My Lovely Jerk {Completed}

Chapter - 27

However, no matter the case, it sickens me to look at my mother because when I look at her, I am reminded of the torment Dad places on her every single night.

Setting my fork down, I gulped.

It was going to happen again tonight. I knew it because there hasn’t been one day in my whole life that I haven’t heard her ... beg or cry for salvation of his malevolence ways.

I asked her once, a year or so back, why she stayed with him. She gave me a weak smile and said that it was because she loved him.

If the reason she stayed with him was for love, then I hope to never fall in love. It sounded like chains, ones that hold you down and drown you so deep in murky water that you can’t tell when you are in a situation that could kill you.

I had no doubt that one day I would wake up and find her on the cold hard ground, dead ... lifeless.

He would go that far, it was just a matter of time.

I placed my hands under the table as they clenched in anger. There was nothing I could do. Last time I tried to stop him from hitting her, I ended up locked in my room without food and water for three days. That was after he got a few blows in.

After that Mother has been locking me up at night in my room so I don’t go stopping him.

I think in some sick twisted way she is protecting me. Her thought is that if I am contained to my room that I won’t be brave and try and stop him. In return, Dad won’t hurt me and people at school won’t catch on to his abusive acts.

Even though she didn’t want me to get hurt, I was. I can’t stand hearing them at night.

“Are ya not goin’ eat, Boy?” Dad asked in his husky voice.

I picked back up my fork, seeing as he was not asking me a question but mere demanding me in his own way to eat. I started to eat the food before me, absent mindedly. Hope coursed through me that tonight would be different and he wouldn’t torment Mother.

Yet, that was a silly thought and I knew it.

***

Present Time

Elle's Point Of View

“I have no secrets,” Bryson told me as the car accelerated some more, showing me he was lying.

“Really? I find that a huge lie. I think you are a puzzle, Bryson. One I am keen to solving.”

“What happens when you get all the pieces together and you don’t like what you see?”

I gave him a single chuckle, “There has never been a puzzle I haven’t liked.”

“Glad to be your first,” he stated.

The immature part of my brain wondered for a minute as I thought of his words and another meaning they implied. Blushing I looked away. “I was in love with Randall,” I blurted out. “I can remember that ... so far in my memories, that is the biggest secret I have...”

Bryson was silent and even though I wasn’t looking at him, I knew he was thinking. “You loved him?” His voice was laced in shock the moment he finally spoke.

“Yep,” I stated as I popped the ‘p’. “So, that was my secret. Come on, tell me something about you! Something no one knows!” I urged.

Bryson grunted, “Why are you so curious about me?”