Keeping his bride

Selina

“T AKE AS MUCH time as you need, Selina. This is just a placement test. It will give me a better understanding of where we should begin with your studies for your GED test,” the teacher explains. She’s older with gray hair and kind, blue eyes. I swear every single person the Vitales hire are nice, amazing and patient. But considering the type of women and children who stay here and the horrific things they’ve been through, I’m sure most of them need people like that in their lives. I know I definitely do.

I sit at the desk and stare down at the paper, gripping a number two pencil in my hand. I’ve never had trouble reading. I’ve read enough books to fill a library in my lifetime. At times, books were my only escape from the real world, and I was happy that Constantine at least gave me that one solace. Although, taking my prized books away from me was one of the ways he was able to punish me or manipulate me into doing bad things for him.

Pushing those thoughts aside, I focus on the questions before me. They start out easy enough, and I think they’re going by grade level, getting harder as they go along. The first few I answer quickly. It’s very basic, identifying shapes and colors.

About ten questions down is a math question. My eyes squint as I try to understand the problem. I don’t even remember taking math in elementary school, and so the numbers just run together until they blur.

Feeling frustrated, I skip that question and continue on. But the complexity of the questions keeps growing. I can feel a hot blush creeping up my chest and cheeks as I skip question after question. Soon, there aren’t any I can answer. The words blur from the tears quickly filling my eyes, and I slam my pencil down on the desk in annoyance.

“Selina, are you all right?” the teacher asks.

“I don’t… I can’t…” My voice trails off as my mouth suddenly goes dry.

“It’s okay. It’s simply for placement, so that we have a starting point for you. A baseline.”

An angry tear leaks out of the corner of my eye and cascades down my burning cheek. God, I can’t even remember the last time I cried over something as stupid as this, and that makes me feel even worse.

I can’t even answer a simple math question…or most of these questions. Constantine stole my life from me. And I never went to school past the third grade, thanks to my mother, who only pretended to home school me when I was a little girl. They kept me from having a normal childhood.

I hate them both.

I hate what they’ve done to me.

And I hate who I’ve become because of it.

Standing quickly, the small room fills with the screeching sound of my chair scraping against the tile floor. I grip the test in my hands and begin tearing it apart into little pieces. I don’t remember being this angry before. I’ve been so numb for so many years thanks to the drugs.

It’s hard to remember what real emotions, like anger, truly feel like.

A scream comes from somewhere in the room. It’s feral and deafening. And it takes me a moment to realize the sound is coming from my own mouth.

My vision darkens around the corners, and my hands grip the corner of the desk I was sitting at. Suddenly, I flip it over. A small sense of satisfaction comes from that. But it’s not enough.

It will never be enough.

Because I have so much repressed resentment inside of me that I’ll never be able to release all of it. And I’m afraid it will end up consuming me and swallowing me whole.

Nicholas

It’s late in the afternoon when I get an emergency alert on my phone. My stomach drops when I realize it’s about Selina. Racing out of my room and down the hall, I run to the other side of the compound in record time.

There’s a room that we use for a makeshift school when children are staying here in the compound so that they don’t fall behind in their classwork until they’re returned to their families or placed into foster care.

I can hear her angry screams filling the hallway before I even reach the door. Swinging the door open, I catch Selina just as she’s flipping over a desk. Numerous desks are flipped over, and I can only assume she did that to all of them.

The teacher stands at the front of the room, giving me a nervous glance when I barge in.

Running over to Selina, I grab her before she can flip another desk. She fights me at first, but I force her to stop. Then, I put my hand under her chin and force her to meet my eyes. “Hey, hey, hey,” I tell her. Her eyes are unfocused, and she looks so damn lost that it makes my chest ache for her. My thumb strokes her soft cheek as she slowly comes back to her senses, her eyes finally clearing as she focuses on me. “Talk to me, Lina. What’s going on?” I whisper to her.

“I can’t do it! I can’t. I can’t,” she says, shaking her head repeatedly.

I give her a nod that I understand her even though I truly don’t. She’s clearly angry about something and taking that anger out on whatever is nearby. I’ve never seen her this upset before, and clearly she needs to get some frustration out. Taking her by the hand, I pull her towards the door. “Come with me,” I tell her.

