So this chapter is kind of an explanation to answer a few questions that I feel may have popped up for you guys.

Still on my writing spree so keep an eye out for 27 soon!

CH 26

Surprisingly enough, the girls caught one look at my face, still streaked with mascara, and my hand, and decided it best not to ask questions until I was ready to talk about it.

Though I never said anything to them, I was thankful for this. I had way too much buzzing in my mind right now to try and understand my own thoughts enough to explain it all to them, and so I stayed the night in their room, sharing a bed with AJ.

When morning came and I had to get up, I was silent, taking my shower and leaving my friends with a simple goodbye before heading back to my room. I grabbed my flowers and luggage, and headed out to my rental, silently thanking God that I didn't see anyone on my way there.

I was looking better this morning after cleaning myself up a bit and I wasn't feeling quite so pitiful. Well, except for the headache taking revenge for my tequila consumption the previous night. I felt pretty pitiful about that.

I made it to the airport easily and got my suitcase checked in and on its way before I got a chance to sit down at my gate. I quickly went for the large copy of Jane Eyre I had with me and began to press each of my roses individually into the pages.

I had learned to press flowers when I was young and had made it a habit to press any flowers given to me on an important date. While my birthday hadn't exactly ended too well, I still thought the flowers and card were a lovely sentiment.

I saved the red rose to press for last and sighed softly. I wished desperately that it hadn't been Mike who'd sent me the flowers. I had expected Punk to at least give me SOMETHING as a gift but I suppose that was too much to ask of him.

My hand twitched and I frowned. Apparently, thinking about said straight edge superstar made me agitated. I wonder why.

I looked to the large digital clock above the desk of my gate and noted that I was almost painfully early. Good. I needed the time to myself to think.

I guess now that I've caught you all up at least to me sitting aimlessly for about half an hour I can fill you in on a few things. I'm sure you have plenty of questions that need answering.

So why was I so mad at Punk?

Here's the deal, I had already told Punk- however briefly- about my previous abusive relationships, but I never got around to telling him about the worst of it.

It started out as a seemingly innocent encounter.

"You went out drinking tonight?"

I blinked over at my boyfriend, sitting on the couch of my apartment and shrugged at him. "I guess you could call it that. I didn't really have more than a few shots. I really just went to hang out." I told him easily.

A frown crossed Ross's face, but I brushed it off, slipping my shoes off by the front door and setting my coat over the back of my recliner. "What? It's not like I got plastered or anything." I laughed but slowly let the sound fall off as I saw the look on his face.

"Yeah, not this time." He was staring at me intently and it made me slightly uncomfortable, so I went to the kitchen to get myself a glass of water. "But what about next time? You know girls who cheat are almost always drunk? And then they try to blame their bad decisions on the alcohol."

I was standing next to my refrigerator when I laughed, "So you're jealous, because you think I'm going to cheat on you?" I called to him, filling a glass with ice and then with filtered water from the front dispenser of the fridge.

"It's not funny, Charlie, you know Jessica ended up cheating on me." I heard him stand from the couch and I downed part of my water before setting the glass on the counter.

"Honey," I watched him walk into the kitchen and went to him, wrapping my arms around his neck, reaching up onto my very tip toes to kiss his cheek, "I'm not going to cheat on you."

For some reason I can't remember when it all started. The beating, I mean. Him hitting me when I came home from a night out with friends. I think there was just a simple instance of him grabbing me roughly by the shoulders and forcing me to promise I hadn't cheated. There was more than that, but it all seems to blur together now that I look back at it.

It was all little things at first. Things that I felt I could forgive him for. I already knew he had some control issues, we'd been friends before we started dating. I was well aware of all of this. It wasn't until things started getting worse that I realized that I had already been digging myself a grave up until now.

"Where the fuck were you?" Ross stood quickly from the recliner as soon as I had shut the door.

"I told you I was going out with Amanda tonight." I told him, once again kicking my shoes off at the door and tossing my jacket at the chair he'd just been sitting in.

"Yeah, but it's 2 in the morning. Why the hell have you been gone so long? You get off work at 5 on Thursdays. 5pm to 2am, Charlie? Seriously?" He was close to me now, nearly pinning me to the door.

"Well, yeah." I blinked up at him, confused and a bit defensive, "I haven't seen Amanda since she moved to California for school. That was 2 and a half years ago. We had a lot of catching up to do."

He slapped me. Hard. The force of it turning my head to the side and forcing tears to my eyes, "Don't you fucking lie to me." His voice was a growl.

I turned back to look up at him, tears falling down my face, "Ross, what the fuck?"

He grabbed my cheeks roughly, pushing them together, fingers digging into the space between my teeth and bruising the flesh there. I whimpered and tried to get away from him but he forced my face up towards his. "Tell me where you were."

"I was out with Amanda! We went to Kerby Lane to eat and then to Friends for a few drinks!" I grabbed at his wrist with both of my hands but couldn't pry his hand off of my face.

"So you were out drinking again?" he took this moment to slap me again.

I whimpered, now shrinking back against the door, "N-no!" the tears were falling fast now, not just out of pain but out of fear. What was going on with him?

"I said don't fucking lie to me!" Ross grabbed a handful of my hair and I yelped, once again reaching up to grab his hand, but to no avail.

"Ross, stop it, you're hurting me!" I sobbed.

"Like you're trying to hurt me going out and fucking any guy you want to!"

"What? N-no! I was with Amanda-!"

His closed fist caught my jaw and I screamed, crumpling to the floor in a heap.

I don't remember much else about that night other than Ross locking me into my own bedroom. I wasn't allowed out the next day and the day after that I was forced to stay in the house. And the day after that. And the next. Until the major bruising on my face had dissipated. I missed a good 4 days of work.

After some time it got to the point that even if I had just gotten home from work, Ross swore he smelled alcohol on my breath. Even when I wasn't drinking.

And if I HAD been drinking, I was cheating on him. All night long with different men. Apparently I was a slut. Too bad no one had told me about it.

It got to a point that eventually I did my best to come home as drunk as I could. See, the thing about being drunk is that it dulls your senses. All of them. Not only does it make you less aware of what's happening but it actually dulls the feelings in nerve endings all over your body.

To put it bluntly, if I was drunk, it didn't hurt as bad when he hit me.

I managed to keep it fairly hidden to. Ross wised up and started hitting me on my torso and legs. Places that I kept hidden with clothing anyway. At first I stayed with him out of fear, but after he had a psychotic breakdown, I contacted his family and they had him institutionalized. It was only after he was back in Nebraska, where his family lived, that I revealed what I had been experiencing the past four months of my relationship.