And I Will Try To Fix You
Marley Rose loved the cold, rainy, October, Sunday afternoons. It was a time where she could snuggle up on the sofa under a warm blanket with a good book. She decided on The Legend of Sleepy Hallow today being that Halloween was next week. Marley smiled as she turned the page, getting deeper and deeper into the tale of Ichabod Crane and the headless horsemen. But sadly a knock on the front door disturbed her peace and she groaned as she stood up and checked the time on her phone. She frowned when she noticed that it couldn't be Jake because he was still in dance practice. So she sighed as she walked over and opened the door, realizing the bad move she made by not looking through the peep hole.
"Dad?" Marley breathed, her eyes going wide. "W-what are you doing here…you can't be here."
He rolled his eyes at her comment. "I'm not allowed to see my family?" He chuckled as he tried to walk past her. "It's been to long Marley, and you turned into a lovely young woman."
"How did you find us" She growls, her blue eyes narrowing. "We have a PFA you can't be near us."
"No, you had a PFA." He grins his sick twisted grin. "And trust me, you and your mother are not that hard to find." He then looked past her and into the mobile home. "Aren't you gonna let me in? C'mon Marley Bear."
"Don't call me that." Marley says through clenched teeth. "Now leave before I call the cops."
Marley's father chuckled, his gaunt pale face turning red. "Who the hell do you think you are talking to little girl?" He starts screaming. "I come home to help the two of you out and this is the welcome I get." Marley goes numb as her cheek begins to throb, had he hit her? She wasn't sure. "You ungrateful little bitch are you listening to me?" He shouts in Marley's face. But Marley had trained herself on how to deal with this, when she was younger she trained herself to leave her body. "This is the thanks I get huh? You are a disrespectful little shit!" His voice is now low and filled with venom. "You outta learn how to respect your father." The next thing Marley knew the wind was being knocked out of her and she was lying on back struggling to get up as he pushed his foot on her stomach. "You know, I came back to see how you were doing and you had to set me off. Marley Bear, you know how easy it is to upset me."
The door to the trailer is still wide open and Marley hopes for something, anything as she watches her father wrap his belt around his knuckles. She closed her eyes, a waiting the impact of his punch when there is a grunt, crash, and the sound of glass breaking. Marley opens her eyes and sat up, turning around to see a figure over top of her dad, punching him as he held his shirt collar. Marley blinked her eyes, determined to make the blurriness go away, when it finally does she sees that the figure is Jake. She stood up, struggling to find her balance as she swayed a little. "Jake," She croaked as she steadied herself on the chair beside her. "Jake…" She whimpered.
Jake stopped his attacks and turned his head to look at her. "Shit Marley." He murmured as he stood up, Marley took a quick glance at her father. His face was swelling up quickly and his nose was awkwardly bent. Jake took two big steps and pulled Marley into him, holding her close as Marley shook terribly. She took notice to the warm red puddle that was starting to stain his shirt.
"Jake you're bleeding." She whispered and he shushed her and stroked her hair.
"That's not me, you don't feel your nose bleeding?" Jake asked and Marley put her hand to her nose and flinched at the instant pain she felt as he fingers brushed over it. "Don't touch it ok, I'm going to call 911." His voice is soft as he talks to her but then turns harsh when her father attempts to move. "Don't you get up or it's going to be more than the nose."
The cops respond to the call pretty quickly. Soon enough they are taking her dad away, once again in handcuffs. She stares him down as the EMTs check her out and Jake gives a statement. He had some cuts on his face from the glass table but other than that he was ok. When he was done, he came back over to Marley and took a seat next to her.
"Are you going to get in trouble?" She asked weakly and he shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know yet." His voice was soft and gentle as he rubbed her. "They still have to take your statement."
"Miss Rose?" The police officer said as he walked over to them. "I would like to ask you some questions" The cop looks at Jake and he gives a nod before getting up. He doesn't get too far because Marley's hand reaches out and grabs his, her eyes begging him to stay.
"I'll be right over there ok Marls, it'll be ok." Jake explains and goes over and sits on the stairs to her front door.
She keeps her eyes on him when the cops ask her questions and she answers the best she can. She told them about the restraining orders and the previous cases of abuse. They finally start asking her about Jake and she tells them both the truth. "He was keeping me safe, if Jake hadn't shown up…I don't know what would have happened."
