Page 6 of Fighting Shadows

Chapter 4

Autumn

‘Days Gone Quiet – Lewis Capaldi’

“Imissed you,” Charlie coos down at me, his eyes lit with possessive intent. The bed dips next to me, his body pressing as close to my thigh as he can, his rough hand splaying across my sweat-slicked skin. A move he used to do when he visited my room in the middle of the night to try to reassure me that he just wanted to help.

It was all a lie.

It was always a lie.

The feeling of his skin touching mine sends shivers of disgust over my body, but I don’t move. I refuse to play this game of cat and mouse he so desperately wants to. It’s how he gets me to be pliant, molding me into the little girl he wants me to be forever.

“Did you not miss me?” he asks again, his voice growing more agitated when I don’t answer him, “Little one, you need to answer me. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t like seeing you chained up like this, but if I let you go, you’ll run from me. I don’t want my precious little girl to try to run from me again.”

“Why? I’m not your little girl.”

“You will always be my little girl. My little one,” he says, a soft smile on his face. He lifts his hand from my thigh and leans over me, his hand clasping the back of my neck roughly, making me wince from the pain. I try to move, to loosen the punishing grip he’s holding me in, but it’s no use. “I knew you loved my touch, and you could never resist me even after all this time.”

“Please don’t,” I rasp, turning my head onto my shoulder as he leans in to kiss me.

“I knew you remembered our little games. You can pretend all you want to, but you know how hard I get when you pretend to resist me. Like you don’t want me to reach between those pretty little thighs and touch you like I used to.”

“I don’t want you to! I want to go home to my family!”

Charlie snarls in my face; his teeth bared like those of a rabid dog.

“I am your family!” he shouts back, “You don’t need anyone else, only me. I am all you ever had before Chloe came along. You were supposed to stay young forever, my perfectly molded little girl who only wanted my cock. Jane decided that being a mom was beneath her and forced you to grow up. She ruined everything!”

“You made me act like a child. Clothes that were too small for my body, too childish. Made me speak like I was seven years old because you’re sick in the head!”

Charlie’s face contorts like what I’ve said has genuinely hurt him. If he were anyone else, I would probably feel bad, but Iknow it’s all an act. Something he mastered a long time ago to get people to let their guard down, to make it easier for him to manipulate those around him.

It’s how he managed to lure me into his trap, making himself the center of my universe from the moment he stepped into our lives.

Charlie jolts up from the bed and storms out of the room, muttering under his breath and leaving me alone with only my memories.

Age 9…

“Hi there, I’m Charlie,” Mom’s new boyfriend says, crouching down to where I’m sitting on the floor, his hand out for me to shake.

I eye him warily. He doesn’t look like Mom’s other boyfriends; he doesn’t smell like Mom’s special drink, either.

Reaching my small hand out, I put it in his much larger one and give it a slight shake.

“Hi, I’m Autumn.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Little One. You are very pretty, like your mom,” he says to me, still smiling.

I can hear Mom getting annoyed in the kitchen, the cupboard doors slamming shut. Mom doesn’t like it when her boyfriends talk to me; it makes her call me mean names.

“Don’t be silly, baby. I’m much prettier than the brat,” Mom appears with two cups of coffee in her hands.

Ducking my head, I averted my eyes, hoping to avoid making her angry, and tried to focus on the book in my lap. Mom let me borrow it from the library from school if I promised not to annoy her by speaking to her for a week. Even though I need a drink, I don’t dare ask Mom for one; I don’t want her to take my book from me. I want to make her happy, and maybe she’lllike me like she likes her special drink. She smiles at her special drink, but she never smiles at me.

Every time I sneak a glance at the new boyfriend, he’s looking at me with a smile on his face, barely paying attention to Mom as she talks about what she did at the special drink place last night.

I smile back at him.

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