Chapter 41

General POV

Stef sighs when she glances down at her cellphone after listening to her ringtone.

"Is it Lux?" Mike asks.

The blonde shakes her head slightly, "Uh, no. It's Lena."

"I still can't believe she's still ignoring us. It makes no damn sense," he shakes his head.

"You're telling me," she mumbles before answering the call. "I'm coming home soon, Lena. I'm sorry it's been—"

"No, I don't think you should," she interrupts.

"What?" Stef asks in disbelief. Her wife had been calling her to try to get her to come home for hours ever since she left and now she was telling her not to…

Lena sighs nervously and Stef automatically knows that something's up.

"What is it?" the blonde caved in.

"I…" Lena pauses, "I talked to Callie…"

"Okay?" she asks hesitantly, suddenly wondering where her wife was going with this.

A bad thought crosses Lena's mind, which causes her to quickly change the subject, "Honey, who's there?"

What? Stef thinks to herself but she still answers, "Um, well Valerie just left not that long ago and it doesn't look like she's coming back anytime soon. Lux isn't picking up the phone of course so I— Babe… where are you going with this?" She squints her eyes in confusion.

"You need to go get her," Lena quickly stops her again. The fact that she's using her firm tone makes it obvious to Stef that her wife is nervous and serious. She wasn't too keen of her going there in the first place, and now she wants her to bring Lux back? None of it was making any sense.

Stef listens closely as Lena takes a deep breath before she speaks again, "It's not Valerie Lux is afraid of, Stef... It' her husband, Trey."

The confused expression on Stef's face suddenly shifts to a more concerned one. She doesn't even want to know where this conversation is going but the fact that her kid has been alone with someone she was afraid while they've been outside the entire time was enough to make her blood boil. She didn't even want to begin to think about why. Instead, she unbuckles her seatbelt and takes her keys out of the ignition.

Mike puts his coffee down onto the cup holder and starts adjusting his belt. "What's going on, Stef? What's happening?"

"What do you mean she's afraid of Trey?" the blonde asks.

"What?" Mike questions out of both confusion and terror as he opens his car door and watches while Stef does the same.

The beeping coming from Stef's phone immediately distracts her from the conversation and she glances at the screen and notices Lux's name. "Lena, Lux is calling me. I will call you right back," she rushes the conversation to an end.

Both Stef and Mike take in deep breaths and feel a sudden glint of relief. If Lux was able to call them, she had to be okay at the moment, right?

She switches lines. "Hello?" Stef abruptly answers, but all she can hear is silence coming from the other side of the conversation for the first bit. "Lux?"

For a second she wonders if the girl called on accident, which was most likely in their case. Lux had never been the one to look for them.

The blonde hears a loud bang and immediately her eyes and ears widen.

Mike walks over toward the other side of the car, "Stef, what's—"

The blonde quickly lifts up her index finger to get her ex-husband to stop talking. He gets the point and waits for the woman to make a move.

She listens intently but the roaring tone coming from the other line was the last thing that she had expected to hear.

"LUX, I'M BREAKING THE DOOR DOWN ON THE COUNT OF THREE, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO LIKE IT WHEN I GET IN THERE! …ONE!"

Another bang.

"TWO!"

The sound of wood cracking.

Stef rapidly released the phone from her hands, dropping it onto the floor. She was so out of it that she couldn't even hear the glass shatter as she began running towards the house.

Lux's flinches at the sound of the wood breaking and watches in fear as the huge chunk of wood falls onto the floor on her side. She stares as Trey's fist bangs into the door again and the blood dripping from his knuckles becomes evident.

"TREY, PLEASE STOP!" she screams as her eyes scan the room for something sharp to defend herself. But she panics when she doesn't automatically find anything. She hears his fist banging again and again. And she grabs the soap dispenser and slams it as hard as she could against the mirror-cabinet, watching a ton of glass shards falling into the sink directly afterwards. Instinctively, she grabs the biggest piece and tightens in her grip around it, feeling the glass digging into the skin of her palm. She considers grabbing the hand towel to wrap around the glass, but Trey was already unlocking the door from her side and her eyes were too focused on what he was going to do.

"PLEASE STOP!" Lux yells at the top of her lungs but as soon as he comes in she can almost feel his hand already wrapping around her arm. And frantically she shuts her eyes, but the sound of someone else's voice causes her to open them and back farther away until she falls into the bathtub, knocking down the shower curtain in the process and allowing it to fall over her.

The pink curtain blocks her direct vision of what was going on, causing her heart to race even more as she tries to maneuver herself out of it so that she could see what was happening.

Just as Mike makes his way up the stairs, he spots where the screams were coming from and could see the blood drops on the floor and the chipped wood pieces. He runs over and grabs Trey from behind by the collar of his shirt, immediately pulling him away from the door and ramming his body up against the wall before punching him in the face again and again.

"LUX!" Stef yells from directly behind Mike and could see the blood on the floor, causing her heart to sink directly at the sight. But that doesn't stop her from listening to the sobs coming from the bathroom and instantly running towards them. "Lux?" she asks as she steps toward the bathroom doorway and sees her daughter trying to get up from the bathtub, dressed in an open bathrobe and her bra and underwear clearly showing. Stef helps her up to a standing position and wraps the bathrobe around her body so that she's covered. But the sudden hyperventilating and sobs coming from the girl as she stared at the empty doorway didn't go unnoticed by the older woman. "Lux? Baby, it's okay. I've got you," she tries to coo before she wraps her arms around the girl and holds onto her tightly, hoping to give her the firmness she needs to keep calm and catch her breath. She glances down and tries to move the hair strands which were stuck to Lux's sweat-drenched face so that she could see her better from her angle, "Baby, can you tell me what happened? Do you think you can do that? Huh?" Stef asks in a desperate and comforting voice.

Lux shakes her head and buries her face into the woman's chest while grabbing onto her mom's arms tightly out of desperation. It was a gesture that both made Stef feel extremely maternal towards her and filled her body with anger at the same time. For a second she wanted to let go of her daughter and help Mike kick the man's ass, who put her daughter in this position to begin with. But she couldn't risk not being there for Lux the one time that it was obvious Lux wanted and needed her there more than ever.

She shuts her eyes and holds onto Lux and tries her best to ignore the loud cursing and banging going on outside of that bathroom. And for a little while it works until she heard the sound of a table snapping in half. She immediately lets go of her hold on Lux and eyes her carefully. "Stay here and don't move," the older woman orders. Lux tries to take in a deep breath and even though she wants to keep Stef close to her she nods her head, lets out the breath, and wipes the tears from her face.

Stef gives Lux a kiss before making her way outside of the bathroom…

To be continued…

A/N: I got some ideas for this from a guest awhile back so thank you to that guest :)

Also, for those of you who have read my short fic That Awkward Moment: After much deliberation I've decided to write the sex-talk with Stef and Callie. It will probably be posted tomorrow since I'm still working on it and will be a one-shot and be posted under "The Talk." A lot of you wanted to see that so I'm going to try my best though it is kinda hard. I want to make it awkward but not corny. And it's more difficult than I thought. But it will be done nonetheless.

As always, thanks for reading :)

One final chapter after this one.