Fighting Back (Mercy's Angels) by Kirsty Dallas Read Free Book Online

me, he had taken away my choice and turned something that was supposed to be beautiful and exciting into something ugly and scary. 
    “Rebecca?” Charlie’s voice broke me from my sorrow.
    The car had stopped moving and I hadn’t even noticed. I turned to face him, not bothering to wipe my tears. It hurt too much anyway. My face was aching, throbbing in fact. It made me think about Ella and the abuse she endured at the hands of her stepfather. My heart broke a little more for her. 
    “Baby,” Charlie whispered, cupping my cheek, “you’re going to be okay. You’re going to get through this and that beautiful face of yours will have a smile on it again, if it’s the last thing I do.”
    My nod was involuntary, because the reality was, I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t imagine ever smiling again. But Charlie’s conviction required a response and I found myself not wanting to let him down.
    “I’m going to run in and get your prescriptions filled, it should only take a minute or two. Will you be okay by yourself?”
    I looked around. We were in a busy parking lot, surrounded by shoppers, people going about their everyday, mundane lives with a blissful ease I now envied. Would I be alright? His words echoed through my mind.
    “I’ll be fine, Charlie, just hurry up, please. I’m really tired.” My head found its way back to the cool glass and I heard Charlie sigh and slip out of the truck.
    The windows were dark, thank God. Otherwise, my horrid face would probably scare the shit out of the people walking by. I couldn’t recall the moment I began to fade away, the moment my eyes became heavy and on a burdensome flutter, closed. Sleep pulled me away from my pain, away from my sorrow and blissfully far away from my fears.

Chapter 4
    Charlie
    I was only in the drug store for twenty-five minutes. I stood sweating and shuffling from one foot to the other nervously, feeling a little like a teenager about to get busted for buying condoms. I didn’t want to leave Rebecca alone for long though, not after the night she had endured. I should have given the damn prescriptions to Mercy, but I had been so eager to get her away from the hospital, I had forgotten. When I made it back to the truck, I found her fast asleep. She looked so small and fragile with her head rested against the window. I managed to shove my jacket between her and the glass without waking her up, then navigated the busy morning streets to Mercy’s house on the outskirts of town. It was on the same road that led to Jax’s place, but not quite as far away from civilization. Mercy’s house was a big, two story colonial with a wide sweeping front porch. I loved it here and I visited often. I even lived here for a couple of years after Jax left for the army. He didn’t want to leave Mercy all alone and I needed to escape my parents before I did something truly damaging and irreversible. The preaching and fanatic religion that I grew up with fuelled hate and anger forced me to distance myself from my family. I haven’t seen my parents in three years, and at the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, halle-a-fucking-lujah for that. The degree to which they demonstrated their so called faith was excessive to say the least. They had strict rules: no music, other than church hymns, no brand named clothing, because apparently the devil owned Prada, no alcohol, no fast food, no books other than the bible, no computers or electronic devices, outside of the microwave, fridge and dishwasher, hell, we never even owned a TV. It was all a little too cult-like and antiquated for a kid born at the end of the twentieth century. Mercy’s was the kind of home I dreamed of growing up in. She was the perfect mom who baked on Sundays, laughed often and filled her home with music and noise. She let me ride a motorcycle, she didn’t bitch when I got my first tattoo, and she never cursed my existence as being attributed to Satan himself. I hadn’t been by in almost a month