Page 62 of Cut Me Down

“I'm sorry! I'll do anything you want! I'll cut her off! Just leave her alone! I'll quit my job, okay!? I'll text right now and quit! It can just be me and you, just like you want!” I beg, practically holding my palms together in a symbol of prayer.

“You think that matters!? You and that little slut have been flaunting your asses to every man that walks in the door! You're helping her fuck around? How do you think that makes me look! My girlfriend being the whore of downtown!” He painfully grips the skin of my thighs and forces my legs apart. My body shivering at the cool air brushing against my non-stimulated sex.

“I didn’t do anything Cooper! Please!” I feel as he rams himself into me with no type of lubrication, natural or otherwise. It burns…my whole body ignites in the fire of his hatred, and I can almost feel myself tearing. His grip on my right wrist tightens as hard as it can, and I feel as he reaches over, and grabs my shears with his right hand. The light reflecting off of the metal is doing very little to block the horrors I’m witnessing. He presses his weight into me as he relentlessly thrusts into me again and again.

“This will teach you to fuck me over!” I watch as he opens my shears and presses them halfway up my right arm. Digging the blade into my sensitive skin and dragging it. The burning and piercing radiate through my whole arm as he continues his ruthless fucking.

I can’t move through the pain, and as much as he’s going to punish me for screaming, I can’t help it. I yell out as loudly as I can, hoping and praying that someone will hear me. My throat instantly burning and matching the pain radiating through my limb…

Chapter twenty-two

Damien

It’s not long before she falls asleep in my arms, and I can’t help but look at her. She’s been through so much, and I have a feeling I don’t even know half of it. Some of her files from the DCFS database are alarming. She may not have had a lot of people in her corner back then, but damn, I’m glad she had Richard and Marla Anderson.

They may be Serena’s parents, but they fought for her like she was theirs. They made countless calls, at first being anonymous, but then when nothing was done, they quickly gave over their names and relations. There’s even an attached police report of Richard being detained after storming down to the DCFS office and screaming at them about their incompetence. I’m starting to admire this man, and I see where Serena gets her persistence from.

I quickly realized while looking over the files that the more detailed, and the younger she was, the more it was blacked out. The last blacked out entry being when she was twelve. It’s insane how that was the first of three occasions she was put into the Anderson’s care. Was the system that incompetent that the blacked-out files weren’t enough to place her with them?

No, it’s that she was considered too young to speak on her own behalf. All her parents had to do was pretend to be good long enough to get them off their backs, and she didn’t stand a chance. The files I could see and read fully after she was twelve were alarming enough. With the level of neglect and abuse, I’m astonished she’s still alive and survived them at all.

In her file, it showed that her parents died of overdoses, but that was at least a year after she was emancipated at sixteen.Sixteen years. That’s how long the system made her suffer. I know she feels that she’s moved on, but does anyone really ever move on? Especially from horrific acts such as those?

The worst I read was of the beatings, disarray of her childhood home, malnourishment, and one time when she was fourteen, she had gotten so sick she passed out in the middle of school and had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance. She almost died, and who showed up to take care of her? The Andersons. Not even her own fucking parents.

Her persistence and her will to live, even under such terrible circumstances, amazes me. She was practically tortured and lived a terrible life. Yet every time it knocked her over, she stood up and practically asked for another. I admire the fuck out of her.

She’ll be comfortable enough to open up to me one day. She’ll tell me. Maybe not yet, but she will. Guarding her thoughts and feelings has become natural to her, and I can’t wait to tear that down. I’ve never wanted or cared to know about someone this deeply before. My family? Sure. But you already know a lot about them just because they’re family.

My family is nothing like hers. Ashia? She has no one. She has Serena, her parents, and Emmett, but no one from her own family. No aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, no one left that could have helped her. I have so many cousins, she could take half of them, and I’d probably still have too many. I can’t imagine what a lonely life that must have been. I’m not sure I’ve ever really been truly alone. Between my huge family, and now DH, I always have someone. Though when I’m not with her, I feel more alone than ever. That’s how I know she’s getting to me. I have countless people that surround me, yet she’s the only one I look for.

One day we’ll have our own family, and she’ll have children she can pour her love into. Is that what we need right now? Probably not, but I don’t give a fuck. I see the way she looks at kids when they enter Cut Me Down, and how she interacts with all the babies she sees. She craves that kind of life. She wants to be loved unconditionally, and she wants to love someone unconditionally. She wants to be able to give someone everything she couldn’t have, and my guess is that’s a lot. I'll give her that chance. Maybe not now, maybe not in the near future, but someday I will, and she’ll want it with me.

