Pursued (Love Hurts)

Three

As soon as she burst through the front door, Marcie stalked up to her bedroom, refusing to tell me anything. We'd always been quite close before the move—although all of my secrets had created a distance between us—so this hurt a lot. The fact that she was going through something so horrific, and she wouldn't tell me anything...it broke my damn heart.

"What do you want for dinner?" I yelled pointlessly up the stairs as she slammed the door loudly behind her as a reply. I wondered whether I should be punishing her for being so rude, but I was too conflicted and exhausted to actually do anything about it.

Plus, shouting at someone that had already been through a rubbish day didn't feel like it would help anyone.

I wasn't always this way—insecure, unsure of myself, terrified of every decision. I used to be a strong, independent woman who really got the best out of life. I'd been carefree and fun, but that had all started to change as soon as I met Tony.

It was one night, in a nightclub. We'd caught one another's eye from across the dance floor, and it had all sparked from there. I used to see our story as a romantic, and lovely, but now looking back, it's nothing more than a tragedy.

The thing that destroyed me.

He started off as charming and interesting, the perfect guy, and since I'd just come out of a long-term relationship that had gone stale, I found his dramatic nature exciting, and I'd quickly gotten sucked in. I feel in love within weeks, and I thought that nothing would be able to tear us apart, no matter what.

Everyone warned me against him at one time or another—everyone. Friends, family, my parent's...but I thought that I knew best. I thought that they just didn't know him, that he was misunderstood. I was a cliché, a typical domestic abuse victim, and I hadn't even realized it was coming. I'd slowly separated myself from everyone, gone inside myself, allowed him to treat me in all kinds of terrible ways.

And then he'd gone and gotten himself locked up.

I'd been forced to stand as witness in court, meaning I hadn't yet managed to grieve about losing my parents, but sitting there in their front room with my daughter upstairs hating the world, the tears finally began to pour down my cheeks. I was crying for myself, for the lost years, for my lost family, for all that I did wrong, for Marcie's terrible first day. I wept until I was sobbing noisily, my entire body racking with sadness on the sofa.

And then, through the wetness soaking my eyes, I spotted something moving in the window.

A shadow.

I jumped up, racing over to where I saw it, my heart pounding painfully in my throat. I looked everywhere, even running to the front door to glance all around the outside of the house, but nothing was there. Everything was perfectly normal.

I had to be nothing; I must have been seeing things.

Eventually, I gave up, and I sat back on my sofa, allowing my pulse rate to slow down. As I calmed, I realized that it was probably just a tree branch or something, and that my emotions were making me overreact.

"Stop it, Alice." I hissed to myself, feeling furious that I allowed myself to get so worked up. "This is your home now, you're gunna have to get used to it."

All the thoughts of what had happened were upsetting me, that was all. I saw that the moment I began to think about my parents, it was just my brain creating something out of nothing. I needed to chill out.

Breathe in, breathe out.

I decided to head to the kitchen, to make myself a cup of tea—in my mind, there was nothing that a good cuppa couldn't sort out, and I needed one now more than ever. As I walked, I shot one more glance backward, and as I looked at the window once more, a shriek tore from my chest.

A face. A male face was pressed up against the glass.

I threw my hands over my heads, screaming louder than I ever had before, and that was how I stayed, frozen in that fiery terror until a small hand tugged at my t-shirt.

"Mummy?" Marcie begged me, in a small, terrified sounding voice. She started clinging to my leg, her heart pumping against her chest. "Mummy, what's wrong?"

I flicked my eyes back to the window, but of course, nothing was there.

In fact, looking back on it now it may never have been there. I may have created it in my own mind.

And even if it had been, I needed to get myself together for the sake of my daughter.

As I looked down at her, her little upset face was enough to calm me down. I suddenly realized that I was acting insane, completely absurd, no matter what the hell was going on. I was terrifying my own daughter—who'd already had one of the toughest days of her life—with my craziness. I needed to calm down, to sort myself out.

"Sorry baby." I panted, holding onto her. "Just ignore mummy, I thought I saw someone, but...I didn't." I confirm, nodding to try and convince myself in the process. "Let's get you back up to bed."

As we walked up the stairs, my breaths came in labored and panicked. I tried to calm myself down, for Marcie's sake, but that was easier said than done. She kept shooting me odd looks, and I was trying to smile reassuringly back at her, but it was quite obvious that she could see right through me.

And then we stepped into her room, and I spotted pictures littering the floor everywhere.

It was him!

The man I'd seen in the window—his face was scribbled all over my daughter's paper, drawn by her, over and over again...

She was being stalked.

My daughter...the person that I loved more than anyone in the world...how could I protect her?