A/N: Keep your tissues on standby for this chapter. I'm dead serious. Do it. Especially if you are a crier.
Trigger Warning: Dark themes ahead.
"Oh my god, that's hysterical! So what happened next?"
"So I told him for probably the fifth time that I was seeing someone, a WOMAN, and then you know what he does? He then proceeds to follow me around the store asking for my phone number. Then I pulled my ADA badge and told him I'd have him for sexual harassment if he didn't get lost. You should have seen his face, it was amazing."
Abbie narrows her eyes and rests her head in her hand as Kim and Casey share a hearty laugh over Casey's story. Honestly, since their food arrived, it's like she's not even there! And this is her date! What hell?!
"Abbie, are you alright? You've been rather quiet…" Kim asks concernedly as she tilts her head.
"No I'm fine." The dark haired woman responds with a forced smile as she stops their waiter. "Excuse me can I have the check please?"
"Oh yes, certainly ma'am, is it all going to be on one ticket?"
"Um, no it's act-"
"Yes it's all on one ticket." Casey cuts in quickly speaking over Abbie.
"I'll have that right out then." He gives them a smile before he tends to the rest of his waiting duties.
A well placed smirk forms across Casey's face as she strikes up another conversation with Kim, yet she can see the death glare that she's receiving from Abbie. It's absolutely perfect, and she has to maintain a straight face, and keep conversation as she watches the waiter return with the check.
"Here you are ma'am." He says nicely before handing Abbie the check.
"Thank you…" Abbie mutters in response, her eyes widening to the size of baseballs when she sees the bill. "CASEY WHAT THE HELL?!"
Casey takes a moment to keep her composure before she puts on a serious face. "What? You said you'd pay?"
"I NEVER said that! This bill is over-"
"You said you'd pay!"
"I am NOT paying for-"
"Abbie it's only polite that you pay if you said you would." Kim speaks up breaking into the dispute.
Abbie's jaw practically hits the table as she stares at the bill again. "But have you seen…look at this!"
"And if you said that you'd pay, it is only fair that you do…"
With a long drawn out sigh, the elder attorney sits back in her chair before slamming her credit card on the table, picking up the bill, and thrusting it at the waiter. "Here…"
"Thank you Abbie, that's very nice of you." Casey says sweetly, putting on a sickly sweet faux smile.
"Yeah whatever…"
By the end of the night, Abbie is completely fuming and it amuses Casey to no end. "It really was a lovely dinner wasn't it?"
"A hundred and twelve dollars…" Abbie continues to mumble to herself as they make their way out of the restaurant. "Uh, Kim, you can head on to the car, I would like to have a word with Casey."
Kim eyes the two of them curiously before she accepts the car keys being held out to her and nods her understanding leaving the two to discuss whatever it is they need to discuss.
Abbie runs her hands through her hair before she turns to Casey with a stony expression. "Okay look, I get that you're upset with me, but what you just did…Casey it was unnecessary."
"Just like how it's completely necessary for you to put me on the stand for Alex's case?" Casey retorts sharply with a raised eyebrow.
"I knew that's what this was about. If you were that upset you could have come and talked to me. You didn't need to be childish about it and completely humiliate me in front of my date and several waiters mind you."
"Whatever. Does that woman there know that the only reason that you took her to dinner was because you wanted to sleep with her?"
"That's not true and you know it. And even if that had been my intention, it's all out he window now, no thanks to you. Look," Abbie pauses as she calms herself and pinches the bridge of her nose. "I've been doing some thinking alright? A lot of thinking about this case, about Alex, and about our friendship. Can you come by my office tomorrow? So we can talk?"
Casey folds her arms tightly and casts her gaze down to the cracks in the cement. "Fine. What time?"
"I have meetings all morning, how about right at noon?"
"Great I'll be there."
The two women part ways when Abbie stops and turns around to give a last minute thought. "Oh, and Case?"
"Yeah?"
"Tell Alex to hang in there. It'll all get better."
Casey nods and gives Abbie the smallest of smiles before she makes her way back to her own car. She doesn't know what it was, but she saw just a sliver of compassion in Abbie's eyes in their last conversation. A compassion that she hadn't seen in weeks. Especially after she spent eighty dollars on a steak dinner she hadn't planned on buying.
Meanwhile…
"Is there a reason that you called me to sit out here in the freezing cold at the park with you." Melissa asks as she glances at her otherwise silent sister on her right. She waits for a moment and when Alex doesn't look at her she turns slightly on the bench and speaks firmly. "Alexandra if you've called me out here just to sit there and ignore me I'm going to go home."
Alex still doesn't say a word; instead, she takes a deep breath as the words of what she wants to say flutter around in her mind like a thousand tiny little butterflies. She gazes up in the sky and despite the cloud coverage and the city lights, she can still see the faintest speckle of stars.
"Do you ever wonder how many stars there are in the sky at a time?" she asks, her voice breezy, calm, and quiet.
Melissa narrows her eyes and raises both of her eyebrows in curious suspicion. "What the hell are you talking about?" she asks, wondering if her little sister has gone completely nuts."
"The stars." Alex repeats, this time pointing her finger towards the sky. "Do you ever wonder if there are billions and billions of stars visible in the night sky, but we just can't see them because of the lights and the clouds? If there were no lights, and no clouds, I bet there would be millions of stars in the sky."
"…I'm sitting here freezing my ass off and you're talking about the damn stars…" Melissa deadpans wrapping her jacket tighter around her body. "Listen Alex, please tell me why you called and asked for me to meet you here. It's fairly late, it's cold, and I have a teenager at my house that will literally eat me out of house and home, especially if I am not there. What is this about?"
