Amelia and Owen took a very clearly shaken up Alice back home. She had a few seizures in the living room.
"Ally, are you okay?" Amelia asked, caressing her cheek.
Alice nodded, rubbing her face. "I'm fine. Seriously."
"I meant about your seizure."
"Me too." Alice and her made eye contact.
"What happened today, at the hospital?" Owen asked, coming back with a glass of water for the girl. "Why was he acting so violent?"
"That's just...him." Alice muttered, taking the glass from him. "He can be very violent. How do you think I'm practically completely bruised?"
Amelia clicked her tongue. "Are they getting any better?"
Alice shrugged. "Hard to tell. Some of them are old, some of them are from the last time, so...they will, get better I mean."
"Ally, he did that to you?"
She nodded. "Yes."
Amelia's face softened. "I am so sorry, Alice. That's horrible. Did he force you to stay with him?"
"Thing is...we met in foster care." Alice said. "I was fifteen, he was sixteen. We were foster siblings. It was the first good home I was sent to. Relatively, anyway. We really hit it off, me and him. We...started dating, and he was so sweet. At first. Then, he started showing his true colors around the house, and they booted us. We were split up for a couple months but eventually he found me and...I needed him."
"Why did you feel like you needed him?" Amelia asked.
"I had no one, Mia." Alice looked at her with glossy eyes. "That was the year I lost you. That was the year...we lost contact and I was a mess. I cried all the time, and he wiped away my tears. Maybe he was a manipulator, and he was controlling, but I was fifteen. I was so naive, Mia. I hadn't been raised in the system, I wasn't stony like everyone else. I was soft. I was fragile. I was broken, but he held my pieces and promised to put me back together, and I believed him. Even though I never should have, because he held those pieces for years. It wasn't until recently that I...knew I had to be done. I was getting sick. He was getting meaner, and meaner, and...he wanted...things."
"What did he want?" Owen raised his eyebrows.
Alice shifted uncomfortably. "Sex. All the time. Every night, during the day, it didn't matter. He was high so often than not, and he'd just...come home and that's what he wanted me to do. He wanted me to perform. I couldn't...after awhile. It hurt too much. I'd never had sex before, real sex, you know? The kind of sex that doesn't make you a whore in societies eyes...but he doesn't take things easy. He was rough, and I bled, all the time, and he never cared. And I couldn't handle it anymore. The pain was too intense, and he'd hit me if I didn't say yes. So one night I packed a bag. He caught me trying to go, and...well my bruises are evidence of what happened that night."
Amelia felt her own eyes tear and she opened her arms as an invitation for Alice. The younger girl crawled into them and sat herself down between Amelia's legs and the older woman wrapped her arms around the younger and held her tightly. "He will never hurt you, or violate you, ever again. Do you understand me, Ally? Never again."
"What do we do?" Her voice cracked as she played with a loose string on Amelia's jeans. "What am I supposed to do? He will find me. He always finds me."
"You'll stay with one of us, no matter what. And if we're both in surgery, you'll stay with DeLuca."
"No." Alice said sharply. "Andrew cannot know what I've been through."
"Why not?"
"Because he's normal." Alice said, her chin quivering. "I'm not normal. My parents are dead. I was abused, and that's not normal. But he is normal, he has good parents, and a loving family, and he's never seen the face of abuse. He doesn't need someone like me, broken and..damaged goods."
"You are not damaged goods!?" Amelia said passionately. "You are not damaged goods, Alice Holmes, so shut your mouth. You are a girl, that's been through shit, okay? You've been through a lot of shit. But you deserve normal as much as anyone else, and he will understand. He is a good guy, trust me. He is a good person, and he will accept your abnormal with all of his normal."
Tears began spilling over Alice's cheeks and she began to cry. Amelia sighed, pressing Alice's head to her chest, and Alice cried into her.
Owen and Amelia shared eye contact with a solemn look in their eyes.
"Mia?" Alice asked softly.
"Yes?"
"I love you." She muttered.
"I love you too." Amelia kissed the girls head. "Do you want to go take a shower?"
She nodded. "Yeah."
"Okay. You go ahead."
Alice sat up, wiping her cheeks. She walked away.
"What do we do, Owen?" Amelia asked once the girl was gone. "That guy is dangerous to her mental and physical health."
"We get a restraining order." Owen responded. "That's what it takes, it's what we do."
"Okay." Amelia nodded.
"Stop blaming yourself." Owen shifted so that he was closer to his wife. "This isn't your fault. It isn't your fault you lost contact. You did try, Amelia, regardless if you stopped. You tried for a long time."
Amelia rubbed her legs before standing on both feet. "Yeah. I need to start on dinner...she'll be hungry when she comes out."
Owen sighed as he watched his wife walk into the kitchen, a pained look on her face.
