The Alpha's Burning Flower

Chapter 8

TRIGGER WARNING: there is a scene about abuse and suicide. There won't be many of these but there will be some. I will just say trigger warning and what it is. I will always put it into italics so you know what to skip if you need to. 

Hannah 

Annabella POV 

6 Years Later 

“Come on Bella! Just come to this one party with me!” begs my best friend Hannah Lawrence. The girl is wearing a jean miniskirt with a green crop top t-shirt with high heeled boots. Her light brown hair is in waves down her back and her eyeliner makes her green eyes look huge. She looks awesome. Meanwhile, I am standing in a yellow diner uniform with my hair in an ugly bun with no makeup on. 

“I can't Han, you know this,” I tell her. 

“But it's midnight! You're done working! Come onnnn! We are getting you out of this hellhole town in three days! Let's consider tonight our going away party!” 

“You know I don’t party Hannah.”

“Uhg! How are we best friends?” She says pouting. I give her a small smile.

“You know why,” I say quietly, looking down at my scarred arms. We became best friends on one of the absolute worst days of my life. 

It was the day after my thirteenth birthday. The second anniversary of my dad’s death. I had practically been living as a house slave for those two years. I didn’t really have any friends at school. I wasn’t bullied, not even by my step-siblings, but no one really talked to me. Hannah would say hi and smile at me sometimes but we never had a conversation. I had to stop doing my sports a year after he died because I couldn’t afford another year and Sarah wouldn’t spend money on me. I had enough knowledge to keep training on my own though. I visited mom a lot and added a small boulder to the clearing and wrote dad’s name on so he would be there too. 

So that’s what I did. I made breakfast, went to school, went home, ran through the woods, stopped at mom and dad’s grave, practiced martial arts and boxing by myself, ran home, showered, made dinner, ate leftovers in my room, cleaned the kitchen or the house, did homework, went to sleep, repeat. That was my life. At least five days a week I got a nice hard smack in the face from Sarah for doing something wrong. I'm surprised my jaw still works. 

On that day though, school was still two weeks away so after I made breakfast, I ran through the woods for hours. Sarah slapped me last night because dinner wasn’t good enough. And then I had nightmares all night so I didn’t sleep well. I was late getting breakfast ready so I got back-handed twice that morning. I was trying to run off everything coursing through me: anger, hurt, fear, sadness, grief. I ran for three hours straight then spent two more hours with boxing gloves on punching at trees. 

I punched and punched until I destroyed my gloves. Then I ran to mom and dad’s grave and collapsed in front of it, my body heaving with sobs. I felt like a failure to my parents. I broke my promise to my mom, I wasn’t brave anymore, not since dad died. And I trust no one. London keeps telling me in my dreams to stay strong but I haven’t been. I sat there crying out apologies, praying that they’ll forgive me for being scared and weak. 

Eventually, I passed out in the grass from exhaustion. When I woke up, it was dark, well past dinner time. My phone was dead. I sprinted back to the house hoping that I'm not too late. I sneak into the house and it is eerily quiet. I see takeout boxes on the table and a half empty bottle of wine. Sarah is sitting on the couch in the living room. I try to sneak up the stair but as soon as I turned the corner, I was yanked back by my hair. She spun me around and smacked me so hard that I fell to the floor. 

“Where have you been?!” She shrieked. 

“I’m sorry! I fell asleep in the woods!” I cry scooting away from her on my butt. 

“Well at least you were with the other animals. No wonder you smell like shit.” She yells yanking me up by my elbow. Then she did the one thing I had been treading: she pulled back and punched me. her fist connected with my temple and I crumpled to the floor. That was the first time she ever did more than smack me. But she didn’t stop there. She began kicking me, landing blow after blow to my abdomen. My inner voice yelled at me to fight back. But I couldn’t. 

Her legs got tired eventually, so she yanked me back up again, and I felt something pop in my shoulder. I cried out and she just smirked and punched me again making me fall face first into the stairs. I laid there waiting for more but she had finally quit. 

“You better clean that kitchen spotless. Actually, since you slept all day you should have no problem cleaning the whole house tonight. Oh and people will be over in the morning so you’ll need to make a bigger breakfast,” she sneers then walks around me up the stairs. I stand up but my body gives out. I reach out my arms to catch myself and the impact pops my shoulder back into place painfully. On the second try, I manage to stay standing. I try to clean quickly but everything hurts too much to move. 

After two hours, I finally have it done. It's nearly three in the morning. I walk into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. The left side of my face is bruised and bleeding and I have a big gash on my right eyebrow. Gingerly, I take off my t-shirt and pants. My abdomen is covered in black and blue splotches and my left shoulder is swollen. Blood starts pooling in my mouth and it takes all the energy I have to make it to the toilet before I throw up. I sit there for ten minutes puking up blood and stomach acid until there is nothing left. Every breath is torture to my chest and every heave cracks my jaw. 

I cried quiet, tearless cries, curled up and bloody on the bathroom floor. That’s the moment I decided that I was done. I pushed myself to my hands and knees and crawled over to the bathtub. Plugging the drain, I started a warm bath and settled in, still in my sports bra and underwear. I grabbed my shaving razor and pulled one of the blades free. I had never been suicidal and I definitely didn’t want the pain I was about to inflict but I was done. I was ready to be with my parents again and away from here. 

I took the blade in my left hand first since it's the weaker one. I make two horizontal cuts on my wrist near the base of my hand, then one long vertical one from those to my elbow. I watch the blood slowly start to seep out. My inner voice was screaming at me to stop but I ignored it. I took the blade in my right hand and repeated the three cuts except these ones were deeper and started bleeding immediately. For good measure, I made two long, deep cuts on either hip where the fold. 

I set the razor on the side of the tub and lean my head back against the tile. I closed my eyes and listened to the water filling the now tainted tub. I started to feel dizzy and smiled, finally about to be free. Someone burst into the bathroom right then, I opened my eyes long enough to catch the long brown hair and deep green eyes before passing out. 

I woke up in a hospital bed. Hannah was asleep in the chair next to me. we became inseparable after that. I finally had someone to talk to and she trained with me. She was in the grade above me but she convinced me to test out of seventh grade so I could start in eighth with her that year. My scores were so high even Sarah couldn’t convince them to keep me in seventh. 

After the first day of school, I went home to Hannah’s house. Her parents made me a deal that day that changed my life: I come over every Friday and clean their house and they’ll pay me a hundred dollars each week. I did this for two years until the owner of Mammi’s gave me a waitressing job which I've had ever since. We both got into the same college: Hearth University. It's about a six hour drive from here across the border into Virginia. We leave for there in three days. 

And that is the reason we are currently standing in front of Mammi’s arguing about going to a party at midnight on a Friday night.