She digs in her heels and pulls her hand from mine. “Where are we going?” she asks warily.

I stop and turn to her. I can see the fear in her eyes, and I hate that someone put that there. “Do you trust me?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. Fuck, what if she says no? But I feel extremely relieved when she nods her head yes. “Okay. Then, follow me.” I leave the room first, and I’m pleased when I hear her right behind me on my heels. I lead her through the compound to where the gym is housed.

Thankfully, no one is in here at this time of the day, so we have the place to ourselves. When the door shuts behind us, I explain, “I didn’t tell you the first time we were in here, but this room is soundproof. So if you need to yell,

kick and scream, you can do all of that in here.” She arches a blonde brow at me.

“You can’t just keep your emotions locked up inside, Lina. Eventually, the pressure becomes too much. Luckily, I know just the right outlet for you. I’m going to let you channel your anger on something positive.” I lead her to the side of the gym where I proceed to grab a roll of sports tape. “Give me your hand,” I tell her.

She hesitates but only for a second before reaching out towards me. I take her hand in mine and begin to wrap her hand and wrist with some sports tape. When I’m done, I do the other until she’s all nicely wrapped up and ready to go. Then, I stick two punching gloves on her hands over the tape. “All set,” I tell her.

Leading her to a long, heavy punching bag hanging in the corner of the room, I stand behind it and tell her, “Okay, start punching.”

Lina throws a right hook and then a left. I can see the tension in her muscles and know she’s not letting go. Not yet anyway.

“You can imagine this bag is anyone you want to take your anger out on,” I remind her.

Then, instead of the dainty punches she was landing before, her fists become weapons, her strikes hitting harder and harder until all you can hear in the entire gym is her punching the fuck out of the bag. That’s my girl.

She cries out, lashing out on the bag, and I just know she’s picturing Constantine. She never got a chance to take her anger out on him before, and the release she’s feeling is probably cathartic.

She lands several more direct, harder punches until she stumbles back, panting.

“How does that feel?” I ask her.

“Good. It feels good,” she says with a shaky sigh. “I want to keep going.”

I step back and let her do her thing, taking her anger out on the inanimate object until she’s too tired to keep going. When she’s finally done, I take her to sit down on a bench while I take off the gloves and unwrap the tape around her hands. I inspect them for any damage, but I don’t see a mark on them.

“You can come in here and do this anytime you want,” I tell her, meeting her gaze. “But make sure you wrap your hands and put on gloves. Otherwise, you could really injure yourself.”

She gives me a nod but doesn’t say a word.

“Do you want to talk about what happened earlier with the teacher?” I ask softly.

Lina worries her bottom lip between her teeth. “I was taking a placement test to see how much work I need to do before trying to get my GED.” She frowns as she tells me, “I could barely get through ten questions before they got too difficult to answer.”NôvelDrama.Org owns this.

I want to tell her that I’ll help her study, that we’ll get through this, but I keep my mouth shut. She doesn’t need my reassurances right now. Right now she needs to vent, get all of her feelings out.

“I guess I just realized how much of my life Constantine and my mother stole from me. I never had an ordinary childhood. I never experienced the usual stuff teenagers do.” She looks up at me, her blue and green eyes meeting mine. “The only time I ever felt normal and safe was when I lived here with you and your family. But that was so brief…” Her voice trails off as her eyes grow sad.

“Fuck the placement test,” I tell her, which earns me a small smile. Fuck, that little grin can light up my entire world in an instant. “We can start to study every night if you want. We’ll study anything and everything. And after you feel more comfortable, then you can take the test again. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says, her smile growing. “Could you…could you help me with math?” she asks, and I can tell she’s embarrassed by asking.

“Of course! I got straight A’s in math in school. Math s easy if you have me as your teacher,” I tell her with a wink.

She lets out a soft giggle, and I can’t believe I got a smile and a laugh out of her today.

Progress.

Baby steps, just like Benito told me the other day.

Slow and steady.

This isn’t a race when it comes to Selina. This is a fucking marathon. And I’m in it for the long haul. I’m here for her whenever she needs me and for whatever the reason.