"NO! Please stop hurting her! No please!"
"Wake up!"
I came awake with a start to find Flint beside the bed shaking me. With a sob I reached for him, "Don't leave me!"
"I wasn't planning on it." He said, as he slid into the bed to sit upright with his back against the head board.
He pulled my head over onto his thigh and began to rub away the bad memory of the dream with his hand on my back. After a while he began to stroke his fingers through my curly hair, not saying anything.
Sounding defensive, even to my own ears, I asked, "I suppose you want to know all about my nightmares?"
He didn't say anything and I was about to add something to the effect that it was none of his business when he said, "I met your father."
I'd pretty much figured out that he had to know who my father was by now. "He told me you tried to kill him once. I wish you had." I responded softly.
He didn't correct me and tell me that was the wrong way to talk about a parent, and I was grateful for that. People often just didn't understand. Some people needed to be killed and my father was one of them. Like a poisonous snake slithering toward a playground full of kids he needed his head chopped off.
"He told me what happened to you and your mother."
I bolted upright and turned on him. "He told you? He had no right!" I screamed and started to get off the bed.
He caught me and brought me back against his chest and held me there while I struggled to be free.
It was no use. He had a strength that made my own appear nonexistent and I cared for him too much to smash my fist between his legs and incapacitate him like any man would be after such a blow. I stopped struggling and let my head fall back against him.
"How can you even still want me?" I asked softly, feeling all broken up inside.
"The things that happen to us don't make us who we are unless we let them. Sometimes there are good things that come out of the experiences we have in life, but sometimes there not. Sometimes we let bad experiences dictate our lives for us, instead of just letting those moments pass us by. What happened to you as a girl was awful, but it doesn't make you the person that I'm holding right now. But, it can stop you from enjoying what you were meant to have in life if you let it. What happened to you will always be a part of your past, but it doesn't and shouldn't have anything to do with the way you live the rest of your life."