Home is where the heart is

5. ISABELLE

*TRIGGER WARNING - s****l A$$AULT*

Isabelle tried really hard to focus on the movie in front of them and not on the nauseating smell of alcohol settling over her as Jason watched her intently, breathing heavily.

Why had she even come in here with him?

He had avoided any and all questions she’d tried asking about their relationship and just watched her like a dog ready to devour a steak.

She shivered as his breath settled on the side of her neck.

“You look so hot,” he whispered, turning her face from the TV screen to his.

Isabelle smiled at him, the butterflies in her stomach going crazy. “It’s the dim lighting.”

“No,” he slurred slightly. “You’ve always been so hot. It’s been killing me the past few months not being able to slide up against that body of yours.”

Isabelle smiled politely but didn’t reply, what the hell was she even meant to say to that?

She was regretting more and more coming with him. He was definitely way too drunk for reason and the movie was forgotten completely, soon she wouldn’t have a distraction from the hungry look in his eyes.

She shifted uncomfortably pulling her skirt down a little, feeling exposed in her short outfit alone with him on his bed. She loved him, she wanted him back so badly but her stance on s*x hadn’t changed.

“I don’t want you to leave,” he purred as he shuffled closer to her.

Isabelle stiffened. “Jason, you’re drunk.”

“You’re sexy,” he whispered as his lips pressed against her cheek.

Isabelle felt too warm and trapped confined by his big body. She knew that if she didn’t put a stop to it, this moment was going to get away from her and she would end up with nothing but regret.

“We’ve been gone awhile, I’ve gotta get back to Tate,” she told him.

His hands grabbed her waist hard for a moment but then quickly relaxed.

“Stop worrying so much about Stevens, he can survive for a couple hours. I just want to be with you, I’ve missed you so much.”

His hands pushed at her skirt as his lips moved sloppily on her neck.

“Jason, what are you doing?” she asked her voice starting to hitch. “I don’t want this.”

“Sure you do baby,” he slurred, smacking away her hands that struggled to push him away. “You love me right? You want to be with me as bad as I want to be with you. I’ll be gentle I promise, I’ll make you feel good, you want that don’t you?”

“No,” she said her voice thick. “I don’t. Get off me I want to go home.”

“You said you loved me, I’m just giving you a chance to prove it,” he purred.

Yeah, she had told him she loved him. She could still feel her traitorous heart pounding away and pining for him but she wasn’t going to sleep with him and not just because he was drunk. It was because in all their time together he had not once said he loved her and she wanted her first time to be about love and building that connection.

“Jason, I’m serious,” she said as she tried to push him off. “Let me go.”

“Just relax,” he purred again. “Let me give you your going away gift.”

“No,” she cried, kicking out from under him so that her knee hit his stomach. “Is that what this is about? You…you get to just take what you want and then I leave so there’s no strings attached? Tate was right about you.”

She pushed away from him and shuffled off the bed, her knees weak as she stood trembling in front of him.

“You b***h,” he snarled, moving swiftly to lunge across the bed and grab her before she could bolt.

Fear pressed down on her and cut off her voice as his hands, roughly yanked hard on her shirt until it ripped, buttons falling across the floor and bouncing away.

Hot tears fell relentlessly down her face. She struggled uselessly and shook her head

backwards and forwards as he lowered her to the floor, his grip iron tight.

This is not how she had envisioned her first time. Crying, terrified with rough, uncaring hands pulling at her clothes as the hard floor dug into her back.

She tried covering her chest with her hands, feeling too exposed and afraid that if he touched her again she was going to throw up but he held her still, her body immobilised as his hand crept up her skirt and stroked her inner thigh.

Oh god, he was going to do it, he was going to take everything from her; the one thing of hers she had left and he was going to tear it away from her just as he had done her heart and her spirit.

“Jason, please,” she managed to choke. “Not like this.”

He stopped and stared down at her; his eyes black pools of emptiness looking right through her.

She had never seen this side of him, never even guessed at this cruelty and in that moment she had no idea who he was. In that moment she began to realise after being together four months she had never truly known him.

“You made it this way, I would have been gentle, loving even but you wanted to play rough,” he told her coolly, pulling her shirt further away from her chest, exposing her black bra.

