Chapter 23

When John entered the room Becki was curled up on her bed staring blankly at the TV screen as her cell was yet again ringing. John had had enough of hearing that thing ring, he stalked over to the bedside table where Becki had left it.

"John leave it" Becki said wearily not really caring if he answered it or not.

"It's driving me crazy" he replied as he picked it up and hit the call button.

"Hello" he barked into the phone.

"You won't get an answer" Becki mumbled

She was right all John received was silence.

"Hello" John tried again but was met with silence once more.

Becki sat up, she reached out to John for the phone. He didn't want to give it to her, it didn't take a genius to figure out that it would be Dean at the other end of the line. Sensing he wasn't gonna give the phone up without a fight, Becki stood on the bed and quickly reached over and snatched it from his hands before sitting back down on the bed.

"What do you want?" she said into the phone without any real emotion as John watched intently.

"What belongs to me!" the sound of his voice made Becki shudder, "and trust me baby…..I'm gonna get it!"

John watched as she quickly ended the call and threw the phone on the bed in frustration.

"Are you ok?" he asked as he slowly sat on the bed next to her.

"Peachy" she replied sarcastically, John didn't reply and after a few minutes of silence Becki turned to him, running a hand through her hair she sighed, "I'm sorry"

"It's ok"

"No it's not! I keep snapping at you and you don't deserve it" she laid back down on the bed hugging a pillow to her.

Reaching out he gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, running his hand across her cheek he replied "I'd rather you snap at me than not talk to me"

Becki ran her hand slowly along his arm as he continued to stroke her cheek.

"I didn't mean the things I said the other day" she said quietly not looking him in the eye.

John smiled, he leant down and kissed her on the forehead "I know"

He laid down next to her and she instantly flung her arm across his stomach and moved closer to him.

"It would help if you moved the pillow" he said

Tossing the pillow behind her Becki moved again and rested her head on his chest as he wrapped an arm around her.

They laid there in silence for a while, John absently stroking her shoulder and Becki staring at the television screen but not actually watching it. John decided it was now or never.

"Bex?"

"Hmmmm"

"Who's Dean?" he felt her tense but she didn't move like he had expected.

"My ex"

John sighed "Bex please don't make me drag this out of you"

"What do you want to know?"

"Let's start with why you moved to get away from him"

Becki rolled away from him and repositioned herself so she was laying on her left side facing him.

"Melody met him first! Once she had talked to him she was determined to set me up with him" John smiled, that sounded like Melody alright.

"So she forced me to go on a date with him, he acted like the perfect guy, you know the saying too good to be true? Well that was him." John started drawing patterns on her hand with his fingers.

"We'd been seeing each other for about nine months when a guy that Mel and I went to school with was killed! It was a big deal and there was a big police enquiry about it. In the end two guys were arrested for killing him, it turned out that he was involved in some sort of drugs deal that had gone wrong. After that we pretty much forgot about it until Dean asked me to move in with him"

Becki's cell phone started to ring again, John growled and grabbed the offending item, showing Becki the screen he asked "Recognise the number?"

"No"

John turned the phone off, before Becki could protest John added "If anything happens with Mel, Randy will call me"

"Ok"

"Carry on" John covered her hand with his.

"I moved in with him and things started to change, he was very secretive, he'd have all these people come round and would never tell me who they were and none of them would really speak to me. Then one day I overheard a conversation I shouldn't have. They were talking about the guy that had been killed, he'd sold a bad batch of drugs to a bunch of teenagers, it had sent a couple of them to the hospital but luckily none of them were seriously affected. The police had been close to finding out who had sold it and they killed him so that it wouldn't be traced to the person he was working for. The two guys that had gone to prison were the guys that killed him but they were working for Dean!"

John watched her closely as she took a deep breath and continued

"Unfortunately for me Dean knew I'd overheard the conversation. I'd gone up to our room to grab as much of my stuff as I could, I just wanted to get out of there but he had followed me. He locked me in the room with him and that's were I got these" Becki pulled up her sleeve to reveal the now faint pink scars.