They end up taking her to the hospital anyway for further treatment and they do call her mom who was in Boston for the weekend to take care of her mom-mom. So with permission she is released and Jake is waiting for her with a sad smile on his face. "You ready to go home?" He asked, its late at night and the cold October air nips at her skin. Jake takes notice and puts his jacket around her and helps her into his truck. The ride home is silent and it starts to rain as she leans her head on the window, getting a good look of her black eye and swollen nose in the mirror. She feels so out of it that she doesn't even notice that they are back at her house and she swallows hard when she figures that she'll have to sleep there alone. "Your mom said I could stay…if-if you want." Jake stuttered and Marley slowly nodded. She closes her eyes when she hears Jake open his car door and shut it. She is so emotionally weak that she can't find the strength to even move to open the door. But somehow Jake knows and the next thing she knows, he is carrying her into her house and past the broken coffee table. He takes her right to her room and sets her down onto her bed before finding her a sweatshirt and a pair of leggings. Jake frowns as she looks blankly at the blue shirt and black leggings and his hands start to shake when he realizes that he would have to be the one to change her. So with an audible gulp he takes a closer step toward her and she raises her arms for him to get her shirt off. The nervous shaking goes to one of anger and rage when he sees the foot shaped bruise on her stomach and side. But then he notices something else, old circular scars. He knew what they were, cigarette burns. He clenched his jaw and let out a ragged breath as he reached for her blue sweat shirt and pulling over her head and onto her body. She is still looking past him; Marley was a shell of a girl right now. So he quickly gets her jeans undone and slides them down her legs and he feels pretty proud of himself because he has managed to not think anything inappropriate yet. But he inwardly curses as he pulls the leggings up her legs because they are the most pain in the ass clothing. He then kneels down in front of her again after she is changed and takes her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him.
"Marley," He murmurs. "Marley, its ok you can cry, its ok, let it out. "He watches as her eyes flicker back to him and he bottom lip starts to quiver. "Let it out Marley."
And just like that she launched herself into his arms and her sobs filled the room. He rubs her back and comforts her the best way he can as he rocked her back and forth. She cries for an hour and it makes her voice raspy but after she is calmed he puts her into bed and goes to sleep in the living room when she stops in.
"No, please stay." She whispers and he does because he can't stand to see her like this. Jake carefully climbs in her bed and she snuggles into him, a comfortable vibe setting between them and the silence stays before she breaks it. "I want to tell you about my dad." She tells him and Jake nods, giving her the ok. So she licks her lips before she explains everything. "My mom and dad had me young, they were only 18 and it was pretty much a shot gun kind of wedding cause she was already pregnant with me. Ever since I was little I remember my dad being an angry man. He would drink and yell and have tantrums over the littlest things…" She grows silent again and a few more tears slid out of her eyes and Jake holds her even closer. "I was five the first time he ever hurt me. It was a Saturday morning and my mom was still sleeping. I was hungry so I climbed up onto the counter to get cereal and knocked down a box in the process. My dad saw it when he came in the kitchen, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me off the counter. Then he backhanded my face and told me if I told my mom where I got the bruise, things would be worse for her." She shrugged. "But things did get worse, for the both of us because he just kept getting worse and worse. Then when I was 10 my mom fully took notice about what was going on. She came home one night after he took out all of his rage on me and found him on the couch passed out drunk and me in the corner with cigarette burns all over my stomach and my face swollen. She called the police and we got out of there."
Jake's eyebrows frowned as he kept comforting her, never letting her go. "Then what the hell was he doing out of jail?"
"I don't know," Marley whispered. "Parole maybe," She blinked as she reached up to touch his face that had been nicked from the glass from the coffee table. "I thought you were going to kill him Jake."
"I wanted to," He confessed. "What kind of a man hits a woman?" He asks. "I hate it, I hate that there are people in this world like that and when I saw you on the floor with the black and the bloody nose…I just went insane. It just…I never want to see you hurt and I never want to see people hurting you." He took a deep breath. "My mom dated this guy when I was thirteen, Peter O'Neal, he was like your dad…angry all the time and one day he hit my mom, right in front of me. I didn't know what to do because I have never seen a guy hit a girl, my mom told me that it was wrong. He lasted about one more week in the house because he kept screaming and attack us. My mom threw him out afterwards, with a shot gun pointed at him. He never came back after that." He looked at her bruised nose. "I can't imagine living through it for five years."
Marley took a deep breath, tears prickling in her eyes again as he put his forehead to hers. "Marley, I am never, ever going to let anything happen to you ever again." He whispered as he looked into her sleepy eyes. "I'm never going to leave you." He brushed some hair away from her face and gulped. "I love you too much to ever let anything happen to you."
Then for the first time tonight. "I love you to Jake."
With that admission, Jake kissed her forehead and let her finally go to sleep against him and letting that feeling of being safe overcome her. Sure the teenage boy in him wanted to kiss more than just her forehead but there would be plenty of time for that, he had all the time in the world to show her how a real guy treated a girl.