Prologue: Matt

Matt wraps his arms around me and just holds me. "Hey, sweetie," he murmurs into my dark brown hair. I press my face into his warm, flat chest and inhale his sweet, yet musky, scent.

"Hey, yourself." I smile. Every night, without even trying, Matt can make me smile. I always feel safe and loved around him, while the rest of the world just hurts me.

Then he pulls back slightly, leaving his tan hands on my forearms, and looks at me up and down.  His dark eyes crease with worry and anger when they rest on the welt stretching across my cheek and the large, purple bruise on my collarbone, exposed by the low-cut, sleeveless, flowy black dress I always seem to be wearing when I meet Matt.

But then they turn sad--a heartbreaking sadness--as  his eyes move past the bruises on my thin arms to the fresh, red scars. "I wish you'd stop that. It doesn't help any, does it?" Matt whispers, touching one gently with his thumb.

"It does, a little. Especially when I can't see you for a while. If I could be with you always, maybe I would try to stop.  But not now, not when I live with..." I trail off, because Matt already knows.

All Matt says is, "I know," and pulls me into another embrace. For a long time, we just stand there in comfortable silence, holding each other, because nothing needs to be said. Love just pulses from him, spilling onto me, drowning me.

"You should go soon," Matt eventually says, not sounding like he wants me to leave. "Your alarm will go off in about ten minutes."

I cringe. I do not want to leave here, my own personal paradise, to go to my own personal hell, the cruel world.

Matt lifts my arm, pain in his eyes.  He gently presses his lips to each cut on my wrist, working his way up from my hand to my elbow. Then he kisses my bruises, then brushes his lips along the length of the welt on my cheek. He stares intensely down into my green eyes for a moment before whispering, "Love you. See you soon."

"Love you too," I say. "More than anything." The words had barely passed through my lips when he kissed my eyelids.

I grip at Matt's shirt as if to keep myself from being dragged back by some mysterious force to my bed. Of course, like every time for the past three years, it doesn't work. My eyes are locked on Matt's as my head spins and everything goes black. In the next moment, I'm blinking up at the pale ceiling in my room, with my sheet clutched in my fists, the snores of my dad coming from his room down the hall.

Author's Note

I'm thinking about continuing this, but I really don't know where it should go. I have a vague plan, but no real conflict. So, if you have an idea, please tell me? I'd like to know.

Reviews

[fallen_angel]

I really like the prolouge, but I knwo where your goign with this and I think you should have dropped a hint at why they have to sneak around, or something vague to make the readers wonder.