Even The Weak Can Be Wicked (PLAYBOOK #2)

CHAPTER 41: Even lambs have teeth

LORELAI

Rory Hall.

I was only 8 when the wolf came from the shadows to steal her innocence. Mother walked in alarmed by the screaming, father smirked as his booze infested breath trickled down my neck.

I bit his ear the moment he tried to pull my shorts down.

He struck me so hard, my eye swelled shut but did anyone say anything? Did mother speak up or father keep that disgusting wolf in him at bay? No.

They threw the weak and pathetic little lamb that was Rory back in, this time he duck taped her mouth so she got smart and used her hands. That put her in cast so when he bonded her to the bed, she used her knee.

Seven stiches from an ex nurse in the lot because no one was sober enough to take her to hospital was the result of that. Eventually Rory got smarter and started sleeping with a knife under her pillow which is when the wolf finally got the message.

Don't be confused, he may have given up and she may her kept her cherry untouched but the wolf made sure to take her innocence along with her childhood.

See, no one is born purely malicious.

If it wasn't for that necessary evil of her own parents, no one would have saved tragic Rory which is why she saved herself.

The trauma was there but at least she wasn't some trailer park cliché. Assaulted at 8 by my own father? No way, I would have rather died.

That's right, she was me.

Before I was Lorelai Henry, I was Lorelai 'Rory' Hall and my life before him was a living nightmare. Abusive father, drug addict mother but that doesn't matter now.

Thanks to my bipolar, I don't feel any emotion towards the past or my parents, my focus is forward and Aleksander Henry is still my future.

My first real episode was the day I saw him. Child Protection Services took me to my grandmother's because my idiot father burned his wife with a hot curling iron in front of the whole lot.

Everyone was sick of him so he was reported and detained.

Aleksander wasn't playing like other kids on the busy streets. No, he was sitting on the grass with a book that covered his entire face and it was thick, had numbers with letters on the cover and a word I couldn't pronounce.

I still remember the way the sunlight hit his wavy brown hair, how his blue-green eye had a forest of eyelashes around them. How clean and innocent he looked.

I didn't even see the enormous house that casted a shadow over him, it was the largest in the entire block apparently.

But I didn't recognize that he was dressed in expensive designer clothes or the fancy cars on his driveway. I only saw him and for the first time in years, little Rory smiled.

So no, this was never about the money or the status, it was always him.

In a way, he broke Rory out of the mental cage she was stuck in. My delusional grandmother thought my joy was because of her, so she ran to me and picked me up but my eyes were still on him.

My Aleksander.

My dream.

I didn't know it back then but he was also my white whale, my unreachable bright light. Oh the price we pay for good things.

The manic episode occurred because on that day, I was going back home. Father was finally in prison and somehow, mother was cleared as a capable parent.