Just For Show (EDITING)

Chapter 21 - " what happened to your face?"

I gently open my eyes to see the streaks of sunlight shinning through the white curtains. It was all a blur at first but then I remembered what had happened the night before. The fight, the slap, the tears.

I sat up on Carter's bed only to realize he had never come home. I head felt heavy and my face bloated from all the crying of last night.

I slowly picked myself up from the bed and began walking around Carter's apartment to find a desserted apartment. Carter had left me and never came back.

Was it over? Was our whole relationship over, over my stupid mistake?

I was so stupid. I shouldn't have said anything to Carter. I wouldn't be in this situation if I hadn't.

I put on the spare clothes, I always left at Carter's, and made my way out of his apartment. I had called one of my drivers in advance and he was parked right outside Carter's apartment building as soon as I stepped out.

I took a seat in the back seat and the driver began to drive. I had asked the driver to take me back to the apartment I shared with the boys. But as he got closer to the apartment I realized I wasn't emotionally stable to face them all. My mind was still spinning and I felt like I was about to throw up. Between worrying about how my relationship status with Carter was and the shock of him slapping me across the face, I still didn't know what was going to happen or what I would do.

Then I thought about something that I should have thought from the moment Carter had slapped me. He hit me. I got hit by a man. Never in my life did I think I would be in this situation. Growing up we hear so much about boyfriends hitting girlfriends but we never think it'll happen to us. It's something so distant that never truly affected me when people talked about.

I looked at myself in the car mirror and knew I couldn't go home. I was a mess. My make-up was melted over my face. My eyes puffy and face bloated, with a bruise on the spot where Carter made made his mark. There would be too many questions I wouldn't want to answer.

I knew where I needed to go.

*

The driver stopped the car in front of the address I had given him. I looked at the unfamiliar house and waited until I had the courage to get out of the car.

I wiped my face as much as I could to take off the horrid leftover make-up and got the courage to leave the car. I walked up the driveway and stood in front of the door. I raised my hand up and knocked on the door three times.

After about a minute the door finally opened revealing my mother with all smiles. I hadn't seen her in months, only phone calls. That was never a problem between us. We didn't have the mother - daughter relationship that I wished we had but it was better than not having one at all. I was always closer with my father even after he got stuck in a coma.

Actually my relationship with her got even more distant after the news of the coma.

My mother's smile quickly faded as she took a good look upon my face.

" oh my baby girl! What happened to you?" she asked rushing me into her house. The house seemed cold. Not speaking about the temperature but the vibe inside the house. This wasn't the house I had grown up in. That house had been sold as soon as my mother gave up on my father. She gotten rid of everything that reminded her of him.

Her pushing me to persue my modeling career, not that I minded, deep down was a way for me not to be attached to my "vegetable of a dad" she would say. I hated her when she'd call him that. He wasn't a vegetable. He was my father and forever will be.

She led me to the living room and sat me on her leather couch. The cold material made me flinch and shiver all over my body. Her hand brushed away the stray strands of hair away from my face and took a good look at me once again.