John ran his fingers over the three scars he'd noticed before, the ones that had bled and formed a letter.

"He did that?" John already knew the answer.

"He changed in the blink of an eye, he said I belonged to him and was gonna give me a warning on what could happen if I said anything about what I overheard. I told him to go to hell so he gave me his warning" she looked down to her arm.

"He did that first" she pointed to the scars that formed the letter 'D'

"said it would always remind me who I belong too! When I still fought back he did the rest"

Pointing to the thicker looking scars she added "They were the worst"

John wasn't sure he wanted to know but asked anyway "Why?"

"These ones" she pointed to the thin scars "he did them with a pen knife, they didn't really hurt that much and I fought back the entire time, that's why there isn't many of them! But with these.." she traced her finger over a scar, "he made it so I couldn't fight back…..but instead of just cutting me with the knife he literally scratched the skin over and over again with the knife so it would hurt more" she paused "and scar worse"

John studied her face, it was blank, like she had switched off her emotions to the memory.

"I went straight to Melody after that, she was the one that patched my arms up and she kept Dean away from me till I left"

"Did you not call the cops?"

"We didn't call them because I was scared, stupid I know but he had told me he would make sure everyone I cared about would get hurt if I did"

"How did Mel keep him away?"

"He never knew where she lived, she'd pretend she hadn't heard from me when he would go to where she worked and he was too scared of my dad to ask him, he found me two days before I left"

"At Melody's?"

"No my dads, but he wasn't there" Becki rubbed her eyes, she hated having to talk about it.

"What did he do?" John didn't know why he was torturing himself, hearing how Becki had got those scars made him feel sick. Every time he thought of Becki having to go through that he had the urge to break Deans neck!

"Kicked me around a bit" she said it like it was nothing out of the ordinary "It's good job you never saw my back or side when I first got here"

John put a finger to her lips "Don't tell me anymore"

"You wanted to know"

John gently pulled her to him "I know I did but I cant hear anymore. Not yet"

Becki sighed as he kissed her gently, she wrapped her arm around his waist and asked "Why?"

"Thinking about you having to go through that makes me ill"

"Me too" she replied as she laid her head back on his chest.

Half an hour later John realised Becki was asleep. Gently he moved her off him and onto the bed, looking at her as she stirred slightly he promised himself and anyone that could hear him, that he would not let Dean get to Becki if it was the last thing he did.

He picked up his phone and quietly walked over the door, he did his best to open and close the door without making a sound.

Once in the hallway he called Randy.

"Hey man"

"Hey, How's Mel?"

Randy sighed "Full of pain killers! She's still sleeping, they say that's a good thing right?"

"Something to do with the body healing itself" John replied

"Ok she can sleep all she wants"

"Has she still not said anything?"

"She tried to mumble something about Becki but we couldn't tell what it was" Randy didn't want to add that it was tubes and machines that stopped them from understanding Melody, he asked

"How is Bex?"

"Sleeping too, she told me about Dean"

"Really? What's going on?"

"I don't know the whole story yet, I'll fill you in when I get to England"

"You ok dude? You sound weird"

"Yeah I'm fine" he wasn't, he was thinking about the scars on Becki's arms "I'd better get back to Bex. Later"

"See ya"

John quietly closed the door, he walked over to the bed pulling his t-shirt off as he did. Carefully he got back onto to the bed and laid down. He was flicking through the cable channels when Becki snuggled up to him. He wrapped an arm around her as she said sleepily "He hurt Mel bad didn't he?"

John brushed the back of his free hand across her cheek and replied "Yeah…he did"

"She'll be ok though wont she?"

"Yes she'll be fine"

"Promise?"

"sssssh go back to sleep" he didn't know if Mel would be fine.

"promise she'll be ok"

"I promise, now sleep" he kissed the top of her head, now all he had to do was hope that Melody would be ok.