The Child Bride

Ch-6: Trust

“No cooking!” Matt calls out unnecessarily, already seating himself on the kitchen counter, taking a pause from his conversation with someone on the phone.

Casey sighs out loud, you set a kitchen on fire one time and you are suspected of arson every single time you even get near it, it’s unfair. Casey forces a sarcastic smile and opens the refrigerator door with a loud thud, hoping he understood that she was just gabbing something to drink before she started on her assignments. Matt smiles at the gesture, but goes back to his conversation with whoever it is one the other line, it’s not Donatello, there is way more swearing involved if he was meant to be talking to his employer, besides Donatello just left around an hour ago for his date, she hoped she wouldn’t be seeing him soon.

Her classes have been good for lack of a better word, but having spent three months with literally nothing to do she’s taken up a lot of classes and that’s quite a shift. She did so mainly to stay out of the house but it also gave her something to focus on, it had seemed like a good idea but now she was mostly stuck writing one assignment after the other and reading bulky textbooks.

Not so surprisingly, Matt follows her to her room, seemingly done with his conversation by the time Casey got settled in with her books and computer. She tries her very best not to show how much it affects her, but she is pretty sure she’s been acting distant and flinching at every sudden motion again. She had just started getting used to Matt, but it’s really hard to get her dear husbands ‘permission’ to screw her out of her head.

“Are you seriously doing homework on a Friday night? Isn’t that a crime or something?” Luckily the man doesn’t pass the doorway, she’s been keeping the door to her room open these days because sometime the claustrophobia hits out of nowhere, no matter how big the room is. It doesn’t help much but at least it’s a semblance of some kind of safety.

Casey simply shrugs in answer. It’s not like she can just leave even if she had somewhere else to be.

“You actually don’t have any friends do you? Aww, Are you shy kiddo?” he teases, “Queens don’t get shy, Mrs. Carllone” he smirks.

“I am not shy, stop making me sound like a five year old” she feels the need to say, “I-I just have better things to do- like homework” she lies, she doesn’t tell him that every friend she had made before had suffered in some way because of relations to her, she doesn’t want repeat performances again. So she was going to be satisfied with her countless classes and her academic development.

“I bet” he obviously notes her lie.

“When is he gonna be back anyway?” she changes the subject to Don, Matt looks at her a little confused, “I-there are great acoustics in the kitchen, I could hear what he said and he moans on about this Marin person almost every time I seen him” she shrugs simply. She is surprised when Matt actually looks a little guilty for some absurd reason.

“It’s fine. It’s more than fine- he can date whoever he wants, in fact I hope he does that-like all the time” so he won’t come near me, is left unsaid. Besides she is not stupid, with marriages like these, even if she cared enough no one was gonna a give a damn about her opinions, the problem with families like the Carllone and Devittos is that the law always sided with the bigger guys and she didn’t stand a chance. It’s the reason she still doesn’t trust them, neither Matt nor Donatello even after almost five months of living with them, they could literally do anything they want to her and she could barely lift a finger against them.

“Marin is a b***h, she calls and he starts thinking with his d**k-Just, don’t worry about it” he says in what he must hope is a comforting tone, it’s really awkward on him, “Wait, if you overheard that then you over heard his-uh ‘go-ahead’ to- that’s why you’ve been skittish again” Matt finally connects.

She turns away from Matt after that, her whole body going tense once again, in the end she just shrugs, because there is nothing she can say here. She knows the value of that kind of ‘permission’ well enough.

“Look kid, that’s not- I am not- I have done a lot of s**t things in my life but I don’t-I- f**k, I am not that kind of guy okay?- Donnie can be an ass sometimes but I don’t- I will never-“ he struggles to say, but Casey finally smiles, something easing off at how uncomfortable the usually cocky moron looks.

“I got it, God, You look like you are gonna have an aneurism” she finally meets his eyes, and Matt thankfully eases off.

“You are a little s**t, you know that?” he smiles, “I’ll order something in, eat something before you go to bed. I’ll be here for a few more hours, let’s see if I can sneak in a couple more episodes” he adds, and then slowly enough leaves her to her relative calm.

For a second Casey just stares at her computer screen and smiles, he reminds her of the older maids who worked at the Devittos’, the only ones who’d actually dared to care for her and clean her up when things got bad, they didn’t talk much the way Matt did. But it’s the closest thing she’s felt to being taken care of, and by the time she was a teen they had been fired or dead so she had never thought she would feel that way again, but it’s nice. And she is sure this is something she will have another panic attack over soon enough because things like that never should happen to her and something is just about to go wrong.

What she hadn’t expected was for things to go wrong not even two hours later, she had been quickly sucked into her work, finishing her ten page essay within the time and was in the middle of proof reading her work when she heard the noise of the car returning. She knows the noise well enough; she had made a point of memorizing it in the earlier months at the house just so she could make herself even more invisible whenever Donatello got home.

