"And we've got the tickets?" Lila was rushing around the house, trying to make sure everything was ready for the big game. Ethan's first game actually playing, that is.
He was usually just a benchwarmer, but the regular quarterback twisted his ankle two weeks ago during a dirt-bike race. Poor guy, but it was good for Ethan.
I felt kinda bad for Ethan, though. He wasn't great at football, but he loved doing it. Everyone encouraged him to do what he loved, so he tried out for football. I was pretty sure the coach thought that putting Ethan on the team would mean lots of donations from the Steel family to keep him there, but Lila wasn't that person. She believed that if Ethan could make the team, he could keep his position because of the talent he had and not the money.
Yeah, Lila was awesome.
"Yes, mom. We've got the tickets. Can we go now, before we're late?" Ethan grumbled, fiddling with his helmet. He'd been moody the entire week, too worried about the upcoming game to try to try and be nice.
I was almost a hundred percent sure that Lila was super close to grounding him for the rest of his life.
"Are you sure you have to go?" I asked Kade, clutching his forearm. He shrugged, glancing over his shoulder at his impatient brother and fretting mother.
"I can't miss Ethan's big game. He's already disappointed enough that you aren't going to make it. I don't believe how easy you get sick." Kade shook his head with a soft laugh. I rolled my eyes.
Two days before, I'd started puking my guts up. Yesterday I'd come down with a serious fever. Awful for me, right? I wasn't even sure what came over me. I never got this sick. Maybe it was the stress of the upcoming trial?
The trial was in a week. My testimony was already written out, ready to be read off at any given moment. But I wasn't so ready.
I wasn't sure how I was even going to look at my father. I told myself that I would look at Lila, look at the boys, look at a stranger so that I didn't have to look at my father. It made me feel slightly better.
"You're telling me. I couldn't have chosen a worse time to get sick." I grumbled, looking longingly at the open door. Lila had forbidden me from going outside in my condition. That also meant missing the big game.
It wasn't that I enjoyed football, in reality I thought it was stupid, but I wanted to support Ethan. And here I was. Sick.
"It's alright. There'll be another game." Kade shrugged, pecked me on the cheek and hurried out the door. Lila hugged me tightly, kissed the top of my head, and ran after her sons. She was shouting something about extra chairs.
Weren't there bleachers at this thing?
I closed the door, locked it, and wandered around the house. I ended up at the doors to the library. I hadn't been in the library since... Well, since Kas. It was always our place. The place we went when we were hurting or needed an escape.
I briefly touched the handle, but pulled my hand back with a smile. I might not have been able to open the doors that day, but I knew when things got better upstairs, I would be able to explore the books that I'd been missing.
After a couple more minutes of simply wandering around, I made it to the kitchen. I instantly felt my stomach make a whale mating call, and I started cooking some pasta before I lost my liver to my stomach.
The water boiled fairly quickly.
I felt a chill race down my spine. Time slowed down. And my head was snapping to the side, blood spurting out of my mouth without my realizing it.
I landed in a heap on the floor, my vision spinning and my head pounding.
I glanced up and my whole world stopped turning.
No.
He was in jail.
I had a restraining order.
He couldn't get to me.
It wasn't possible.
No.
But something deep inside of me screamed 'Yes'. Yes, he's here. Yes, he's finally getting to use the crowbar he loved so much.
"You ruined everything." He growled. The crazy light brightened his onyx eyes. The deadness of his eyes was more devastatingly paralyzing than I could remember.
He had snapped. He had completely lost his mind. There was no saving him.
No sanity.
I crawled away on my hands and knees, desperately trying to get away. My hands were touching everything around me, trying to find some type of purchase or some type of weapon.
The crowbar came down on my right leg, then my left.
A small scream left my mouth at the intense pain that radiated from those spots. My father slowly looked at me, a maniacal grin spreading across his thin lips. I shook my head, clamping my lips together.
Father hated screaming.
The crowbar came down again. And again. And again. And again.
Until I couldn't remember anything but the feeling of a crowbar hitting my skin.
