The Lost Princess Fell inlove with her Brother's Friend

{Tyra} " I can't wait until you graduate and get out of my hair, " his gruff voice slurred at me, and I couldn't hel but think the exact same thing in agreement. I disn't dare respond to her, however. The last time I did, I had a shiner for three days afterwards. Anytime she was that drunk, I just let her be to his own devices, She knew how to destroy himself more than my comebacks in my head and relished the fact that I didn't hit because of it. She might have thought that she broke my spirit, but that was the farthest thing from the truth. After all the death I'd ecountered over my short twenty years of life. I knew that it took more than a few to break a person's spirit. let alone my own. " What did you say?" she asked me, his eyes cutting to mine from the recliner that she was sprawled out across. "Nothing, " I responded, keeping my head down and made sure not to make eye contact with her as that only fueled the fire that roared underneath the surface of his dead eyes. I had tried to fight back the first couple of times it had happened, but it didn't really work out in my favor. I ended up missing an entire week of school nursing my bruises under my clothes and the fat lip I sported for a while. The dim light from the yellow lamp in the corner outlined his body that was once healthy but was turned into a shadow of what ahe once was from all of the heavy drinking and garbage that she shoveled down his throat on a daily basis. She used to be sweet, nice enough to me when she first married my dad three years ago. And then the Grim Reaper just had to visit me again, taking my father with her that time and thatbwas when he really lost it. She said it was my fault that my father died overseas in war that was completely out of my control, she said death followed me and that was hiw I took my father away from her. I yelled at her and told her she was insane, that she needed ro get helf and was being delusional. How wrong was I to say such things to her, she fed me and gave me a roof over my head and clothes on my back, his logic always seeping into me like black tar goo from the pits of Tartarus She didn't mention that she'd stolen all the measly wages I'd made at the dinner that I worked at on the weekends and after school every day of the week. He didn't know I kept my own stast somewhere safe so I could run far, far away from her and this place once and for all. Living in a small in a middle state in the US was hard enough, but it was all made even worse when someone went throuh a tragedy, and then they were the talk of the town. My friends' pulles away from me after my father died. They told me I was too emotional and sad for them and that once I fixed myself, then they would be my friends again. I was seventeen that time my dad was hit by a drunk driver and my whole word shattered with one tiny phone call. It was like my emotions were on hyper drive, and I couldn't shut them off. The pain was unbearable. My dad, the man who molded me into the woman that he always wanted me to be, was gone. The man who tucked me in when I had a nightmare. After that, there was no fixing my heart, it was shattered and cracked far too many times to be put back together again, but I rather liked it that way. "Are you listening to me?!" she demanded of me in his gruff southern accent and I could smell the whiskey on his breath even from across the tiny living room. She'd spiraled that was for sure. Selena once prominent in the oil industry in Califonia, reduced to whiskey and gamblin debts in our small single wide mobile home out in the deep south living off the wage of his step daughter instead of working himself. "I'm sorry" I simply said, not bothering to explain myself. She sharply stood up from the wool patterned recliner and set down his bottle of Wild Turkey, obviously about to punish me for not listening. She didn't even bother hitting me this time, just grabbed me up by my hair and threw me down onto the ground, the familiar singing pain of my scalp comporting me, I rememberd it, savored it catalogued the feeling so I didn't panic asnit was happening. I relished the pain. Call me a sadist or a masochist but it was the way I survived his torture. And then the phone rang. "Were not finished" she croaked out sullenly and one look inyo his flaming gaze and I believed her. "What?" I heard her answer the phone gruffly. "Ain't no young girl live here" she shouted into the phone and I wondered who it could be. Suddenly I saw a flash of fear cross his features and then the phone was on the ground. She bolted across the room faster than I'd ever seen her move in my entire life. She ran into my room and I followed behind her. I watched as ge flipped up my mattress and found the stash of my cash thstbI'd hidden from her. She'd known all along where it was. I felt tears creeping up in my vission scared of what was happening. Was it someone calling to collect on his gambling debts and thet'd threatened me? They wouldn't get anywhere by doing that, I was only a cash cow to her nothing worth saving in his eyes. "Where's the rest of it?" she demanded and I cowered back from his predatory stance. "What? The rest of the money? That was all I had" I shouted at her, not caring that she might punish me for doing so "You lying b***h!" she screeched, back handng me across my face causing me to collapse on the floor. "You'll pay for this!" She was suddenly hovering over me, shes foot kicking my sideo over and over again until I was numb. His foot got a few good kicks into my face, my stomach. I would surely have intnernal bleeding and damage, if it didn't kill me. I saw the blood on the ground but I didn't register whose blood itbreally was. Who else would be bleeding at that moment, certainly not her. Unless the cacophony of shots ringing out in the air had something to do with it. It was a lot of blood. Whats happening? " Don't worry you're safe now dont worry, I heard a soothing voice say out into the night air. I was confused as to who was talking, it didn't sound like Selena's voice, no, shes always gruff or annoyed or angry, not ever soothing. I was about to ask what was going on before a calming light appeared in front of my eyes, and I started to fade into it, the pain that came with my life going with it. . . . . . . {Tyra's Pov} I had woken up in a hospital plenty of times before, but never had I awoken with my body in such complete and uttter shambles, the life almost completely drained out of me. I opened my eyes to see a familiar looking man sitting in the corner of my hospital room, Hes eyes closed and weary looking for some reason. She looked almost exactly like my dad, and that made me want to cry even more. " Ouch" I sttuttered out trying to sit up, which set off a little beeping alarm causing my visitor to sit upright in hes seat and hes eyes to grow wide with fear. "No no no you don't" he said with a thick British accent that puzzled me. How could he look like my father but have an accent from another country? As far as I knew the only relatived I had resided in the US He had the same dark brown hair as mine. He was my father's spitting image, which made hes my spitting image as well. I was more than confused when he started talking. I know you must be really scared right now but dont worry, Selena was detained and she won't bother you ever again. I heard the words coming out of hes mouth but I couldn't comprehend what they meant. I looked down at my pale skin encased in casts and gauze and the cuts slushed across my from the previous lashes and beating I'd sustained from my step mother over the past few months.