Kiss me in the crossfire

ChapterSeven

Annika’s POV

I don't know how to wrap my head around the message I just read and I hate that it was sent to me by Vivienne. The nerve she has. She didn't think to apologize to me or check in to see if I am doing fine. She wants to push me further away from my… I feel a blank space in my heart as I put my thoughts together to who Ares is to me now.

“That's enough. You need to get some rest. You've been glaring at your screen.” Sloane took my phone from me and turned it off. She didn't look at the screen as I expected her to. She places it on the small brown table next to the bed. “You should get some rest. The world will continue when you wake up.”

I don't think I deserve Sloane. Despite how nicely she spoke to me, I wished I wasn't in her house sobbing and feeling devastated about how my life was unveiling. I love Vivienne and I love Ares, but how is it possible that the two people I love the most in this world would leave me in shambles at once? I sunk into deep thoughts mixed with emotional turmoil.

Sloane came over to me and leaned into me, hugging me softly and firm. Her embrace feels like my pain could be shared by her and taken away. It was long and quiet. Then she pressed me onto the couch, making me lie properly.

“Don't worry about anything, I'd be here to walk you through everything to come” she smiled softly and looked like a round ball because she bent down to speak to me despite being petite.

I did not have the words to say to her comforting actions. I nodded gently and took my gaze off her.

She stayed still for a while like she had some unusual love for staring at me before she stood straight and walked off.

“You can go ahead and kill her.” I could not stop hearing the voice of my dad yell those words at Ares. How invaluable I must be to him.

I heard gentle steps approaching the couch I laid in, knowing it was Sloane, I closed my eyes to pretend I was sleeping.

I felt the heat of a large heavy cloth thumping over me as Sloane adjusted a duvet to wrap me well. I wasn't used to such hard material but it got the job done.

“Thank you.” I whisper to myself as if I didn't intend for her to hear.

There was something about the duvet that made me too warm and my eyes were heavier than I wanted it to be so I couldn't keep them open.

Ares punished me yet again and forced me to scrub the floors in the toilet. His body fit well to the door as he leaned on it, watching me as I scrubbed while he kept yelling, “Harder, Harder!”

My ocean eyes were filled and overflowing while I kept scrubbing a particular spot on the floor in his toilet.

His voice was fierce and more arrogant than it used to be while he yelled at me this time around.

“You good for nothing girl. You think you are more than the weak person you are?” His loud laugh frightened me more. I did not respond or look him in the face. I kept my gaze at scrubbing that same spot on the floor till my hand started bleeding hard.

Despite how much my blood was on the floor, I kept scrubbing till I couldn't see what I was cleaning because of the blood that filled the floor from my bleeding hands.

“Annika, Annika!” A familiar voice yelled out to me but I didn't know where it came from until I opened my eyes. “Wake up.”

I gasped for air and my eyes were wide open. I glared like I had just escaped death. I had thought all that was happening was real. It didn't feel like a nightmare.

“Are you fine? Do you need me to get you a glass of water?”

“Yes, water.”

“Okay” She walks off in haste.

I turned to the red small clock embedded in green leaves that was hung in the corner of the room. “The time is fast spent. It's noon already?” I murmur to myself. I didn't know I could sleep that long.

“Alright, here you go.” It feels as though Sloane ran to get me water because of how fast she was. Perhaps, it was her house that was tiny.

Gulping down the water, I followed her with my eyes as she walked in the direction of my phone.

“You should call someone now so that they can know you're safe.” She says holding my phone as she approaches me again.

“No one is coming for me.”

“What do you mean no one is coming for you? You have a family outside Ares. You don't have to say that because he did all this to you.”

“My dad is in all this with him. If my dad can be with him in all this then there's no one else that can be present for me.”

Silence fills the room after I said that.

Sloane had switched off the phone while she picked it up.

“We can call…” Sloane was still speaking when the phone began to ring.

“Who's calling?” I ask her without an interest in whoever it was as I didn't expect much.

“It's Ares. You know what, if you don't want to speak to him yet, you don't have to speak to him. He can wait till another time. The audacity he has to call you by this time. I don't know why he would look at someone so pretty and loving like you and decide that he would rather lose you to those tiny things he goes about flirting with.” She slams the phone on the bed in anger. I could see that Sloane is not a fan of Ares at all

Taking a deep breath in, “Let me have the phone, I'd speak to him”