," I tell her absentmindedly thinking about how her name would sound if she married me: Mia Billiard. God, that sounded good and yes, I was thinking of marriage. I was whipped. 

"It's a common enough name" She shrugs dismissively. 

"Don't you ever want to know if he's alive?" I ask her suddenly as the thought pops in my head for the first time. 

Mia pauses her tracing on my chest and thinks for a while, "I don't know, I just figured he was so depressed he killed himself. It's easier to think that than the alternative"

"being?"

"There's two alternatives, one that he's still a drunk and messed up in so much crap that he's just waiting till the day he dies, the other would be that somehow he managed to turn his life around and move on.....without me" She says her face growing sadder at the end.