I can see her tolerance for me continue to build. She gets upset about my work, or at least she says she does. She’s been watching that Adrien kid’s podcast, and she hears about what I’ve done before I come home to her. I think she’s more upset about loosening up to the thought of me so easily. How could a person like me be her knight in shining armor? How could the same hands that take life bring her such pleasure? She has guarded herself so well that her lack of control is eating away at her.

She likes me, and although she won’t admit it right now, she’s warming up to me, and that scares the fuck out her. She knows she shouldn’t like it, or how our relationship started out, but she does. Her soft smiles and glances tell me everything. Even her slight movements in her sleep. When she stirs from her dark thoughts, but instantly calms down when her fingertips glide across my arms encased around her. She’s more afraid of the void she’ll feel without me there.

She’s convinced that I'll leave her. Cast her out like a broken toy when I'm done with her, but she severely underestimates my feelings for her. She’s captivating, and surprising. So complex. She’s pushed aside her feelings for so long, she’s not sure what to feel. Not towards me, little dick Cooper, or even her parents, and she refuses to feel these things until the dam breaks, and they flow through her all at once. I can’t wait for the dam that holds her feelings for me to break.

I know she feels them, and she knows it too, she’s just too afraid to. Another layer of her to unveil. Every time I lift a stone in her heart to see what’s underneath, it leads me to another stone. Layers upon layers of self-preservation and survival, and I plan to unearth them all.

I’ve only ever seen her come out of her shell that one night she was at Until Dawn. I need to find the time to take her out more, push her comfortable boundaries, but with Dust growing so quickly, it's hard to. No. I need to though. I need to show her that there’s more to her life than sitting around and waiting for me to come home or working.

At the same time, I like her being home. She relaxes here, and I don’t have to worry about anything happening to her. I don’t know what I’d do if something did. I may have shot Cooper in the face, but that was only out of necessity. The things I had planned for that man would have made Satan blush, but at least now she’s safe. She’ll always be safe with me, and I'm going to do everything I can to prove that to her. The drug addict in the alleyway showed her that, but she’s always so apprehensive, never truly believing anything.

She’s starting to fill a hole in my chest that I didn’t know was there, and now that I do, I feel myself crumbling with need to kneel to her. I’d do anything she asks. Besides leave, which she likes to try and command me to do, but I'll never leave her.

I promised.

Screams awaken me. Tearing me from sleep in a violent swipe. As I feel her thrashing in my arms, I turn to witness Ashia launching herself out of bed. It takes me a second to fully wake up, but I can tell that she’s clearly distraught. She’s violently shaking. Full tremors wrack her body from her shoulders to her knees, and she’s having trouble catching her breath. Hot tears streaming down her beautiful face. I’ve never witnessed one of her nightmares get to her this badly.

“Ashia? Just breathe, baby. It’s okay.” I hold my hand out to her. Gently and soothingly. Offering her some type of assistance as I slowly get up from the bed. Showing the same caution as I would to the victims I rescue, but the moment I stand to my full height, she flinches and backs herself into the wall. Which just startles her more. As if she wasn’t expecting the wall to be there, and she sprints to the bathroom. Slamming the door shut and locking it behind her. I quickly throw my pants on and walk over to the door. “Baby, open the door.”

Quick, jagged breaths ring out from the other side of the wooden barrier, as if her back is pressed against it. Barricading herself inside as if the threat in her dreams was still right in front of her. Her breathing speeds up, and I can tell she’s not breathing as deeply as she was at first. My own chest tightens, and the urge to break down the door and pull her into my arms surfaces. I quickly cast that aside, knowing that such an aggressive act would only scare her further.

“Ashia. Take deep breaths. Wherever it was, you're not there anymore. You're in your own apartment, you’re safe.” I try to console her, though I wish I could just take her place and fend off the ghosts that snuck their way in.

My reassurance is bullshit, and she knows it. Cooper got in no problem, and, well, I do too. I break in every night. Without her permission or knowledge. Fuck, I pushed her too far. I’m a constant reminder that this apartment can't shield her from the horrors that plague her nightmares. She’s told me how she used to have nightmares like this, but she hasn’t in a long time.

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