I Hate You But I Love You.

I Hate You But I Love You. Chapter 21

WARNING: There will be a pretty violent/depressing scene in this chapter. I will warn you in bold when it happens, and then again in bold I will say when it’s done and sum up what happened.

**Scarlet’s P.O.V.**

Alice, Trinity and I were hanging out at the elementary school playground after school. We were sitting on some stairs that led to a back door; it didn’t seem like anyone else was around.

“So, are you going to tell me?” Trinity asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting to it. Give me a minute,” I sighed. I hung my head and took a few deep breaths and then looked up at the playground in front of me.

“So, a few years ago, my parents both had to go on a long business trip. And because I was either ten or eleven, they needed someone to watch me. Not many of our relatives were willing to watch me for so long, about a month, but my mom’s brother agreed to it.” I took a shaky breath.

“I had only met him once before, and for the first two days he was nice. But then on the third day, I had dropped a plate, and he flipped shit. He slapped me around and yelled and I was so scared. Basically, this went on for the rest of the month, but getting worse and worse. I had to come home, clean the house, make dinner and then afterwards he would beat me up.

“He really liked using a belt,” I muttered as an afterthought, “But then, I told the police, my parents came back, attacked him, and now he’s in jail.” Looking over to Alice and Trinity I saw that they were crying. “Whoa! What’s wrong?”

Trinity sniffled and wiped her eyes, “That’s just… horrible. How did we not realize it?”

I shrugged, “I don’t think we were all in the same class that year.”

Alice was looking away from us, wiping her eyes, then she cleared her throat and looked back, “So, you’re really okay with it?”

“Well, I mean, I hate his guts, he was disgusting to do that. But apart from having occasional nightmares, I’m fine.”

“Do you have any scars?” Trinity asked.

“Yeah, mostly on my back, but I’ve put cream on it to help the scars fade,” I shrugged.

“Wait, those scars around your wrist…” Alice trailed off. I looked down at my wrists and pulled up my sleeves. There were small little scars wrapping around each of my wrists; they were actually rope burn.

“This is going to sound pretty grim,” I started, but they continued to look at me, obviously wanting to know, “He used rope to tie me to that support pole in my basement, and then, you know…belt.”

“Oh my God that’s horrible,” Trinity said. I nodded and shrugged. There was a moment of silence between us and then Alice spoke up.

“So how does Lukas know?”

I laughed a little, “I didn’t tell him if that’s what you’re thinking. I had actually forgotten how he found out, but I started to remember. You see, after I got beat up really bad, like I thought I was going to die, I managed to run out of the house and Lukas found me shivering in an alley. He took me back to his house, and that’s when I called the police.”