Shattered Ceilings
E.C.
The best thing I can do in this moment is stop pretending the bruises on her skin don't exist. A million questions pose ready to strike on the tip of my tongue, but I'm trying to figure out the best way to address them. She isn't mine; hasn't been for a long time, but that doesn't mean there's any part of this that's okay with me.
I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, deciding to push aside my worry about the mother and focus on the child, or deal with the mother like so many parts of me are screaming to. But it doesn't have to be one or the other. The two are not mutually exclusive.
When Reny is done dragging me around the boardwalk, making me ride the Tilt-a-Whirl and Hammer, and all the carnival things that leave me wanting to puke up all the cotton candy the little girl just shoved down my throat, she's exhausted. Bella insists they head back to their beach house rental and let Reny get some rest.
Shit. It must be hard to be ten. I choose to not remember life back then, because that's when Dad left and Mom started binge drinking to solve her problems.
When the door to Reny's room is shut, you can hear the squeak of the hinges echoing because everything is silent; every nail and screw and plank knows that Bella and I are alone. Each piece of wood holds its breath to see what's next.
"Well, what do you think?" Bella asks. I wish I could say she's pretending now, but I really don't think she is. The moments ticking by show me new layers of this girl - woman - I loved. This isn't her. This isn't normal. This isn't right.
And as much as I'd like to watch her hurt the way I have all these years, I'm kind of afraid she already knows the feeling. I know what it's like to get hit by someone who's supposed to love you. Each bottle of Jack mom went through was another in a series of her knuckles marring my body. I was a scratching post for someone else's illness, and it's never okay.
"How long has he been hitting you, Bella?" I cut straight to the point. I'm quickly learning this is the only way to get anywhere with her. My forwardness speaks to the person buried alive inside those stony walls.
Even now, while she's flipping through emotions and reactions and responses like a remote to a television, I see flickers of her inside. She's a mustang whose been captured and trained to do as she's told and not question the hand she's been dealt. Her spirit - that wildness inside her I love more than my next breath - has been broken.
"Let's not, Edward," she finally says, the politician's wife winning the battle of wills within. She's all business, but I'm not about to back down.
"No, let's," I demand. "Let's do this. Right here. Right now."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Her insistence makes me wickedly angry. More than I've been in the months since she popped back into my life. And I'm in front of her, pulling the sunglasses off her face while she shrinks away from me.
"I'm not him. I'm not going to fucking hit you, Bella!" I seethe. I'm so fucking ... mad. Mad with anger and mad with pain and crazy with the need to kill the man who did this to her. "How long?" I ask. "How long?" I demand. "How. Fucking. Long?"
She's running toward a room at the back of the house before I can blink, and my legs are leading me to her before my mind can catch up. The door shuts in my face and when I try to open it, I feel the weight of her pressing against it, keeping it closed; shutting me out.
I knock until she yells for me to go away. Then I push - not nearly as hard as I'd like in the moment, but enough to get the door open. She's sprawled on the floor with her head in her hands, bawling. Crying like she's a dam bursting under the pressure of a decade's worth of rain. This is the amount of tears she sheds, I'm certain.
And I don't ask. Not now. Not in this moment, because she doesn't need me to fix it this second. She needs arms to hold her.
xxxxxxx
A/N:
Thank you for your passion for these characters and the story.
Thank you from the bottom of the heart of a formerly broken girl.