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My fingers tangle in my hair and I tug at the strands, reveling in the bite of pain as my skull prickles. I stumble up the stairs with memories haunting every moment of my journey until I stop outside the bedroom where I know my girl is still asleep.

My hands are still shaking, my knees feel as if they want to give out. Slamming one hand against the wall, I push against it, trying to hold myself up and break through the cool wallpaper. Staring at the pattern on the paper, I focus, breathing deeply in an attempt to calm the fuck down because the wall looks good enough to punch through.

I want to be near Rukaiya right now. I want to hold her, to tell her we’ll be okay, but I don’t open the door beside me. Instead, I stare at the door willing it to stay closed because I can’t go in there looking like a crazed person.

She’s come to mean everything to me and that is something I can no longer deny. I know that relationships aren’t always forever, I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes, my own family torn apart by stupidity and hunger for something else. But I hope that Rukaiya and I will last.

It reminds me of the moment I knew my parents were never going to work. The night that I finally realized my family was falling apart, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was too young to beg them to stay together, and I learned that unhappiness in a marriage can lead to more volatile emotions.

I’m broken. I knew it the moment I turned seventeen and looked back on my life, on the people who were meant to be role models. They’re all fucked up, my family most of all. And now, I’m just like them. I vowed never to love because I didn’t want to be like my father, and I didn’t want the person I loved to turn out like my mother.

The fear of turning into my parents has made me stay away from relationships all this time. At twenty-one I should be happy to find a girl, to be with someone. But how am I meant to do that when my own upbringing was so fucked up?

Closing my eyes, I lean my head against the door and allow my mind to take me back to the night my parents finally taught me how savage emotions can be.

The house is quiet, but I know Dad is on his way home, and the moment he steps through the door, he’ll see mom passed out on the sofa. She’s been there all day. When I got home from school, the maid told me she’d been out with friends for breakfast. When she got home, she fell onto the cushions and swung her arm along the table in an attempt to find her wine glass, which wasn’t there. She ended up taking out a vase of flowers, making them fall onto the cold Italian marble tiles.

It’s not the first time my mother has been drunk before lunch. It’s also not the first time my mother has taken everything in our home and made it nothing but a prop for her drunken escapades.

Sighing, I push into my bedroom and flop onto my bed, staring at the pressed ceiling. I focus on the pattern and count the lines that form geometric shapes in the paint. I no longer have stars pinned to the ceiling. When I was younger, I used to have glow in the dark stickers that I put up there, but Dad had them removed the moment I turned twelve. He told me I wasn’t a child anymore.

How I wish I was.

Life would be so much easier.

The door swooshes open, the clicking of the lock reverberates in the eerily quiet mansion, and then I hear him make his way through the house until he reaches the living room. My ears prick, and even though I’m completely focused on anything other than my own breathing, I don’t hear a sound.

I push off my bed and make my way back to the bedroom door and quietly twist the knob, pulling it open and stepping out onto the soft carpet that covers the wooden floors. I wait a moment before I pad over the paisley pattern and stop at the top of the steps.

From here, I can see Dad hovering over my mother. His hand on the back of the sofa as he holds himself up. He doesn’t touch her, but the sneer of disgust on his face is evidence that he’s not happy.

“You sicken me,” he murmurs at her sleeping face. His hand trails up her body toward her throat. And I watch as he squeezes. “I could end you. I can be free, but you know what? I’m not a monster.” Dad’s voice is cold, as if he’d flicked a switch and he’s no longer the man who gives me smiles and tells me he’s proud of me.