Author's Note: Here it is chapter seven! I must say I'm rather happy to ride this wave of creativity, though I'm knocking on wood *knock, knock* because it seems whenever I start riding a pretty stellar wave of creativity it comes crashing down haha so lets pray that, that doesn't happen. Anyways enough of my mumbling, onto chapter seven! Read/Enjoy/Review!
Chapter 7: What Matters
" I'll lean on you, and you'll lean on me, and we'll be okay."-Dave Matthews Band.
I claw my way through the darkness opening my eyes slowly, my vision swimming and swaying when I try to sit up. I wince as I get to my knee's, rocking unsteadily when I realize that I can barely see. I lift my hands to my face hissing a breath through clenched teeth my fingers brush over swollen skin. What the hell happened? I close my eyes trying to remember but come up blank. The last thing I remember is walking through the door, after that there's nothing.
I stumble my way to the bathroom on weak legs as I feel along the wall of the bathroom trying to find the light switch. I snap my eyes shut when the light pierces the darkness my head throbbing by the sudden brightness, I steady myself against the counter my head bent down as I fight the unsettling urge to vomit. I feel the cold sweat bathe my skin as I look up recoiling when I don't recognize the person staring back at me in the mirror.
Her dark hair is matted against her forehead and face by an odd mixture of sweat and blood, her eyes nearly swollen shut, dark bruises marring her skin in a cheerful mixture of blue and black. I watch her as she lifts a hand pressing it to her lips, lips dry with blood. I choke out a sob when I realize that the girl in the mirror is me. I step away from the counter, my back bumping against the cold wall sending a painful shockwave through my body as I slide to the floor gasping for air.
I will myself to get up, stripping my torn dress from my body until I stand fully naked staring at my alien body in the mirror. The bruises dance happily from my face to shoulders, stomach, thighs. I turn slowly casting a look over my shoulder noting the gold ball sized bruises that mar the words of my tattoo. I feel myself starting to shake and I know that shock is starting to settle in. I walk numbly to the shower turning it on as hot as it will go stepping through the fog as I try to wash away the evidence.
I wince when the hot spray stings against my broken skin, shuddering as the shakes set in. I close my eyes, memories flashinng before my eyes like a movie in fastforward.
The funeral. Blake. Saying Goodbye. Caleb, Liv, Celia, Mama. Walking up the stairs, door open. Glass shattered on the floor, crunching beneath my feet.
' His blood's on your hands.'
' Hello Brooke,' my eyes flash open when the voice screams in my head. I didn't see the face. Just the bottom of a black boot, and then everything goes blank, wiped clean from my memory.
I lift my phone to my ear listening as it rings when a voice murmurs hello in my ear.
" I know that I shouldn't be calling so late," I say into the phone my voice controlled and dull, " I shouldn't be calling you at all, but I need you."
Michael's POV
I watch as the sun rises over the hills painting the early December air a multitude of pinks and purples, my heart so heavy that I don't take a moment to think of the beautiful picture it makes. Instead my heart and mind are on Brooke. Remembering how strong, yet vulnerable she was yesterday, when she spoke in front of a crowd of people remembering the man who held her heart. The man who isn't me. I know I shouldn't take what she said personally. Everyone who was there, hell everyone in the world knew that Brooke and I had been a thing, once, so her talking about the relationship isn't what got to me. What got to me was her saying that what we had wasn't real. I shake my head trying to make the words disappear, wishing there was a way that I could go back and not hear that part. Damned if it wasn't real. It was the realist thing I ever felt in my life. I know that Brooke didn't mean it. She's grieving, heartbroken. I drop my head into my hands bracing my elbows against my knee's when a soft knock on the door has me cursing the fact that I cant seem to find five minutes of peace in my own home.
" Go away," I growl not even bothering to lift my head.
" Michael," Tatiana whispers laying a hand softly on my shoulder, " I have to go. You need to watch Talia."
" Where are you going?" I ask turning to look up at her.
" I cant tell you, and I don't know how long I'll be gone, but I'll be back," she says turning to hurry from the room.
" There's someone else isn't there?" I call out and I expect to be met with some sort of heated retort, at the very least an ' How dare you.' After all I'm the one whose in love with someone who isn't my wife.
" Yes," she says and as that one word resounds in my head painfully I realize I have no one to blame but myself.
Brooke's POV
I sweep up the last of the broken glass into a dust pan, watching almost mesmerized by the way that the light glitters, but I snap out of my silent revelry walking on steady legs to the trash can emptying the contents into it, listening to the cheerful clinking noises that it makes as it hits bottom. I look around, realizing how empty it all seems. What once used to be a happy home has been forever changed, transformed into a house of nightmares and emptiness. My hand balls into a tight fist on the counter and I jump just slightly when there is a soft knock on the door.
" Its open," I call out, my back turned to the door.
" Brooke?" Tatiana calls out questioningly and for just one moment I think I must have completely lost my mind. Of all of the people in this wide world that I know to call, why did I call her?
I turn slowly watching the way that Tatiana's light eyes widen in shock. She drops her purse noiselessly to the couch before gracefully racing across the room to me. Her hands are soft and light as she skims them over my face and I wince turning my face out of her hold.
" Brooke, what the hell happened?" Tatiana asks clutching her hands together.
