BADLANDS | camren

four

ive neglected this story and i feel so bad. it's been months but here's finally an update for you guys!

enjoy x

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Four.

Lauren's mother has been through a long-string of boyfriends, each one of them seemingly pulled from the bottom of a dumpster. They all shared the same unfortunate qualities, one of the most prominent being their violent and abusive streaks. Every single one of them always laid their hands on her mother and sometimes, even Lauren, but her mother never learned. It was as if she was a masochist who enjoyed being treated like dirt, because no matter how badly they treated her or how many bruises they left on her body, she always forgave them.

Intellectually, Lauren knows that it's trauma in her mother's life that has made her think she deserves the poorest imitation of love-she accepts the love she thinks she deserves. And truly, Lauren feels pity for the woman who birthed her, but her resentment for her was even stronger. It was one thing for her mother to be willingly treated like a human doormat, but for her mother to be compliant with these men disrespecting her daughter is what angered Lauren.

Kelly reminds Lauren of her mother's boyfriend-just a younger, more handsome version. He's on the road to becoming exactly like them-man chauvinistic assholes with so little content in their life that the only time they feel any semblance of control is when they're controlling a woman. A lot of the men Lauren has encountered probably started out like Kelly with an abusive father and a submissive mother, and they swore to themselves they'd never be like their parents but in a lot of cases, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

It's a fact that terrifies Lauren-what if no matter how hard she works against becoming like her mother it's her fate? She will end up with a man, or woman, who will see all the cracks inside of her and instead of mending them, they will break her into even smaller pieces.

Did Camila have an abused mother or abusive father or both, Lauren wonders. It would explain why she forgave Kelly even though he hit her and raped her in the back of an alley. It took less than a day of Kelly groveling at her feet for Camila to take him back, ultimately reminding Lauren of her mother.

Was Lauren's mother young and beautiful like Camila once until she let a man take away the best years of her life?

She doesn't know, all she knows is that even though Camila has forgiven Kelly, Lauren hasn't. Now that she has seen what he's capable of, he scares her and she doesn't trust him. She keeps her distance from him, flinching every time he makes an unpredictable movement, even something as harmless as stretching wounds her body tighter than a bow.

She doesn't like the way he looks at her sometimes. Like that one time she stepped out of the tiny bathroom of a scrappy motel room in nothing but a towel, expecting Camila and Kelly to be out. Except Kelly had come back to retrieve his wallet and seen her half-naked and dripping water on the carpet. Instead of looking away his eyes had travelled over her fame with an unsettling look in her eyes.

"You're the definition of jail-bait," he'd told her and laughed as if it was a joke. He was oblivious to how terrified Lauren looked.

Or that one time they were sleeping in the hay loft of an unsuspecting farmer's barn, somewhere close to the border between Arkansas and Mississippi. Lauren had been wide awake while they were having sex right next to her, uncomfortable in every bone of her body. Once they were done and asleep, she had shifted around to find a more comfortable position and Kelly spoke, startling her.