Wicked Love

Chapter 1

"Come on, baby. It's time to wake up," I said softly to Clarabelle, rubbing her back.

My three-year-old blinks up at me sleepily then promptly closes her eyes and buries her face in the pillow.

"No, come on. Shower," I say to her softly, gently grabbing her shoulder and rolling her back over. "We spent the day at the park and you didn't get a bath when we got back."

We lost track of time at the park and didn't end up getting back to the house until after nine and dad was angry I wasn't there to make him his dinner. We stayed out longer than we usually do because dad was in an extra bad mood that morning.

I bribe her with the offer to carry her to the shower and get ice cream after I get her from daycare.

"But Matthew hurt you last night," she replied, shocking me. She knows she's supposed to stay in our room when dad is angry. She calls my dad by his name because he's not her father and I don't want her to know him as her grandfather. "Won't it hurt you to carry me?" She continues, green eyes blinking up at me.

"No, I'm fine, baby, but you know you have to stay in here when Matthew gets angry."

"I know, but I wanted to help you," she replied, her voice small. "I don't like it when he hurts you."

"I know... but I'm fine." I lie. My ribs are really hurting, but she doesn't need to know that. "And you stay up here. I can handle him."

"Okay, Mommy."

"Good. Now let's go shower," I said, picking her up from our bed.

I don't trust my dad not to do something to her in the middle of the night. He used to come into my room when I was little and drag me out of bed just to hit me, he stopped doing it a while ago but I'm not taking any chances of that happening to my baby so she sleeps in my room, which has been our room since she's been born.

 She has a chest for all her toys on the floor at the end of the bed, and everything else is lined along the wall next to the chest. She's such a little neat freak, not letting one toy get out of place. She tears everything out when she's playing with them but she puts them away exactly as they were when she's done.

Being a neat freak is not the kind of behavior you'd expect from a three-year-old, but I guess I got lucky. Or she is doing it out of fear of Matthew hurting me.

I grunt when a sharp pain pierces my ribs after I place Irabella on the hip that isn't bruised. When dad didn't get his dinner, he punched me in the face sending me sprawling to the floor then kicked me in the ribs a few times and said that if it happened again, it'd be worse.

After setting Belle down in the bathroom I tell her to go potty before she gets in the shower because if she doesn't and she ends up having to go then she'll just pee in the shower.

While she peed, I turned the warm water on in the shower then grabbed two towels from under the sink and set them on the back of the toilet. They're two small and ripped towels and they barely fit me but they're the only ones that dad will let us have.  After she finished and wiped, I stripped her then set her in the shower and told her to get her hair wet and to just brush her teeth in there to save time, because her hair is going to take long enough to do.

She has long black hair all the way down to the middle of her back. I've tried to get her to cut it so many times but she won't even get it trimmed. Her hair gets horribly knotted no matter what I do, no matter what shampoo (which is cheap shampoo from Dollar Stores because it's the only stuff dad will let us have) I use she always wakes up in the morning with her hair all knotted to hell. I should've cut it when she was too young to say anything about it.