" I don't know," I say sitting on a barstool my voice cold as stare straight ahead of me.
" What do you mean you don't know?" she asks positioning herself across from me so that I'm forced to look at her, " Were you in an accident? Have you been to a hospital?"
" I wasn't in an accident," I answer shaking my head slowly, " The last thing I can remember is coming home, the door was open a little and I pushed it open and walked in. After that there's nothing, I cant remember anything else."
" You need to call the police," she urges but I shake my head furiously causing a throbbing pain to course over me from head to toe.
" No cops. I don't want anyone to know," I say firmly and I can tell by the quiet understanding on her face that she understands.
" Was anything taken?" she asks and I shrug my shoulders.
" I don't think so, everything seems to be here," I murmur, looking around. Which is true. Nothing is gone. The television lays firmly mounted the wall, my stereo system in the entertainment center. Nothing is gone, missing. The only things destroyed were personal things. Pictures of Blake, of me, of us. The sweater of his that I sleep with every night lays cut to shreds on my bedroom floor. Those facts tremble inside of me as I begin crying. Everything I had to remind me of the happiness Blake brought to my life lay destroyed.
" Brooke," Tatiana murmurs as she comes around the corner of the counter and I cling to her.
" Are you sure you want to do this Brooke?" Tatiana asks, and I nod my head staring at myself in the mirror. I watch her standing behind me her eyes sad as she lifts the scissors with shaking hands.
" I trust you Tatiana," I say at length, " So don't mess this up. I wont be going to a salon for a while so I will have to live with what you do for a long time." A soft chuckle escapes her lips and I smile when I close my eyes the sound of the scissors cutting through my dark tumble of hair echoing inside of my head.
" There," she says and I open my eyes the most that I can seeing that she didn't do half bad. Its short. Chin length. And I look completely different than the person that I used to be.
" Wow," I murmur smiling into the mirror jumping slightly when my phone buzzes for the fourteenth time dancing across the counter top.
" Your beautiful," she whispers and I nod my head, " Are you going to answer that?" I shake my head pressing the ignore button just to have the room fill with another buzzing noise and I catch the way that Tatiana glances down at the pocket of her jeans.
" Are you going to answer that?" I ask looking at quirking an eyebrow at her when she nods the head.
" We make one hell of a team don't we?" she asks and I cant help but laugh, just a little.
The sun just begins setting when Tatiana gets done giving me a quick make-up lesson. Who better to know how to cover up the bruises than her? I shudder at the thought. How sad is that? I sit carefully, my hand cupping the steaming mug of chamomile and honey tea that she insisted I drink. The day had been busy, what with my impromptu make over, the locksmiths coming to change the locks and add a few extra ones.
" You know Brooke, yesterday," Tatiana says, trailing off as she settles in the chair across from me, pulling me from my thoughts, " You didn't give me the chance to say my peace and seeing how now seems like the perfect time I hope you'll let me say what I need to say." I incline my head to her, after all listening to what she has to say is the least that I can do after all she's done for me.
" You were right that day that you went off on me, and on Michael," she says her voice hitching slightly, " Though it was bitter pill to swallow, and I might add I didn't like the way you just threw my secret out there. But I understand why you did it. I had no right to use Talia against Michael that way, to allude that he was ignoring his daughter, my daughter, to come to your rescue. Michael is an amazing father, sometimes when he looks at her I swear its like he's looking at the sun, the way his face and eyes just light up, and I had no right at all to bring my problems with Michael into your home when your life was falling apart all around you. The truth is Brooke that I knew when I married Michael that I was marrying someone whose heart was with someone else, and I thought I could handle it, but I couldn't, I cant."
" Tatiana, I," I trail off setting my mug on the coffee table resting my elbows on my knees, " I am sorry for that. I am, but I don't control what Michael feels, or what he wants. I thought I loved Michael I did. And I don't know what he's told you about me, my past. But Michael came along at a time when my world was completely upside down and inside out, and I clung to him because I was losing my best friend, and he was there. Maybe I used him, and maybe he used me, and for a while that worked, but when you came into the picture everything changed and maybe that was your fault, or mine or his, none of that matters. What matters is now your married to him. He is your husband, and he is the father, the only father that beautiful Talia has ever known, and if I can be so blunt, but he needs to grow the hell up and realize that he made a commitment to you, to Talia." I watch as she comes to sit next to her eyes swimming as she takes my hand.
" You're an amazing woman Brooke," she murmurs brushing a tear away from her cheek with her free hand, " Here I was hoping to apologize to you, to make you feel better and instead you made me feel better."
" Yeah well its what friends do," I say shocking even myself as her own stunned eyes fall on me.
" Yeah?" she asks and I nod my head hugging her lightly.
I lock the door tightly behind Tatiana listening to the way the cold metal slides against metal. Its dark now, well past dark heading straight away to morning and I'm left to face the nightmares in the dark by myself. I wrap my arms tightly around myself as I look at the emptiness. I know eventually that I'm going to have to tell Olivia, and Caleb, and Mama. Her dissapointed voice lingers in my head as I remember the way she sounded when I told her that I just wasn't up for company today. Maybe tomorrow. I slide against the door as I realize that I have no idea how I'm going to explain my current state without inciting panic amongst the people who love me the most. I drop my head into my hands praying for peace. Praying for strength.
