Page 39 of Fighting Shadows

For a moment, I forgot that she didn’t remember anything from her time there.

Noah’s eyes turn sad as if her reaction hurts him, but before any of us can say anything, Kelvin barges into the room.

“Why didn’t any of you wait for me?” he barks at us.

His attitude has been shit the last few months, only growing worse when Autumn went missing. He’s been absent most of the time, but when he was around, he was intolerable, and I’m fucking sick of it.

Autumn shrinks in on herself, her shoulders bunching up to her ears. Her reaction to him is visceral, and the last shred of my sanity shedding at the sight has me snapping at someone I once respected.

“Watch your tone.” I warn him, “I won’t have you making Autumn more uncomfortable than she already is.”

“I’m her father!”

“You don’t fucking act like you are! I thought you were an amazing father to Brenn; you were so supportive and always present, and then the moment the girl we’ve spent years talking about, searching for, comes home, you turned into a dick, and I’m sick of it!” I shout, pushing up from the chair and getting into Kelvin's face.

No one says anything; the only sounds that can be heard in the sterile hospital room are our harsh breaths as we both standoff with one another.

My girl's voice carries over to us. She is small and quiet as she asks her dad to leave, surprising us all.

“I don’t want you here, Dad. You’ve done enough,” she says, dropping her head and staring at her covered legs.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Atlas asks.

When no one says anything, the tension in the room is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

“Little bear,” Brenn coaxes, approaching the bed as if she’s a scared animal.

Maybe she is. You can tell just by looking at her that she’s been through hell the last 14 days, and I hate it.

I’m so sick of her getting hurt by the people who are supposed to protect her. Ellie's betrayal is going to cut her deep for a long time, and then there's how she reacts to her dad.

How much can one girl take until she breaks completely?

I nearly lost her once before, and I can’t do it again; it would destroy me. I can’t save her from this. It’s not a burning building that I can run into, and I can’t fight my way through the pain for her, clearing a path for her to walk through untouched. I have to walk through this with her, holding her while she processes thison top of everything else, and while I have no complaints about doing so, I’m frustrated that we have to do it at all.

Autumn deserves peace. A happily ever after, especially after everything she’s been made to go through.

“Can you tell them?” she asks her brother.

We all look at him expectantly, hating how small she looks in that damn bed. Her entire demeanor changed the moment Kelvin stepped into the room, and I wouldn’t say I liked it one bit.

Stepping back, I place myself between him and her bed, making sure she can still see him but blocking his view of her enough that he focuses on the others in the room.

He narrows his eyes at me but wisely doesn’t say anything; I don’t think I could stop Dominic from hitting him even if I wanted to, which I don’t.

Dominic twirls his knife around his fingers, his eyes blank. He’s been silent this entire time, barely reacting to anything like he usually does. He’s just there.

“Tell us what?” Tobias asks. I can hear him move behind me, getting closer to Autumn.

“You all know that he confessed to knowing about some of the abuse, and because Jane was a manipulative bitch he didn’t do anything about it. Well, dear old Dad confessed to much worse, didn’t you,Kelvin,” Brenn sneers his name like it’s poison in his mouth.

“I told you my reasons!” Kelvin snaps.

“They aren’t good enough! You fucking found her and left her there!” Brenn shouts back, his face coated in fury.

“You found her?” Atlas croaks, his voice laced with fury, “You fucking found her and didn’t tell us. Didn’t bring her home?”

“I don’t answer to you, boy.”

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