Teenage Troubles (Prequel for Teenage Baby)

Chapter 6 | The captors

Chapter 6 | The captors

Cara and sanity had never belonged to the same equation, unless on opposite sides where they juxtaposed each other. 

  Her mom brought men home when her father was at night shifts. Just for fun, sweetie. That was the explanation Cara used to get when she was just six years old and at that time with an innocent mindset, she didn't get the underline meaning to fun. Our secret, don't tell anyone.

  So Cara didn't. But her eyes would melt in their sockets as they'd watch with confused horror all across the way from the threshold, where she'd be partially hidden behind the door, her mom mingle with a man on the couch, chest to chest, lips to lips. Breaths heaving, throats rumbling. Cara'd put her hands to her ears and she'd turn her face away.

  And she remained silent and watchful until her mom and the strange man had stood once, arms tangled like a hectic braid and faces just an inch apart, then teetered drunkenly across the corridor until they stumbled into the bedroom. They'd kicked the door shut behind but the paper thin walls did all but forbid the noises that rose from echoing; heavy breaths, aggressive groans.

   So she'd thought the man was hurting her mom, and with all her childish innocence had called her dad and urgently whispered, "Dad, come please, I'm scared. There's a man in the bedroom with mom. Hurry-"

  Her words had elicited a heart-attack, postponed only for her dad to break rules and race home faster than he imagined the car could even go. He'd burst through the front door, heart pounding and brain churning, then stormed into the bedroom where the ugly exposure of treason and betrayal came like an iron-punch to his gut.  

  He kicked Cara's mom and the nameless lover shamelessly out of the house, cursed them at the doorstep and swore she'd never step in there ever again. When he'd turned in again with his heart ripped apart, he saw Cara looking at him through traumatized watery green eyes.

"Don't tell me you've seen a lot," he'd mumbled.

But she had. And it was enough for it to turn her mind upside down.

  The first psychologist said she didn't seem to be coping because all she'd do during sessions was sit carelessly on the recliner with an unamused expression on her face and her arms crossed. She'd twirl a strand of her hair around her finger, blow it off her face. Refuse to cooperate. Cara didn't think those people were helping her. So she didn't let them.

  Now Cara was a thirteen-year-old with pretty eyes and pretty smiles but subdued abuse lurking behind her lips and blossoming insanity setting roots around her heart. The images of past incidents were stuck in her head but she refused to acknowledge them. She liked to pretend that she was just a normal girl waiting outside a store for her dad to finish his business which she couldn't care less about, but she knew she wasn't.

Her legs started complaining. She was just about to turn around to urge her father to finish when something caught the edge of her vision. Across the worn tar of the road was the town's graveyard. Which wouldn't be anything interesting if it hadn't been for the boy standing there by the foot of one grave, slightly obscured by the trees in front of him.

Dominic Alain. 

  She'd never personally met him but she'd heard the rumors; the spoiled brat with anger issues, the poor boy who'd watched his mom die, the (insanely) overprotective brother to Luciano Alain. Cara hadn't made her judgment yet but she wanted to know what he was like herself. Something about his eerie aura was alluring.

  Her curiosity urged her feet forwards until she crossed the road and stood by a tree, narrowing her eyes apprehensively at fourteen-year-old Dom crouched down with his back to her. He was watering the flowers on his mom's grave and little Lou was behind him, watching. A cat stalked along. Young amber eyes followed it. Cara knew from Lou's stance and observant look that he was about to go after it and she wasn't wrong. Lou did.