Broken (a Niall Horan love story)

Chapter 50

TRIGGER WARNING: ABUSE

***Navaeh's P.O.V.***

I told Niall to go to Mullingar for St. Patrick's Day. He was hesitant to leave me behind because that would mean he would be all the way in Ireland if something bad happened to me and he wouldn't be able to do anything about it. After about half a day of arguing about it, he finally said that he would and I was watching him get on his flight on Monday. I was honestly as scared as I could be; I knew that the next few days would be hard without him, but I hoped that I would manage.

I had scared him the other day; it was easy to tell by the way that he had started sobbing along with me. Seeing him cry is like watching the world end, though. I had to pull myself together because I couldn't handle watching him shake so violently. It wasn't that I was going to kill myself or that I thought that I might; I would never want to do that to Niall after I had felt the pain of Cody's suicide. No, I just knew that my step father had become even more violent than he was before (I didn't even think it was possible) and that didn't reassure me that my life was incredibly safe. The proof of it would be what happened when I had gotten back to my house.

I had just been stepping into the house, tapping a reply into my phone while smiling at what Niall had sent me. James wasn't even supposed to be home; he should've been gone on his night shift already. However, the TV was blaring and that was my first alert to the fact that he was still there. I was on edge as I clutched my phone in my hand tightly and peeked into the kitchen.

"Where have you been?" an all too familiar voice growled out from behind me. Already on edge and not expecting him to have been there, I jumped slightly and smacked my hand over my chest. As soon as I recovered from the surprise I dropped my hand; I didn't want him to know that he had scared me because the reaction had already made him smirk to himself.

"I was out," I simply told him as if that explained everything. I knew it wouldn't make him happy, but I said it anyways.

"With that Niall boy?" he questioned to which I sneered slightly, "I told you to stay away from him." The words were so menacing that they were almost like a slap to the face. If I was lucky, they would be the only things I got that night. However, I was almost never lucky. "You didn't disobey me, did you?" I didn't give an answer to that; I just started to back away as slowly as I could. "Did you?!"

I couldn't control the flinch that shook my body when he screamed the words and I hated that. I wanted to shrink away like the scared little girl that I had been at the beginning of his abuse. Lately it had felt like the beginning all over again. "You don't control me," the words were quieter than I would have liked, but I still said them and I quickly wished that I hadn't.

"What the fuck did you just say?" he spat out the words and I cringed before there was a palm smacking against my cheek roughly. The hit was so hard that I was seeing stars for a moment, and my neck twisted uncomfortably as I stumbled into the nearby wall. My hand rose to my cheek instinctively as if I would find something there other than the intense sting from the contact. Boy, it hurt like a bitch.

There was a rush of air hitting me as he pinned me against the wall by putting his hands on either side of my head. I did my best to flatten myself against the surface behind me so that I could be as far away from him as possible. His face was too close to mine for comfort as he leaned forward and snarled out his words like the disgusting animal that was, "If that's what you think than you have a lot to learn, Darling." And with that, he gripped my upper arm painfully and shoved me to the ground at his feet.

My grip on my phone loosened just enough during the fall and it skidded against the floor so that it was just out of my reach. With a small groan, I tried to sit up just as there was a ding from my phone. Quickly, I reached for it, but his foot soon stepped on my hand and pushed it painfully into the ground as he reached over to grab the phone off of the ground. His face contorted first when he saw the lock screen of my phone; it was a picture of Niall and I where he was kissing my cheek and I wore a large smile. Just a week ago it had been of Cody and I, but that grew too painful to look at and I had to change it to a preexisting photo.

"Your fuck buddy wants you to know that you're not going to be talking to him anymore," James told me with an absolutely fuming look in his eyes. His words were enough to make my eyes widen. Even though I knew that couldn't have possibly been what Niall said, I was scared to know what James meant by saying it.

"What?" my fragile sounding voice questioned.

Before I could even fully process what was happening, he brought his hand back and then swung his arm so that the phone flew across the room at an almost impossible speed. I let out a loud yelp as if he had just hit me when the phone hit the wall and there was an unbearable cracking sound. His foot rose off of my hand and I was quickly crawling across the floor to get to my phone on the other side of the hallway. It was a silly and way too hopeful thought, but I turned it over to the screen side while praying that it wouldn't be too badly shattered. Of course, the screen was cracked beyond repair; lighting up the screen only revealed an unrecognizable blur of colors.

A soft sob left my lips as I looked down at the broken phone in my hand. If I had been in a different situation and it had cracked and I had acted like I was then then I might have laughed at myself. However, the situation was too much to handle and I felt like the reaction was more than justified. This was more than a phone; it was one of my only ways of communicating with Niall while he was gone. He had bought the phone for me for the sole purpose of being able to talk to him. To me, it was priceless, and now it was gone.

James' hand tangled into my hair and he twisted it around his fist which made my cries become louder. He pushed my face towards the ground where the phone had dropped to when I had let go of it; he was treating me like a dog that had just made a mess on the carpet and needed to be shown how bad it was. It made me want to be sick right then and there. "Don't you dare forget who makes the rules here, you little bitch," he ground out the words through gritted teeth and then continued, "you aren't leaving this house starting right now and you better be damn sure that if you try and go against that I will find you and strangle you with my bare hands. Do you understand?"

I stayed quiet as the tears ran down my cheeks rapidly and I tried to catch a breath. My lungs were screaming for a substantial breath that I just couldn't manage to take it and all I wanted to do was die right there on the floor. Another painful tug on my hair made me wince even more and whimper slightly. I had never felt so completely helpless in my whole entire life and I absolutely hated every second of it.

"I said do you fucking understand?!"

"Y-Yes," I struggled with the word, but it was all he needed to hear before he untangled his hand from my hair and stalked away from me. From the sound of his movements after that, he was grabbing a beer before making sure that every single exit in the house was locked and I wouldn't be able to get out. With a painful gasp breaking through my cries, I collapsed on the floor and let myself cry next to my shattered phone. If I wasn't dead by the end of the week then it would be a miracle.