Lethal Lust

17 | heart-to-hearts

Weeks passed by excruciatingly slow after Jess's miscarriage.

The nights and days gradually converged into one; both of which were filled with oceans of tears.

Pattie decided to move in with the three after she deemed both Elijah and Kylie irresponsible and unable to take care of her daughter properly.

Pattie's presence was huge, she seemed to lurk in each and every corner and shadow of the house, controlling everything. Constantly wanting to know where everyone was at specific times and making sure that little to no tension ever met her teary-eyed daughter.

Pattie's hurling of verbal abuse towards Kylie grew tenfold and it wasn't long before Kylie quickly became the main cook and cleaner of the house, which surprisingly for Kylie, she didn't mind. It gave her something else to think about, something else to worry about. And soon when the tiny little burn marks began to coat her wrists as they had done when she was a child, she welcomed them just as she had done then.

Perhaps, she couldn't have prevented them when she was a child but now at this age, she could and she chose not to. Because the pain in itself offered a sense of relief in its own strange way.

She could've left and returned to her childhood home with her mother but for her, it would've made no difference.

Hell was no longer refined to one certain location, it was everywhere. It had become inescapable, for it was all around her. Within her.

Kylie kept her distance from Elijah too, as much as she physically could. The first night after Jess's arrival back home from the hospital proved the hardest by far.

That same night, she remembered being sprawled out across the bed as she heard the familiar pitter-patter sound of feet running up the stairs.

And for the first time in a long time, she did the right thing. She locked the bedroom door from inside her room. Denying Elijah access into both her room and heart for the first time.

Elijah didn't give up so easily, trying again the night after and again the night after that. But eventually, even he got the message loud and clear and stopped coming completely.

The most contact that was ever shared between the two were meaningless glances that could and would never amount to anything more with the likes of Pattie being around every second of each and every day.

Kylie and Jess's friendship remained strained as they barely spoke the weeks following. To be honest, nobody spoke much in Pattie's presence, other than the usual formalities like asking one to pass the ketchup or asking when the food would be prepared.

"Hey." Jess hovered at the doorway of Kylie's bedroom. The distant and faint memories of the night that she had entered Kylie's room last and the feelings it had evoked within her bubbled away at the surface but she shook her head, pushing the feelings to the back of her mind.

"Mum's out, by the way," Jess muttered speedily when Kylie's response didn't come. For even Jess knew that Kylie would be more at peace and more able to be her usual self without Pattie's usual snarky comments lingering in each and every corner.

"Hey. What's that?" Kylie nodded tentatively at the little black velvet box neatly placed in Jess's pale hands.

A grin played across Jess's lips as she cautiously lifted the lid as though it contained priceless jewels, slowly revealing the contents to Kylie.

Two rather ugly looking pieces of string wrapped into what one may term a bracelet stared back at her. One with a little 'J' engraved on it and the other with a tiny 'K'.