Rosefort Rehabilitation Centre.

Then she screamed.

Ashton, 2013

I almost beat that bastard to death. We’d all four been playfully bickering about the next movie to watch when he came in. The second he came in and took Rae and Jayden, I knew something was up. And then he went and took them to his fucking office and locked the door. Then she screamed. I don’t know how I knew it was her, ok? I just did. And I knew that I had to stop whatever was happening in there.

Something terrible was happening to them both. But more importantly her. The one who made my heart do the thing. Apparently Mikey’s heart did the thing when the other one left too but I couldn’t have cared less about that right now.

I rammed the door as hard as I could with my shoulder, failing to move it much, but making it give way a tiny bit. The more of her screams and pleads for help came, the harder I rammed myself into that door. Inconveniently it had no glass panes in it to break to get to the lock. And our resident lock-pick had been released two days ago. Pausing, I realised that she had gone silent. This was all the motivation I needed as I finally rammed into the door so hard it fell shattered from its hinges. Cursing loudly and clutching my shoulder, I hung back for just a moment to compose myself as Mikey charged in, barrelling over to Jayden.

When I looked up, the bastard hadn’t even stopped trying to shove himself inside of her. I snapped. I don’t really get why, or how, but I snapped. Sprinting at the fat old man, I knocked him to the ground away from Rae. That’s when I hit him. I did it once to keep him down, but then I carried on. I carried on until I’d almost beaten him to death. Standing, I paused before helping Rae to cover herself up. I could feel her flinch away from my touch as I helped her, frowning softly.

I wanted nothing more than to protect her. And so, when she declined my arm and walked to her room, I followed, leaving Mikey to deal with Jayden. I sat outside her door for the remainder of the night, my back pressed firmly against it so that nobody could open it. It opened towards me. That was an advantage. Nobody would be able to get past me, even if I didn’t already scare them half to death, my knuckles were bloody and bruised and I had a scowl etched across my lips. He would pay for this.