She lay paralysed beneath him as he moved his hands all over her body as his lips worked clumsily on her neck.

Something hard was pressing against her and she had never felt so powerless. She was very ready to retreat into her mind and lock herself away from this moment when the noise from the party picked up and Isabelle heard footsteps come closer.

This was it; this was her chance.

“Help!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Someone please help me!”

It came from nowhere.

One minute she was screaming and the next her voice had been cut off and she was

choking on blood as a fist came down on her face.

“Shut up!” he screamed as he smacked her again, driving his point home. “Are you stupid? Shut up!”

The hits stopped as he watched her with blind fury, panting.

“Why’d you make me do that?” he whispered, shame colouring his cheeks as he eased away from her slightly, his body not pinning her down as firmly.

Get it together Isabelle, she told herself. This is the last chance you’re going to get to save yourself and you need to take it.

With a deep breath she gathered all the energy she had left and hit him so hard in the nose that he reared back.

Scrambling to her feet she kicked him in the groin to make sure he wouldn’t follow her and then she ran on shaky legs out of the room and back into the party where everyone was oblivious to what had almost happened.

“Belle? Shane said you went to get ice?”

Isabelle ignored Tate’s voice, too ashamed to turn around. She ran as fast as she could manage outside and down the street, thanking god that she didn’t live too far away.

She ran like she was in the Olympics and didn’t stop until she was nearly home. She could no longer see with blood and tears streaming down her face, her nerves and body completely shot to hell.

How was she ever going to be able to face her parents like this? There would be questions, questions she wasn’t willing to answer, questions that would break her completely if she had to relive them.

“Isabelle!” Tate bellowed.

She froze, he’d come after her. Damnit Tate, did you always have to be so dependable? She could not let him see her like this; she could not allow this sort of weakness in front of him.

Fresh tears wet her cheeks and she began to feel anxious and trapped. What was the lesser of two evils?

She pulled out her phone and checked the time. One in the morning.

She turned towards Tate then back to her house weighing up her options. With only a moments hesitation she ran towards her house praying her parents were fast asleep.

With shaking hands she turned her key in the door and barely made it inside before she heard the footsteps approaching and her name being screamed again.

Luckily everything was dark and her parents were nowhere to be found, vaguely she recalled her mum saying they were going to be out late with some friends.

Leaving the lights off and just relying on her phone for light, Isabelle slowly made her way to the bathroom. She waited until the door was softly shut before she turned on the light then frantically turned her phone off before Tate could bombard her with calls.

Her whole body shook as she worked up the courage to turn around and look in the mirror.

You can do this, just take a deep breath and then you can work out the damage control.

Giving herself until three she hesitantly turned around to face her reflection and had to fiercely grip the counter so that she didn’t collapse in a heap.

A mess of blood and ruined mascara stared back at her with a fat lip, swollen eye and bruises spreading around her neck and face. She wrapped her arms around her chest to try and keep from shattering apart.

How was she going to hide this from her parents?

With great effort she pulled her ruined clothes off her aching body, turned the shower on and stepped under the hot jets of water, letting the liquid run over her body, washing away the filth that she felt imbedded in her pores.

The sobs came, one after the other and wracked her entire body until she was lying on the floor convulsing and biting her fist so she didn’t scream the house down. She could still feel his hands on her, touching her in places she had never given anyone permission to touch before. Turning her head towards the drain bile rose from her throat and spilled out of her mouth.

This had to be a nightmare. She was going to wake up any second now and she could laugh about this with Tate tomorrow.

It had to be a nightmare… because if it wasn’t she had no idea how to bounce back from this, or if it was even possible to move on and put this behind her.

After about an hour the water started to turn cold. Isabelle slowly climbed to her feet, turned the water off and wrapped the warm fluffy towel around her body. With a few more deep breaths she braced herself for the second glimpse of her reflection.

Her eye was still swollen and the bruises were still forming but with the blood washed off she didn’t look like she’d been hit by a truck anymore. In fact Isabelle was confident that she could pass it off like she tried to break up a fight and got caught in the middle of it all.

Maybe she could even pretend like every part of her wasn’t falling apart… that she was not broken, possibly even ruined forever.

Maybe when she moved to her new school she could just pretend to be someone else so that she didn’t have to feel the agony of being her.