3rd Person's POV:
Lila waved to a fellow sports mom as she unlocked her car. Of course she had to forget her camera on a day like this. Sure, she had her phone but her actual camera was better than any photo her phone could take.
She pulled into her driveway, a strange churning in her gut. There were no other cars, but as Lila neared the front door, she noticed something strange.
Hadn't Ariel shut the front door when they left?
Lila pushed the door open with a confused, yet wary look on her face. She grabbed her can of pepper spray from her purse, not sure if she would be needing it. Unluckily, her gun was still in her car.
"Ariel?" Lila called out hopefully. Perhaps Ariel had gone out and forgotten to close the door fully when she came back inside.
It sounded a bit far fetched, but Lila was hoping.
An eerie silence filled the house, like fog floating over the ground after a rainy night. Lila could feel fear twist her gut into several knots. She entered the kitchen, not expecting the sight she was greeted with.
Her purse and pepper spray fell to the ground as a high pitched scream of disbelief left her mouth.
She scrambled to the island, where Ariel was laying motionless behind. Lila slid on the blood that surrounded Ariel in a scarlet puddle, making her look down at her hands in shock. Without another moment of hesitation, Lila was screaming out her daughter's name.
In moments, Lila had a 911 operator on the phone, describing the situation.
In minutes, an ambulance was taking Ariel away, shouting out words that Lila didn't understand.
A blanket was wrapped around Lila's shoulders as she gave her statement.
"There's something you should know." The officer started, then stopped. Lila was breathing heavily, almost hyperventilating. Her glare was enough to prompt the other officer to speak.
"Elliot James was released on bail five hours ago." The officer said. Lila's eyes widened in pure, unadulterated fury. The kind of fury that only a mother protecting her child can feel.
"And you didn't tell me, why?" Lila snarled, her teeth bared and gleaming in the light. The officers scrambled to find some reason or explanation for their failure.
"She had a restraining order..." The first officer started with a small chuckle, not knowing what else to say or do.
"And you can see how well that worked out! A restraining order is a piece of paper! Anyone can walk through it." Lila howled, then climbed in her car and sped directly to the hospital. Twenty minutes from the house, Gabriel picked up his phone with a smile.
"Wassup mom?" Gabriel asked with a wide smile. His smile dropped, his face paled, and tears welled up in his eyes.
"Gabe?" Xavier asked, grabbing his sibling's elbow to steady the nearly green man. Gabriel jumped, pulling the phone away from his ear.
"Get everyone. We need to get to the hospital now. It's Ariel. It's bad." Gabriel choked out through the bile rising in his throat. Xavier's chest rose and fell quickly, panic racing throughout his veins at high speed.
All the brothers were collected, waiting for Ethan to get off the field so they could grab him from the game. Ethan was instantly throwing his helmet to the coach the second that Ariel's name was brought up.
The coach protested a little, but stopped when he realized there was no getting Ethan to stay.
The boys rushed into their respective cars, seeing as how they all arrived at different times and in different cars. Hands were shaking, breathing was sporadic, tears were already falling. Hearts were ready to give out in fear.
The boys raced into the hospital waiting room and were pointed towards the surgery waiting room. Lila was sitting in a chair, her head held between her hands. She was shaking with sobs, not knowing if her daughter was going to survive this latest attack or not.
The boys gathered around their mother, crying and begging for their angel to be alright. The surgeon walked into the room, making the entire family perk up.
Ariel's blood covered his front.
He gazed at them with sad, sympathetic eyes. Lila knew what he was going to say before he said it, and she sank to her knees with hysteric sobs shaking her entire body. When the doctor shook his head, chaos broke out in the waiting room.
Jaydon fainted, unable to believe what was happening. Lila cried harder. Screams of agony were heard throughout the hospital, making strangers hang their heads at the sound. The sound of a broken soul crying out for one that they lost. Sounds that made the strangers waiting in the surgery waiting room cry for the family and all they lost.
All they knew was that Ariel was gone. Forever.