Alex is silent for another moment before she looks away from the sky and turns towards her sister with shameful tears glistening in her eyes. "Our father raped me." she says, her words coming out not as firm or as confident as she had hoped and she can tell that for Melissa, her words are slowly beginning to sink in.
Melissa sits completely frozen as if she had looked the mythical creature known as Medusa square in the eye and was then turned to complete stone. Her sister's words made her throat go completely dry, and it's as if all of the oxygen was sucked right away from her body. After what feels like forever, her mouth falls open, but the words just don't seem to come out.
"W-what…?" she croaks, her own words coming out as a strangled whisper as if what she had just heard is a complete lie. "Alex I-…when?"
Alex sighs and turns away from the sad steely blue eyes that are replicating her own. She has kept the secret bottled up so long, she finally felt like that she needed to tell someone, to open up about it, and for some same reason, Melissa seemed like the person that she needed to go to. "Until I was seventeen. He started when I was six…." She admits shamefully, cursing herself as her tears begin to fall.
"Ali, why…why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you tell me? Or Mom?"
"Would you have believed me if I had? You know that Mom was never around, and what would you have done Melissa? Honestly? It's not like Mom would have believed either of us. It doesn't matter anyway, he said that he'd hurt you if I told anyone. He said that he'd hurt you, and Mom, and that there's was nothing that would be able to stop him from doing so if I told anyone."
Melissa shakes her head and turns so that she is completely facing her sister. She doesn't give a damn about the cold anymore even as a chilling breezes comes through, blowing their hair in every which direction. "When you were six? Alex that's…that's a long time."
Alex wipes her eyes and chuckles though it is neither humorous nor humorless; it's just simply saddening. "Yeah well, I guess he just fell into a habit. It was almost my seventh birthday, and he came into my room one of the nights before. He told me…he told me that I was special; that I was prettiest and I was his princess and that princesses deserved to be loved the right way. He then told me stories of pretty princesses and how their daddies would love them. Then he told me to lie down and…and I did. That was the first time that he touched me. When he did, it felt strange, but I was six, I really didn't know any better. Then he told me that he was going to show me how daddies were really supposed to love their little girls. How that he never loved you like he was going to love me. Oh god, it hurt so much, but he kept his hand over my mouth and he told me that in time it would stop hurting; that I would get used to it, get used to him."
"Alex…you should have told someone. He was hurting you! Mom and I would have done something we would've…she would have left him, you know she would have!"
"No we don't know that Melissa, we don't. And if she had left him, we wouldn't have Lauren. And I told you, I was little, I was scared, and I didn't know what to do. When you're that age, and your rapist threatens you not to tell anyone, you do what they tell you. Even as I got older, I began to realize what he was doing to me was wrong but what was I supposed to do? I still too scared to tell anyone, too ashamed. If I tried to fight him, he'd hit me, hard, but he made sure to do it in a place where no one would see the bruises. Once when I tried to fight him off when I was twelve, he broke my arm."
Melissa's face contorts into a frown, and her scowl begins to deepen as she begins to put two and two together. "Was that the time that you fell off your bike, and broke your arm?"
A sad smile flits across Alex's lips and she nods as she just barely glances at her sister out of the corner of her eye. "Y-yeah. That's what he said that he was going to tell Mom, and it was a believable story. Oh god Mel, his hands…they were so cold, and sometimes I can even still feel them on me. There are times when I can't even let Casey touch me, let alone have sex with her, because his phantom is still there. That's why…that's why I'm the way I am around you."
"I don't understand. How does that have to do with me?"
"You weren't there when he was hurting me! I screamed for you Melissa! I screamed for you, and I screamed for Mom, but you weren't there. You promised that you'd protect me because you were my big sister despite how we didn't get along. I know that it's my own fault for not saying anything, I know that now, but as a kid I didn't. All I knew is that I was scared, I was hurting, and you weren't there like you said you would be."
Melissa finds herself blinking away her own tears as she comes to terms with what she's just been told. Of all of the things that she's imagined Alex resenting her for, this was most definitely not one of them. Never in her wildest nightmares could she have imagined that something like this had happened to Alex; and because of their own father. She just has no idea what to think.
She moves across the bench and wraps her arms around her sobbing sister, thankful that the younger woman doesn't pull away. "Oh Ali, I-I'm so sorry. I am so, so sorry that I wasn't there for you and I'm sorry that he hurt you like he did. Oh god I wish you had told someone. Does Casey know?"
"Oh god, no. I can't tell her something like this." Alex chokes out as she leans into her sister's warm embrace. "She'll think I'm disgusting, and I can't bear to have her leave me now, I just…I can't tell her."
"Sweetheart, the last thing she will think you are is disgusting."
"She'll look at me like I'm one of our victims Mel; I can't let her do that. I only told you because I couldn't keep it in any longer. I needed to tell someone, and I'm trusting you to keep this only between the two of us."
Melissa purses her lips and gives a light push on Alex's shoulder, beckoning for the younger blonde to look at her. "But…what about Mom? I think that she really needs to know…"
Alex's eyes widen and she shakes her head vigorously. "I-I can't tell her either. I can't…"
"Alex, you have to. She's our mother."
"So?! She already doesn't love me and she's already disgusted with me, why would I give her more reason to amplify that?! Promise me you won't tell her."
"But Al-"
"PROMISE me Melissa…"
"…I promise."
I told you guys…dark themes were ahead. At least it kinda makes sense to you guys now why Alex is sorta bitter…
Also, if you see that it looks like Dangerous Collisions has been updated, it's not a joke. It has, and there's a reason for that, so head on over there and read the epilogue!
Anyway, leave your feedback?
Also, before I end this chapter, I just thought I'd share this little fun fact. Between all of us, one of our most favorite people in the history of like EVER, has a birthday today! Hehehe ten points if you guess who it is ;)