Strange Mates

Strange Mates - Chapter 16

A/N: Heyyy!! i'm so sorry i haven't updated in awhile, been busy with other things. I hope this chapter makes up for my absence!! 

Keep the comments and votes coming!! Much love and Enjoy!! Dannii xx

Chapter 16

Layla’s P.O.V

I couldn’t give in to Jace. I just couldn’t. Regardless of how sincere he sounded, the pain from my father’s latest attack was just too raw, too real. I couldn’t just forget that. Forget the years of abuse that I suffered at the hands of that man. He hadn’t hurt me at first. He had been the loving father when my mother had been alive. That had just all changed when she’d died. My heart constricted at the thoughts of my mother. I missed her so much. It was cruel that the cancer had torn her away from me so suddenly. One day she had been fine. The next she’d been in hospital, barely living. I hated remembering my mother when the cancer had ravished her body. When that had happened she’d ceased to be my mother, in spirit anyway. The only good side was she managed to slip away in the end peacefully, falling asleep one night when her organs were failing and never waking back up. The grief had swamped my father, and to deal with it he’d turned to drink. That had been when the problems started. At first I thought it was my fault. That I looked too much like my dead mother, so he couldn’t cope with me. But comparing my photo to my mother’s there wasn’t that much of a resemblance so that couldn’t have been the case. As my father’s drunken depression worsened, so did the abuse. I no longer had to do anything to set him off. He just abused me because he could. I guess it made him feel better. In control of something in his life after everything had spiralled so out of control from the death of his wife.

I shook my head rapidly making me feel dizzy. I had to get the thoughts out of my head. I didn’t like remembering my mother as her cancer raged self. I preferred to remember her when she was my healthy mother, the mother that hugged me when I was sad and patched up my grazed knees. Sadly after so long being abused, the abuse and cancer was all I thought about in terms of my mother. This upset me dramatically. I rubbed my eyes that had begun to spring a leak in the form of tears. I would not break down crying. I just wouldn’t. I walked into my current room and locked the door, before throwing myself down on the bed. I bit my lip determined not to cry, but as I buried my head into the fluffy white pillows, I just couldn’t seem to stop the tears spilling over. I cried for the ache in my heart that my mother’s death had caused, I cried for the abuse I’d suffered at the hands of my father, I cried for my currently missing sister who I had yet to meet and I cried for my confusion over everything with Jace. 

I sobbed until tears no longer fell and my sobbing had receded to hiccups caused by crying too much. I sat up slowly and wandered miserably to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror I was ashamed at my reflection. My dark blue eyes seemed dull. They were also red and puffy, my cheeks in a similar state. My hair was a black tangled mess on top of my head and my too pale skin seemed to be almost translucent. I sighed. How had I let myself get into this state, I had managed for months to endure my father’s beatings and not shed a single tear in his presence. Now here I was reduced to a snivelling mess all because some hot guy claimed he was my mate. Shame poured through me. Not because of the state of my body, but because I had treated my mate so terribly. I knew he loved me, that much was obvious in the way he looked at me, his honey eyes practically absorbing me into his love vortex. I was too afraid to be sucked in though. I hadn’t come here to meet a guy, I’d come here to meet my sister. ‘You’d come just to find someone to escape that hellhole. And guess what Jace could provide that escape’ a little voice in my head said. I just shook my head again; I knew the voice was right; I just didn’t want to admit that to myself, it seemed too much life defeat. And I wouldn’t be defeated.