#Chapter1 The Monster Living With Me

Synopsis

Kayla Green is not your typical girl. She is known and she has friends. People talk to her because of her easy going personality and caring attitude.

Even though Kayla seems happy at school and is always chirpy, she didn't have things easy at home, so she uses school and her friends as a way of escaping her problems. No one knew about her problems, not even her best friends.

Carson Knight, the school's bad boy, who has his own secrets, has soon become a part of Kayla's life. He is very dangerous, cold hearted and a player. Would he be another bad thing to add to her life or would he be her saving grace?

Overview

Her Saving Grace is a teen fiction romance novel about a high school boy and a girl from two different social circles. Their personality differs in more ways than one and they are from two different background and family life.

The protagonist of the story, Kayla Green is an ordinary seventeen year old girl. She is known and she has friends. People talk to her because of her easy going personality and caring attitude. She likes to help people and she is always jovial, quirky and happy. She lives by the rules and never gets in trouble.

However, that was just what people think because she hides what's really going on so well. Even though Kayla seems happy at school and is always chirpy, she didn't have things easy at home because she was abused by her step father. She hides what's going on in her life on the inside and uses school and her friends as a way of escaping her problems. No one knew about her problems, not even her best friends; Jasmine, Kevin and Lucas.

Her days at school was great. She laugh and joke with her friends and everything is normal and perfect. However, when she's at home, her world changes to a nightmare. Everything was different then and all this started happening when she lost her mother two years back. It all started when the man her mother married started to show his true colours. It was like she wasn't living; just existing. What happens behind closed doors of her home was what her true life entails.

Then there's Carson Knight. Carson is the school's bad boy, who has his own share of secrets. Secrets that shapes him, maybe makes him who he is. He is very dangerous, cold hearted and a player. He gets in trouble a lot and nobody tries to mess with him and his friends. He doesn't care for girls; he just uses them and toss them aside.

His family is rich and he has everything that anyone would dream of. However, that wasn't so, because his father was putting a lot of pressure on him. Pressures that goes against what he wants. His father wants him to join his family business, but Carson doesn't want this. He wants to be a engineer. As a result of this disagreement with Hus father, his life wasn't all perfect as people thought. Carson then starts to do underground fighting in order to fund his own way into college.

After one chance encounter, Carson soon become a part of Kayla's life. Carson starts to tutor Kayla and he start to observe things about her. The way she flinches, things she says and bruises on her body. At the same time, Kayla also has the opportunity to know about Carson. His home life, his secrets and why he does the things he do. She also get to see him for who he really was and unwillingly, breaks down the hard shell that he was so known for.

During the bumpy ride of their life, Carson and Kayla will become close in the process. Carson will eventually find out about Kayla's abuse and offer for her to stay with him and his patents. Soon after, her stepfather finds out where she is staying and came back for her; this time taking it too far. Carson would save her from her stepfather and they will fall in love in the process.

I was terrified all the time.

I couldn't go on like this. I was even afraid of my own shadow.

I heard a noise downstairs and I knew Allan was home. He was probably searching the cabinets for his stash of alcohol. He was more violent when he was drunk.

I heard my stomach grumbled again. I was really hungry, but I couldn't go downstairs, because he would see me and find a reason to hit me.

I really don't know why my mother had married him. What had she seen in him? I don't know why I ask that question, because I already knew the answer. He was rich and my mother needed the money.

Dad died when I was ten and we started to have money issues. My mother had to do something in order for us to get by, so a year later she married Allan. She didn't love him and I knew he didn't love her either.

Thinking about my mother, I touched the locket that was around my neck. My mother had given it to me when I was twelve. That was when she was healthy. Two years later, she became sick with lung cancer. Allan didn't even care. He didn't try his best to take care of her and pay for her medications. She died a year later when I was fifteen.

I opened the locket and looked at the picture inside. It was a photograph of my mother and I. We were both smiling widely at the camera. I was really happy that day. I sighed. I really miss you, Mom. I knew you would never allow this to happen.

I closed the locket and went to lay on my bed. I was really thankful that tomorrow was the first day of senior year, so I don't have to be home all the time with him anymore.

I remember clearly the first time he hit me. It was six months after my mom had died.

** Flashback **

I had just finished my homework and I went downstairs to make myself a sandwich.

As soon as I stepped in the kitchen, Allan, my stepfather, was leaning on the counter, a bottle of whiskey in his right hand. I didn't say anything because he was like this most days. He didn't even talk to me anymore.

I went over to the fridge to retrieve the cheese, tomato and mayonnaise.

"Kayla," I heard Allan called. I closed the fridge and turned around to face him. I waited for him to speak. "Didn't you hear me calling you?" He asked.

"No. I was in my room doing homework." I replied.

"When I call you a next time, I want you to answer me." He said, stepping closer to me. I scrunched up my nose from the stench of alcohol on his breath.

"Okay, but I really didn't hear you." I said, confused about his behaviour. It happened so fast and took me by surprise, but the next thing I know is that I was holding my cheek. He had hit me and it hurt like hell.

"Do you hear me?!" He roared.

I looked at him in surprise. Man, he must really be drunk. I would never thought he would hit me. He had never before. "Yes." I said quietly.

"Good. Now, I'm out of whiskey. I want you to go to the store and get me some." He said, slamming the empty bottle on the counter.

** End Of Flashback **

It had been two years since that happened. Two years since my life hasn't been the same. Two years since my life was normal. I had thought that he had hit me because he was drunk and that it would be the last time.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

He continued to hit me for every single thing and then it got worse. He had become a monster. I really can't take it anymore. I can't wait until I'm eighteen so I can get the hell out of here.

He hitting me that day was the first, but not the last. It was just the beginning.