Honey Boy

by cookiemonster57

Chapter 54: I'm Tired

Summary:

Happy Fourth of July Guys!!

She left.

She actually left and I just let her.

A coward is what I am.

I stand there in that large ass living room with my hands hanging useless at my sides and my chest caved in around the spot where she just put her finger and pressed into my chest.

You’re ashamed.

The words hurt but maybe they hurt cause they were true. I want to take those words and push them away but I just can't seem too. Hell, I can’t even close my eyes, I just watch the door like maybe it’ll open again and she’ll walk back in and take it back, take me back.

But it doesn’t and she doesn’t and the only sound I can focus on right now is my own breathing. At the sound of a gentleman's laugh I look up.

My father is in the center of a small group near the fireplace, his arm around my mother’s waist, his head thrown back in a laugh, most likely a fake one, and he’s telling a story about a business deal in Dubai probably, and everyone around him is nodding and smiling and glancing at each other to make sure they’re all performing the same lie at the same time.

Everything is fine. Nothing happened. The girl was hysterical. We’re all having a wonderful time.

I reach up and yank my tie loose, pulling the knot undone and letting it hang open against my collar. No one looks at me directly but I can feel their eyes sliding over me, it was a quick flick of attention and then the immediate look away, like they’re afraid I’ll catch them staring at the wreckage of me. I make my way to the long table near the back wall where the waitstaff has set up the champagne flutes in neat, glittering rows, and I pick one up without looking at it, my fingers closing around the stem, and I bring it to my mouth and down the whole thing in three quick swallows. The bubbles burn my throat on the way down and I put the empty glass back on the table and grab another one, my hands werent shaking shockingly, but my grip is tighter than it needs to be.

“Jean.”

Marco’s voice comes from my left, and I turn my head and he’s standing there in his own suit looking at me with that open, earnest face I’ve known since we were both in diapers, his brow was furrowed and his mouth pulled down at the corners. He’s holding a glass of sparkling water with a lime wedge floating in it and his other hand is in his pocket and his shoulders are squared like he’s bracing himself for something, for bad news, or for me to fall apart right here on the ballroom floor, which at this point I might do just that.

“Hey,” I say, and my voice comes out rough, scratched up from the champagne or from holding my breath or from not saying all the things I should have said five minutes ago.

|♩♩♩- Table For Two|

By: Abel Korzeniowski

“You good?” he asks, and he steps a little closer so we’re not shouting over the music that has started up again from the quartet in the corner.

I look at him for a second, at his clear brown eyes and the worry written across his whole face, and I know I could tell him, I could say it out loud, I could say No, I’m not good, my girlfriend just left because I let my father humiliate her in front of everyone and I didn’t do a damn thing to stop it and now she thinks I’m ashamed of her. I could say all of that and Marco would listen and he would believe me and he would try to help. But the room is full of people who know my father, who work with my father, who owe my father something, and Marco’s parents are here somewhere, and my mother is across the room with a fixed smile on her face, and the feeling of all those watching eyes are pressing on the back of my neck, and I just can’t.

So I say, “Yeah,” and it sounds unconvincing even to me, and I take another swallow of champagne. “I’m good.”

Marco’s frown deepens and he glances over his shoulder toward the direction of the front hall, then back at me. “What was she even talking about, man? What did she mean, about Louis… about your dad…” He trails off, because even he can’t bring himself to say it out loud in this room, the word abuse and he shakes his head a little. “She was really upset.”

“I don’t know,” I say, I look past him, at the crowd, at my father laughing again, at my mother’s hand curled around her own champagne flute so tight her knuckles are pale. I don’t know. As if I haven’t spent years cataloging every bruise, every broken bone, every hissed threat. As if I didn’t sit in a hospital bed at sixteen with a concussion and a story about falling off my bike while my father sat in the chair next to me and told the nurse the same story with a smile. As if I haven’t seen the way my mother limps sometimes in the morning, the way she flinches when a door slams to loud, the way she looks at him sometimes when she thinks no one is watching.

I don’t know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

It’s the biggest lie I’ve ever told.

“Okay,” he says, and he nods. “But you know you can talk to me, right? Whenever. About whatever.”

“I know.”

“You need a minute?”

I let out a breath. “Yeah,” I say. “I think I need a minute.” Marco nods again, and he reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezes once. “I’ll be around,” he says. “Come find me later.”

“Okay.”

He gives me one last look of worry and concern, and then he turns and melts back into the crowd, heading toward the table where his parents are sitting with a group of other couples. I watch him go, and then I turn away from the champagne table and start walking, not toward anything in particular, just moving, putting one foot in front of the other, weaving through clusters of people who are talking too loud and laughing too hard, past the quartet, past the buffet table with its gleaming silver chafing dishes, past the open terrace doors where a few guests have wandered outside to smoke cigars and look at the gardens lit up by spotlights.

I find a relatively quiet corner near a tall potted palm tree and I lean my back against the wall, my champagne glass still in my hand, half-empty now, and I close my eyes for a second and just breathe.

To me it seems as if the sounds of the party was getting quieter and slower.

The clink of glassware, the rise and fall of conversation, the strains of the violin, and it all feels far away, like it’s happening on the other side of a thick sheet of glass. All I can hear in my own head now is Y/N’s voice, the way her face looked right before she turned and ran, that mixture of anger and hurt and betrayal.

You knew.

You knew about my dad. You knew it was your father’s company.

And I did know. I’ve known for a good three months, maybe even earlier than that to be honest.

Since my father came home one night when I was fifteen and told us over dinner that there had been an accident at one of the construction sites, a welder who fell from scaffolding, severe brain injury, not expected to recover, and he’d said it the same way he said everything, detached, clinical, annoyed at the paperwork and the insurance claims. He’d said the man’s name, and it hadn’t meant anything to me then, just a name, another faceless casualty of the Kirstein empire. It wasn’t until college, when Y/N and I were starting to get close, when she told me about her father in the hospital, about the accident at work, that I’d put it together. I’d sat there in her apartment with her leaning against my shoulder and I’d felt the truth drop into my stomach like a stone, and I hadn’t said anything, because what could I say?

My father’s company put your father in a coma.

How do you say that to someone you’re starting to truly cherish? So I kept it to myself, a guilty secret, and I told myself it was to protect her, but really it was to protect myself, because I was afraid that if she knew, she’d look at me and see him, see Louis Kirstein’s son, and she’d walk away.

I open my eyes and take another drink, and the champagne tastes flat now, no bubbles left, just a sour taste. "Gross." I push off from the wall and start moving again, wandering through the room with my eyes scanning the crowd.

I should have done things so differently. I should have gone after her. I should have grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the room the second my father started in on her. I should have told her the truth months ago, sat her down and said it straight out, given her the chance to decide what she wanted to do with it. I should have stood up in front of all these people and said, Yeah, he hits us. Yeah, he’s a monster. Yeah, I’m scared of him too.

But I didn’t.

I stood there frozen, like I always do, my body locked up with years of conditioned obedience, my mouth glued shut, and I watched her burn herself up trying to defend me, and then I let her walk out thinking I was ashamed of her.

I could never be ashamed of someone as lovely as her.

The shame isn’t about her, it never was. The shame is about me, about the way my hands still shake sometimes when I hear a door slam, about the way I flinch when someone moves too fast, about the scar on my forehead hidden under my hairline from where a wine glass hit the wall next to my head and shattered, about the rib I broke when I was twelve because I talked back at the dinner table, about all the things that live in my body and in my head that make me feel weak and broken.

I’m ashamed of my own fear, my own inability to fight back, my own complicity in the charade. And I projected that onto her, I let her think it was her, I let her believe she was the thing I was embarrassed by, when really I was just embarrassed that she was seeing me for what I am.

And I am so tired of it.

A waiter passes by with a tray of fresh champagne flutes, and I swap my empty glass for a full one without even looking, my hand moving on autopilot. I drink half of it in one go, the alcohol was starting to warm my veins now, and I know I should stop, I know drinking around my father is never a good idea, but I don’t care. Let him see me drunk.

Let him see me sloppy.

Fuck it.

Yeah, fuck it and fuck him.

I keep walking, and I notice my mother across the room, sitting on one of the velvet settees near the fireplace, her legs crossed at the ankles, a plate of untouched food on the small table beside her. She’s talking to Eleanor, and she’s smiling, but her hands are clasped in her lap so tight her fingers are white, and she keeps nodding at whatever Eleanor is saying without really listening, her eyes scanning the room every few seconds, looking for something, looking for me maybe, looking for my father. I see her glance over at him where he’s holding court with a group of men in expensive suits, and her smile falters for just a fraction of a second, a crack in that porcelain face of hers, before she smooths it over and turns back to Eleanor.

She knew too, I think, suddenly. My mother must have known about the welder, about the accident. She handles so much of my father’s correspondence, his calendar, his social obligations. She would have seen the paperwork, the legal letters, the settlement offers. Did she know it was Y/N’s father?

Did she put it together when I brought Y/N around? Is that why she’s been so kind to her, why she took her to Françoise’s? Is it guilt? Is it pity? Is it just another one of the Kirstein family secret, another thing we don’t talk about?

I turn away from the sight of her and drain the rest of my champagne, and this time I don’t bother getting another one. I just stand there with the empty glass in my hand and let the noise of the party wash over me, and I feel so tired, so fucking tired of all of it, the pretending, the performing, the careful construction of a life that looks perfect from the outside and is hollowed out and rotten on the inside. I look at my father laughing, his hand clapped on the shoulder of some bald man in a tuxedo, and I think about what Y/N said right before she left.

She was talking about my mother, about the bruise on her wrist, and in that moment I saw it, I saw the lie in my mother’s eyes, the same lie I’ve seen a hundred times before, the same lie I tell every day.

I’m fine. It was an accident. Nothing to see here.

|♩♩♩- Run|

By: Ludovico Einaudi

But Y/N saw it.

She saw right through it. And instead of thanking her for it, instead of standing with her, I let my father take control of the room, I let him twist her words, I let him paint her as crazy, as a gold-digger, as someone trying to cause trouble. I let him do what he does best.

Destroy something beautiful because he can’t control it.

The hour passes by quickly. The crowd from one conversational cluster to another. I drift from one corner to another, never staying in one place too long, avoiding eye contact, ignoring the few people who try to talk to me, giving monosyllabic answers until they give up and move on. I feel untethered, disconnected from my own body, like I’m watching the party from somewhere up near the ceiling, like a fucking ghost. Every time the front door opens to let a guest out or a waiter in, my head whips around, my heart lurching in my chest, hoping it’s her coming back, hoping she changed her mind, hoping she’ll give me another chance to say the right thing this time.

But it’s never her. It’s just more strangers in evening wear, more fake smiles, more of the same.

I’m standing near the terrace doors again, looking out at the dark shapes of the garden sculptures lit by the pale yellow spotlights, when the music stops abruptly mid-song, and a hush falls over the room. I turn around and see my father standing on the small raised platform near the fireplace where the quartet was playing, holding a microphone in one hand, the other hand raised for silence. The quartet has retreated to the side of the room, their instruments resting on their laps, and everyone in the crowd is turned toward my father, their faces expectant with their glasses held aloft.

“If I could have everyone’s attention for just a moment,” my father says, and his voice booms through the speakers set up around the room. “I want to thank you all for coming tonight to celebrate my beautiful wife’s birthday.” He gestures toward my mother, who is still sitting on the settee, and she gives a small, demure wave, her smile fixed in place. “Céline, my love, you look absolutely radiant tonight, as you do every night.” There’s a smattering of polite applause, and my father waits for it to die down before continuing, his eyes scanning the crowd, landing on me for a second, holding my gaze just long enough to make my skin crawl before moving on.

“As many of you know,” he says, “Stone and Steel has been my life’s work, and I’ve been incredibly fortunate to build something that I believe will stand the test of time, something that will leave a mark on this city long after I’m gone.” He pauses, a practiced beat, letting the weight of his words settle. “And for a long time, I’ve been thinking about the future of the company, about what comes next, about ensuring that the Kirstein legacy continues for generations to come.”

My stomach tightens into a hard knot.

I know where this is going.

I’ve known it was coming for years, the inevitable moment when my father would make it official, when he would announce my fate to a room full of people, when he would pin me to the board like a butterfly, a specimen to be admired.

His successor.

“So tonight,” my father says, and his voice takes on a tone of solemn importance, “on this special occasion, surrounded by our closest friends and family, I’m thrilled to announce that after his graduation next year, my son, Jean-Luc, will be joining Stone and Steel full-time, starting with a senior executive internship this summer that will lead directly into a permanent position as Vice President of Development.”

There’s a collective intake of breath, then a wave of applause, enthusiastic and congratulatory, and people start turning to look at me, their faces lit up with smiles, their hands clapping. My father is beaming, his chest puffed out, his arm extended toward me in a grand gesture. “Jean, come up here, son.”

My feet are frozen to the floor. My heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my throat. All around me, people are nodding and clapping and whispering to each other about what a great opportunity this is, what a proud moment for the family, what a bright future. I see Marco and his parents near the front, Marco and his parents smiling and clapping for me. I see my mother on the settee, her hands clasped in her lap and her eyes pleading with me from across the room.

Please, Jean. Just go along with it. Just for tonight. Please.

My father’s eyes are on me, and he nods once. Come here.

I take a breath, and I start walking, my legs moving on their own, my body carrying me through the crowd that parts to let me pass. The applause grows louder as I approach the platform, hands reaching out to pat my back, voices calling congratulations, and I feel like I’m moving through water. It's almost like my body's is on fucking auto pilot. I reach the steps and I climb them, my dress shoes clicking on the polished wood, and I stand next to my father, and thats when I fully take in the eyes of a hundred people watching me.

My father puts a hand on my shoulder with his fingers digging in just enough to be felt through the fabric of my jacket. He hands me the microphone with his other hand, his smile never wavering, but his eyes are hard, warning me. “Say a few words, Jean,” he says, his voice low enough that the microphone doesn’t pick it up.

I take the microphone, my hand wrapping around the cool metal, and I turn to face the crowd. The room is quiet now, waiting, everyone looking up at me with expectant faces, glasses held ready for a toast. I open my mouth, and nothing comes out.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

My throat feels dry and I just needed to close my eyes just for a damn second. But once I opened them again. I’m not in the ballroom anymore.

I’m in an art museum on a cold afternoon, standing in front of a massive canvas of swirling colors and thick, textured brushstrokes, and Y/N is beside me, her arm linked through mine, her head tilted as she studies the painting. I don’t get it, she’d said, and I’d laughed and tried to explain it the best way I can, and then she’d said, Okay, I think I see it now.

Then I'm not longer there either.

I’m in a pottery studio, my hands covered in cool, wet clay, the wheel spinning under my palms, but not just my palms, Y/ns palms too. She was laughing and smiling as she messed up the shape. "I'm actually doing this." She said, but I just looked at her and spoke. "You're a quick learner." She turned, and right as she gave me that radiant smile of hers, It was gone.

I’m in a sunflower field at sunset, the golden light washing over everything, the tall stalks swaying in the breeze, and she’s standing in front of me with a gift bag in her hands, her face full of nerves and hopefulness. I got you something, she’d said, and I’d opened it to find a sketchbook and other pencils.

That was one of the happiest days of my life.

Drawing is your passion, Jean, she’d said. And that shouldn’t be taken away from you.

Just draw.

Just draw.

I opened my eyes again to look out at the sea of expectant faces, at my father’s hand gripping my shoulder, at the opulent room.

I can’t do this.

I can’t stand here and lie to all these people, I can’t smile and nod and accept this future that has been forced on me, I can’t become another cog in the Kirstein machine, not anymore. Not after what just happened. Not after Y/N walked out that door because I wasn’t brave enough to stand up for her, to stand up for us, to stand up for myself.

I take a deep breath, and I lift the microphone to my lips.

“Thank you,” I say. My father’s grip on my shoulder tightens, it was most likely a warning squeeze, but I don’t look at him. I keep my eyes on the crowd, on Marco’s worried face, on my mother’s wide eyes, on the blank, polite expressions of all these strangers. “Thank you for coming tonight, and for celebrating my mother.” I pause, my heart hammering against my ribs.

“But I’m not going to be accepting the position at Stone and Steel.”

There’s a collective gasp, and the silence that follows is absolute, broken only by the faint sound of someone coughing near the back. My father’s fingers dig into my shoulder so hard it hurts, his nails biting through the fabric, but I don’t flinch. I hold the microphone, and I keep going, my hands are starting to shake as I think about what he might do to me later.

But what else can he do?

He already made me loose the woman of my dreams and he's already torturing my mother, so fuck it. I continue with calm eyes. “It’s a generous offer, but it’s not the future I want for myself. My passions lie elsewhere.” I swallow, my throat tight. “So I won’t be joining the company...Thank you.”

I lower the microphone, and for a second there’s nothing, just the stunned silence of a hundred people who don’t know how to react, and then my father’s hand is on my arm, yanking the microphone from my grip, his face a mask of cold fury. He forces a laugh, and he brings the microphone back to his mouth.

“Jean is joking, of course,” he says, his voice hearty and false, his eyes hard as flint as he looks at me. “He’s had a little too much champagne tonight, I think.” He turns his smile back to the crowd. “Young people, they get nervous about these big announcements, don’t they? But we’ll talk more about it later. For now, let’s get back to the celebration, shall we? Music, please!”

He gestures sharply to the quartet, who scramble to pick up their instruments and start playing again, a lively, upbeat tune meant to cover the awkwardness. The crowd erupts into a murmur of confused conversation, people turning to each other with raised eyebrows and whispered questions, and my father hands the microphone off to a waiter and grabs my upper arm, and he leans in close, his mouth right next to my ear.

“My study.” His breath was hot and disgusting against my ear. “Now.”

He shoves me toward the steps, and I stumble down them, my legs unsteady, the adrenaline draining out of me all at once, leaving me weak. He follows close behind, his hand still clamped on my arm, steering me through the crowd, his face a pleasant mask for the guests even as his grip is hard enough to bruise. People try to stop us, to offer congratulations or ask questions, but my father brushes them off with a tight smile and a wave of his free hand. “Give us a moment, please,” he says, his voice light, but there’s a nastiness to it that makes people step back.

We move through the ballroom, past the buffet table, through the arched doorway into the main hall, and then he’s propelling me down the hallway that leads to the back of the house, toward his private study. The sounds of the party fade behind us, replaced by the echo of our footsteps on the marble floor, the angry sound of my father’s breathing, the thud of my own heart. He shoves open the study door, and pushes me inside, following me in and slamming the door shut behind us with a bang that makes the glass panes in the bookcases rattle.

The study is exactly as I remember it from a thousand childhood punishments, but this one might be worse than all the other considering the circumstances.

My father releases my arm and strides around to the other side of the desk. He doesn’t sit. He stands behind the desk, his hands braced on the polished surface, his shoulders hunched, and he glares at me across the space between us, his face stripped of all its public charm. Now here stood the real Louis Kirstein.

“What the fuck was that?”

I stand my ground, my feet planted on the rug, my hands hanging at my sides, my body still trembling with the aftershocks of what I just did. I can feel the ghost of Y/N’s hand in mine, the memory of her smile, and I hold onto it, I let it fill up the empty spaces inside me, I let it give me the strength to meet his eyes.

“I meant what I said,” I tell him, and my voice doesn’t shake. “I’m not working for you.”

He lets out a short, harsh bark of laughter. “You think you have a choice?”

“I’m twenty-one years old. I have a choice.”

“You have nothing!” he snarls, and he slams his palm down on the desk, the impact making the lamp shake. “Everything you have, everything you are, comes from me! Your tuition, your apartment, the car you drive, the clothes on your back, all of it! You think you can just walk away from that? You think you can spit in my face in front of all my friends and colleagues and there won’t be consequences?”

“I don’t want your money,” I say. I don’t. I’d rather live in a fucking studio apartment and eat ramen for every meal than take another cent from him. “I’ll figure it out.”

“You’ll figure it out,” he repeats, mocking my tone. “You’ll figure it out. Doing what? Drawing pretty pictures? Making ashtrays out of clay?” He shakes his head, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a sneer. “You’re a child, Jean. A spoiled, sentimental child who doesn’t understand how the world works. Art doesn’t pay the bills. Dreams don’t put food on the table. You need this company. You need me.”

“I don’t need you,” I say, and I’m surprised by how calm I sound, how sure I sound. “I haven’t needed you for a very long time.”

His eyes narrow, and he pushes off the desk and walks around it, coming to stand in front of me, so close I can smell the scotch on his breath, the expensive cologne he always wears. He steps into my space, meeting me eye to eye, considering were the same height. I knew what he was trying to do easily, trying to make me back down.

But I won't.

Not this time.

“You’re going to go back out there, and you’re going to tell everyone that you were confused, that you misspoke, that you’re honored to accept the position. You’re going to smile and shake hands and be a grateful son. Do you understand me?”

“No.”

He lifts his hand, and for a second I think he’s going to hit me, my body tenses automatically, my muscles coiling, but he doesn’t. He just points a finger at my face, his hand shaking with suppressed violence. “You will ruin everything I’ve built,” he says, his voice trembling with rage. “You will embarrass this family in front of everyone who matters. You will undo years of planning, years of work. For what? For some little bitch who’s only after our money?”

My hands curl into fists at my sides, my nails digging into my palms.

“Don’t fucking talk about her like that.”

“Why?” he scoffs. “Because you’re in love with her? Because you think she actually gives a shit about you? Let me tell you something, boy. That girl out there tonight, she saw an opportunity. She saw a rich family and a weak son, and she thought she could weasel her way in, cause some trouble, get a payout. Did she tell you about her father? The welder? The one who had that little accident on our site?” He smiles, a cruel, knowing smile. “She didn’t, did she? Because she’s smart. She knows how to play the victim. She knows how to make you feel sorry for her so you’ll open your wallet. She’s just like her father, looking for a handout, looking for someone to blame for his own incompetence.”

I stare at him, and for the first time I see it clearly, the rot at the core of him, the way he dehumanizes everyone who isn’t useful to him, the way he reduces pain and tragedy to a financial transaction.

He’s not just abusive.

He’s evil. He’s a small, pathetic man who gets off on controlling other people’s lives because he’s empty inside, and the realization is so blinding, so obvious, that I wonder how I didn’t see it before.

“You know nothing about her,” I say in a low toned voice. “And you know nothing about me.”

“I know you’re my son,” he spits. “I know you owe me your life. I know you don’t get to stand there and tell me no.”

“I just did.”

He steps forward again, his chest almost touching mine, his face tilted up to mine, his eyes blazing. “I will cut you off,” he says, each word a promise. “I will call the dean and pull every string I have to have you expelled. I will make sure you never get a job in this city, not even flipping burgers. I will ruin you, Jean. I will destroy everything you have, everything you are, until you come crawling back to me on your knees, begging for forgiveness.”

I don’t move. I don’t back down. I hold his gaze, and I feel something new growing in my chest, something hard and unyielding, a spine made of steel.

“Do it,” I say. “Cut me off. See if I ca-”

His hand comes up quickly and I brace for it, closing my eyes and turning my face away.

But he doesn't hit me.

|♩♩♩- R U OK|

By: Rock Burwell

He grabs my chin instead, his fingers digging into the hinge of my jaw, forcing my face up so I'm looking at him, so I can't avoid his eyes.

"You think you're brave," he says, his voice quiet. "You think standing there and talking back to me makes you a man. But you're not a man, Jean. You're a boy. A scared, pathetic boy who's about to lose everything because he doesn't know when to keep his damn mouth shut."

I don't answer. I don't give him the satisfaction.

He holds my chin for another second, his eyes searching my face for something, fear, maybe regret, maybe the same submission he's been extracting from me since I was five years old. And when he doesn't find it, when I just look back at him, something shifts in his face. The coldness hardens into something worse. Something I've seen before, in the moments right before he used to send me to the hospital.

"That mouth of yours," he says, almost gently. "That smart, disrespectful mouth. Where do you think it's going to get you when I'm done with you? Huh? You think that girl of yours is going to stick around when you're broke and homeless and begging for your tuition back?"

He releases my chin and steps back, and for a second I think he's going to walk away, that this is over, that I've survived another round. But he doesn't walk away. He turns and walks to the drink cart against the wall, the one with the crystal decanters and the cut-glass tumblers, and he pours himself two fingers of scotch.

The fucker hasn't had enough yet?

"She's not going to stay," he says, not looking at me. He takes a sip of the scotch, swirls it in the glass, watches the amber liquid catch the light from his lamp. "You know that, right? Girls like that, they don't stick around when the money dries up. They're looking for a future, a stable one, and you can't give her that anymore. Not after tonight."

"She's not like that."

"No?" He turns to face me, his eyebrow raised, his expression mocking. "Then what is she like, Jean? Enlighten me. Tell me all about the wonderful girl who came to my house and insulted me in front of my guests and then ran away when things got hard. Sounds like a real keeper."

My hands are shaking now, and I shove them in my pockets so he won't see, so he won't know how close I am to losing it. "She didn't run away. I made her leave. I let you-" I stop, because if I finish that sentence, if I say it out loud, I'm going to lose whatever control I have left.

"You let me what?" He takes another sip, his eyes never leaving my face. "Tell the truth? Expose her for what she is?"

"It wasn't like that."

"No? Then explain it to me. Explain how a girl whose father is in a coma because of my company just happens to be dating the son of the man who put him there. That's quite a coincidence, isn't it?"

"He didn't fall because of negligence. He fell because the scaffolding was defective. Your scaffolding. Your company's equipment that you cut corners on to save money, and a man almost died because of it."

He sets the scotch glass down on the cart, the crystal clinking against the wood, and when he looks at me again, his eyes are absolutely murderous.

"What did you just say to me?"

I should stop. I know I should stop. Every instinct I've developed over years of surviving this man is screaming at me to shut up, to apologize, to take it back, to do whatever I have to do to get out of this room in one piece. But I can't. Something in me has broken open, something that's been building since Y/N walked out that door, since I watched her face crumble while I stood there and did nothing.

I realized that I've been a coward my whole life, and I'm tired of it. I'm so fucking tired of it.

"I said the truth." My voice doesn't shake. I don't know how, but it doesn't. "She didn't come here for money. She didn't come here for revenge. She didn't even know about the connection until I told her, and she's trusted me enough to talk about her father with me. She's not the one with the grudge here. You are. You've been carrying a grudge against a girl because she dared to call you out for what you are."

"And what am I, Jean?"

"A cold-hearted monster."

He walks toward me, and I don't move.

He stops in front of me, and I don't move.

He looks at me with his eyes searching my face, and I still don't move.

And then he swings.

His fist connects with my jaw, it was so hard that it snaps my head to the side and sends a shock of pain through my skull, and I stumble backward, my shoulder hitting the bookcase behind me, a few leather-bound volumes clattering to the floor. The pain isterrible, it radiating from my jaw up into my temple and down into my neck, and I taste blood, copper and salt, spreading across my tongue where my teeth have cut into the inside of my cheek.

“Nothing to say now?" He's behind me, his voice in my ear, and then his hand grabs my hair and pulls my head back, and I'm looking at the ceiling, at the dark wood beams, at the crystal chandelier that's older than I am. "Nothing to say, boy?"

I don't answer. I can't answer. I'm still trying to breathe.

He lets go of my hair and I drop, my knees hitting the Persian rug hard enough to bruise, and I stay there on all fours, trying to get my lungs to work again, trying to remember how to do something as simple as pulling air into my body. The blood from my lip is dripping onto the rug, dark spots spreading across the deep red fibers, and I stare at them and think that they'll probably blend in with the pattern.

His shoes appear in my field of vision.

"Get up."

I don't move.

"I SAID GET UP!"

I push myself up, slowly, my body screaming at me, my ribs aching where the first hit landed, my stomach cramping from the second. I make it to my knees, then to my feet, swaying a little, my hand braced on the edge of his desk.

He's standing in front of me, his face flushed, and his collar loosened. What made it worse was the look of pleasure on his face. He's breathing through his nose, his chest rising and falling, and he's smiling.

"You've always been weak," he says, and his voice is almost calm now. "I knew it from the time you were a child. Crying over everything. Crying over your drawings, crying over a scraped knee, crying because I had to teach you a lesson about respect." He shakes his head. "I tried to beat it out of you. Tried to make a man out of you. And you're still weak. You're still the same sniveling little boy who begged me to stop."

These words are not new.

I've heard all of them before, in different variations, across different years, in different rooms of this house. They don't even surprise me anymore.

He takes a step forward, and I brace myself for another hit, but instead he just looks at me, his eyes traveling over my face, cataloging the damage. "Look at you," he says, and there's disgust in his voice. "Just look at you."

I don't look at myself. I don't need to. I can feel the swelling starting on my jaw, the cut on my lip, the ache spreading through my ribs. I can feel the blood that's still dripping, and I wipe it away with the back of my hand.

"You're going to go back out there," he says. "You're going to tell everyone that you fell, that you had too much to drink, that you're fine. And then you're going to go upstairs and stay there until the party is over. Do you understand me?"

I don't answer. I just stand there, looking at him.

"Do you understand me?"

"Fuck you."

I see the flash of anger cross his face, see his hand come up again, and I don't even try to dodge this time. I just stand there and let him hit me. The impact sends me back against the desk, the edge of it digging into my lower back, and I hear something crack. Maybe the wood of the desk or one of my ribs, I can't tell which. I slide down, my back against the front of the desk, my legs folding under me, and I end up on the floor again, sitting this time, my head hanging forward.

He's standing over me, his chest heaving, his hands shaking, and he looks down at me disgust written all over his face. “Tch. You fucking pathetic excuse for a so-”

The door opens.

I hear it before I see it, the sound of the brass handle turning, the creak of the heavy wood swinging inward, and I look up from my spot on the floor and see a woman standing in the doorway, mid-fifties maybe, wearing a deep green dress and pearls, her hand still on the handle, her eyes wide as she takes in the scene in front of her.

She must have been looking for the bathroom considering the way she was hopping up and down. Then her gaze lands on me, on the floor, on the blood, on my father standing over me with his hands still wet, and her mouth opens but nothing comes out.

She blinks, once, twice, and she backs out of the room, her hand pressed to her mouth, the door swinging shut behind her, and I can hear her footsteps in the hallway.

My father looks at the door, then back at me, and his facial expressions change, and he's already moving across the room, and opening the door. He gives me one last glance before shutting the door behind him.

"Nicole, wait, let me explain," I hear him say, and soon his voice fades down the hallway, leaving me alone on the floor of the study with the taste of blood in my mouth and the green lamp still burning on the desk.

I sit on the floor of the study for a long time after the door closes behind my dad, long enough that the blood on my face starts to dry and the numbness in my left hand starts to feels like pins and needles spreading up into my wrist, and I stare at the Persian rug beneath me, at the dark spots of my own blood soaking into the deep red fibers.

They'll probably blend in with the pattern. No one will ever know they're there unless they're looking for them.

Tragic.

Y/N.

I want to call her.

I want to pick up my phone and dial her number and hear her voice on the other end, even if she's angry, even if she hangs up on me, even if all I get is her voicemail, at least I'd hear her voice, at least I'd have something to hold onto, to give me the strength to get up.

But I don't reach for my phone.

I don't reach for anything.

I just sit there on the floor while my back is pressing against the front of the desk, my legs stretched out in front of me, my hands resting palms-up on my thighs, and I breathe in and out, in and out, trying to convince my body that the danger has passed, that he's not coming back, that I'm safe for now.

I can get up and walk out of this room and go find my mother and make sure she's okay.

The clock on the mantel ticks.

Somewhere in the house, a door opens and closes, and I hear voices, the world is still spinning and moving and I should too.

I push myself up.

My ribs scream in protest, and I brace my hand on the edge of the desk and pull myself to my feet, swaying a little as the blood rushes back to my head and the room tilts and then rights itself.

I walk to the mirror above the sideboard.

The face that looks back at me is not the face I woke up with this morning. My lip is split, swollen to twice its normal size, the blood dried in a dark crust from the corner of my mouth down to my chin. There's a gash above my left eyebrow that's still seeping, a thin line of red that I wipe away with the back of my hand, and the skin around it is already starting to purple, a deep bruise that spreads across my brow bone and down into my eyelid. My cheekbone is red and swollen, and the outline of his ring is visible in the swelling, a perfect circle of darker skin that will be black and blue by tomorrow morning.

My shirt is ruined, blood down the front of it, the white fabric stained in ways that will never come out.

She would cry if she saw me like this.

To know, there's someone out there who would look at this face and cry, not because it's ugly, but because it's hurt.

I turn away from the mirror and walk to the door.

The hallway is empty when I step out, the sounds of the party drifting from the ballroom, but something's different about them now.

They are a bit more higher pitched, more urgent. I follow the sound and I have my hand pressed to my face to stem the bleeding from my eyebrow, and as I get closer to the ballroom, I start to hear individual voices, and I round the corner and see what's happening.

Nicole is standing near the center of the room, her hand pressed to her chest, her face pale and drawn, and she's talking to a small group of guests, her voice trembling, her words tumbling out too fast, something about blood, something about the study, something about Louis Kirstein and his son and the look on his face when she walked in.

My father is next to her of course, with his hand on her elbow. He was trying to make her deny it. Trying to be the perfect host, the concerned friend, and he's laughing, actually laughing, shaking his head like she's had too much to drink, like she's confused, like what she saw wasn't real.

"She's had a bit too much champagne, I think," he says to the group with a smile, and some of the guests nod, relieved to have an explanation, but Nicole is shaking her head, pulling her arm away from him, and her voice rises, "I know what I saw, Louis, I know what I saw-"

"Alright, that's enough." The man, presumably Nicole's husband, seemed to look embarrassed, and he grabs her arm again, more forcefully this time, and starts steering her toward the door. "I apologize for my wife, Mr. Kirstein, she's not feeling well-"

"I'm not sick, I'm telling you what I saw-"

And then she sees me.

I'm standing at the edge of the hallway, half in shadow, and her eyes find me, and she stops struggling. Her whole body went still as she takes in my face, the blood, the bruise that's already starting to form along my jaw, the split lip, and the gash above my eye.

"Oh my god," she says, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Oh my god."

Her husband follows her gaze, and I watch his face change as he sees me, the confusion, the dawning realization, and the horror that flickers across his features before he masks it. He looks at my father, then back at me, and something passes between him and his wife.

"We should go," he says.

He pulls his wife toward the door, and she goes this time, but she's looking back at me over her shoulder, her eyes wide and her hand pressed to her mouth, and I watch them disappear through the front door, the heavy oak swinging shut behind them with a sound that seems to echo through the whole house.

The room goes quiet for a second, and then the whispers start.

Louis Kirstein hit his son?

I thought he was a nice man.

Did you see the blood on his face?

Nicole looked terrified.

I take a step farther back into the shadows, pressing myself against the wall, forcing myself to try and disappear, but it's too late, the damage is done.

The seed has been planted, and I watch as one by one, couples and groups begin to file out of the room, heading toward the front door with their coats in their hands and their excuses on their lips.

My mother is standing near the door, her hands clasped in front of her. She was smirking at the guest and she was trying so very hard to hold it together. She reaches out and grabs someone's arm, a woman I don't recognize, and speaks desperately.

"Please stay," she says, and her accent is thicker now. "I-it's my birthday, please. We haven't even tried the cake yet."

The woman looks at her with something that might be pity or might be embarrassment, and she pats my mother's hand lightly, a gesture that's meant to be comforting but seems more condescending and dismissive.

"I apologize, Mrs. Kirstein, but it's getting rather late...Happy birthday."

She pulls her hand away and follows her husband out the door.

My mother stands there, her hand still extended, her fingers curling into nothing, and I watch her face crumble and then rebuild itself. The show must go on i guess.

More couples file out.

Then more.

Then more.

I watch them go, standing in the shadows, and I feel something I haven't felt in a long time, something that might be hope or might be terror, I can't tell the difference anymore, but it's there.

This is it, this is the moment, everything changes now.

Mr. Smith steps up, his wife Erika tucked into his arm, her eyes hard as she looks at my father. "Mr. