Taking Tessa Read Online Free PDF

to my truck. "Such a firecracker."
    Fifteen minutes later, as we pulled our purchases from the truck, Tessa looked up at the sky, sucking in a lungful of breath as tears soaked her cheeks.
    "Hey, you okay?" I dropped the bags on the porch and rushed to her side, my hand cupping her face. "It breaks my heart to see you cry."
    Tessa sniffed, swiping at a tear running down her cheek, and she said, "It's just so good to be outside. You don't realize how much you'll miss it until it's just taken from you."
    I nodded, pulling her down next to me.
    "Just smelling the flowers makes me so happy. You know I used to look out the window and try to imagine their smell in my mind? I know what flowers smell like, but you'd be surprised how much your memory fades."
    "How did this happen, Tessa? How did you end up with him?"
    She shrugged, "My mom married him after only knowing him for two weeks when I was three. He'd been around forever, but he never really acted like my father, ya know? There was always just something off with him, but what could I say? My mom was high more than she was sober, so there was never a good time to talk to her. Then when she passed away..." Tessa paused as she pushed back more tears. "It just all fell apart. If I thought it was bad before..." She laughed angrily. "He went crazy. It was like he split with reality. The older I got, the more he thought he had to protect me. When I grew boobs and needed my first bra, he locked me in my room for two weeks and forced me to tape them with duct tape. He just kept screaming about hell and damnation, about Eve tempting Adam and the start of the end for our society."
    "But Tessa..." I paused, wondering how to word this question. "Why him? How was it that you get left with him when she passed away?"
    "I wasn't left with him. He always had me. I was with that man since the age of three. It was just Tom, Mom and me. Mom didn't have any other family that I knew of, and Tom just had some friends he partied with." She shook her head. "To the outside world, Tom was my father. No one even thought about questioning that, and once I was shut away and home-schooled, there was no one to question anything strange or out of the ordinary. I was completely isolated."
    This man was a fucking rapist. He may not have been convicted, but he was a rapist, and this beautiful girl was left to his mercy. I felt rage swarm around me. I wanted to head back to that house and beat him until he was black, blue, and broken. The fucking bastard had to be stopped.
    "Social services didn't visit the house. To them, I didn't exist, and to anyone else I was Tom's daughter, and to Tom I was his property, to do with as he pleased."

    A nger coiled like a tornado in my stomach. My fists ached and clenched together as I thought about how everyone in her life had let her down.
    "When did it go bad? I mean, where he stopped letting you out?"
    She turned her head up to the sky, fluffy white clouds as far as the eye could see. "Somewhere around my sixteenth birthday. I snuck out once or twice in the beginning, only to tend Mama's roses in the front yard. I couldn't stand to see them withering and overrun with weeds, but when he found me he screamed bloody murder and locked me in my room for a week. He only opened the door to slide food in. Thank God there was a bathroom off my bedroom or I don't know what I would have done. But normally as long as I stayed inside and obeyed, I would be allowed anywhere in the house. But I never knew how to gauge his temper." A visible shudder ran through her.
    "Christ, I had no idea it was that bad. And with all of that…you swear he never touched you? Never indecently?"
    "Every single time he laid a hand on me felt indecent, but he never did anything sexually."
    "Did he hit you?"
    "Not really." She shook her head. "He'd pull me around by the arm now and again, grab my hair if he was really angry, but verbal and emotional abuse was much more his speed."
    I nodded, clasping my hands