Gray Skies

Chapter One

Walking into the front door of Charlie's double story house, I am livid and humiliated. My scattered thoughts from tonight shifted back and forth from the good and the bad. The loving moments we spent together whispering and giggling at our reserved table for dinner at an expensive Italian restaurant as celebration for my first year of College at the University of Washington being over. Then the horrifying moments after I refused his proposal for marriage as he snapped in a public place, humiliating me and speaking, no, yelling, at me in an unfiltered manner.

It's not that I didn't want to marry him, I'm just not... ready. I'm never ready.

I turn to Charlie now in the confines of his large living room as he slams the front door shut and stare into his furious brown eyes. His black hair is disheveled from running his hands through it in frustration and his teeth are pulling on his lip ring so hard I fear he may just rip it out. I know what I must look like, my tight red dress rumpled from me grasping the fabric at my thighs in exasperation, my shoulder length brown hair probably gone haywire at this point.

"How dare you embarrass me like that." My voice is quiet in all this electric chaos surrounding us that is yet to unfold, but my hushed words set him off.

"How dare I embarrass you? You're the one that made a fool out of me, Skylar! I'm offering to give you everything in life! Everything that you're absent parents didn't!" His guttural words are harsh but his voice is worse. The anger emanating from his loud mouth makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Charlie could be more than intimidating when he wanted to be.

But now I was angrier. I throw my bag to the ground and stare defiantly into his once kind eyes.

"Don't you dare bring them into this! I said no because I'm not ready, not that I'll never want to. But you! You flew off the handle and humiliated me in front of all those people, saying things to me that I've never heard you say. And what? You think that it's all going to be okay? That you can just treat me like shit and I'll deal with it and accept your proposal to marry you knowing you could do the same thing again? Or worse?" My voice comes out angrier all of a sudden as tears begin to run down my face and the rage in his eyes scares me enough to take a step back

Charlie follows me and backs me into the wall of his living room.

"Wha-" Before a word can come out and before I can comprehend what's happening the back of Charlie's hand connects with the right side of my face and my eyes lose focus. Pain pulses through me and I feel a small trail of blood drip down from my mouth. His large hands grip my neck and push me up against the wall so hard that I'm forced to stand on my toes in hopes that he doesn't strangle the life out of me.

"You fucking bitch!" Charlie screams the words into my face so vehemently that my heart begins to beat faster, speeding up an octave, as pure rage fills his once handsome facial features and a monster I never knew existed comes out. "You don't get to fucking talk to me that way!"

"Charlie. Stop." I struggle to get the words out as I gasp for air but this seems to anger him more as the next move he makes is to punch me in my stomach.

More breath is knocked out of me and I find it even more difficult to breathe as pain now runs through majority of my body. With his left hand still wrapped around my neck, my eyes begin to roll back into my head as more tears stream down my face. I want to scream and yell and kick and show that I'm not completely vulnerable, but a voice inside of my head tells me to stay still as he assaults me.

I feel a brief sense of relief when Charlie releases his hand from my neck but it is short lived as he pulls me to the ground and repeatedly kicks me in the stomach. Blood begins to flow from my mouth as I cough over and over. At this he stops and leans down on the ground, his face inches from mine as he stares into my eyes.