She hadn’t expected him to come home at all for the day, and even if he hadn’t been out with his girlfriend he usually only comes in hours later but she doesn’t dwell much on it, too focused on her work, glasses perched on her nose and hands aimlessly playing with a loose thread on her hoodie as she read over her essay. She only takes note when she hears something shatter from downstairs a few minutes later, Matt’s voice is loud but she can’t make out the words.

She’s startled enough when she notices the usually spy like guards making their way down the stairs, Casey doesn’t even think of going down, but she notes that her door is still kept open and wonders if she should close it. She doesn’t have much time to contemplate on the choice because the noises get clearer and she realizes they are coming closer to her.

“Donnie- Boss- Don, what the hell are you doing?” she hears Matt’s voice echo by the time she gets off her seat on the bed. She doesn’t get the time to close her door because Don catches her eyes just as she dares to touch the doorframe.

He is angry, he is furious, something she knows full on well but she had never experienced from him other than for that drunken night where he yelled at her to stay away. But there is more this time, for the first part there is a dark bruise along his jaw, another thing she knows well on could only be obtained due to a solid punch, his hands are bleeding and he reeks of alcohol even more than he usually does by the time he gets near her.

She moves back instinctively, panic bubbling when her legs hit the chair and she almost falls onto the floor.

“Don, STOP IT!-You are better than this, man” Matt rushes to stand between her and Don, slowly pushing him away from her and trying to get him out of the room.

“No, she is the reason for every f*****g thing. I lost everything because she was f*****g born- If I am losing my life over this then she sure as hell is going to make it better” he spits out angrily, pushing Matt away with quick shove. “There should be some god damn use for her!” he goes on.

The rest of the people around him quickly dissipate, leaving only the three of in the room and she feels the world cave in once again, whatever notion of safety she had washing away with wave and wave of paralyzing fear.

“Don, you don’t want to hurt her. Come on man she’s just a kid” Matt is still trying to calm him down, but he just gets angrier.

“She is my wife! My f*****g property, I get to do what I want with her. Stand down Matt” he spits out, his eyes intense. Matt tries again, but stops midway and loosens his hold over him.

In a horrorstruck movement Matt let’s go and moves away from them. He looks apologetically at her, but she can’t even blame him, everyone had their loyalties and he’s done everything he could. She’s been so god damn stupid; falling into a fake assurance of safety when she should have known better, when she should have known nothing ever comes this easy and the ground will split underneath if she doesn’t look closely.

Don’s sudden hold on her wrist snaps her out of her thoughts, she thinks of fighting back, she’s been doing so all her life that she knows she would at least be unconscious or blinded by pain to care about the rest of it. But this is what was expected of her isn’t it? From the very beginning, from the moment she was born, she knew this was going to happen; it was her own fault for hoping otherwise.

He drags her away, no one stops him and Casey simply follows. The sad part is even no matter how much he hurts her tonight, he would still be the most decent guy she had ever met, still her best choice to be married to. He had let her go to college for god’s sake, she owes him this. It’s gonna hurt, but it always did, it was her god damn job to get through it. And once it was over she could honestly say she’s been through worse, there is always worse.

She follows him; he springs her through the stairs, wordlessly dragging her. She tries to keep the panic at bay, but she knows it will hit her eventually, but for the time being she is going to try and not let him break her.

She only notes that he isn’t dragging her to the bedroom once his room, the master bedroom, passes by, and by the time she notes the faint blue warmth of the aquarium and her couch, their couch she almost gapes until he more of less pushes her onto it and sits on the other end.

“Talk” he demands by the time her brain finally process the events.

She feels like she is seconds away from crying, and it’s stupid and silly but she can’t help but stare at the guy, her husband and the smile that follows is more unshed tears rather than amusement at his actions. In hindsight, she notes that Matt has finally caught up with them and was confusedly staring at them.

She opens her mouth but she can’t find the words because she is so close to bursting out in tears.

“f*****g talk, make her go away!” He is drunk, he is so drunk that she doubts he might even remember what happened, but Casey will though. Casey will remember this for the rest of her life. Casey will remember the guy who wants to listen to her lame stories rather than harm her even when all his senses are completely numbed off, Casey will remember the tears in his eyes, the anger that is hiding the desperation and heartbreak there, she will remember the tone of his voice and she will remember the only way he touches her is by putting his head in her lap, trying to hide his own tears in her insane stories.

Casey cards her fingers through his hair, hands still shaking but she isn’t scared to touch him anymore, instead what she wants to do is fall on his feet and thank him, the gratitude in her chest is so heavy that she wants to do something, assure him that she will keep talking for the rest of her life, to be the distraction he needs, to do something for being the best thing to happen to her, but she can’t because she doesn’t know how to. Her whole life she has been locked in and hurt that she never thought she would ever feel thank full to anyone, but at that moment everything is changing.

She remembers it so well, because that’s the moment she finally trusts him.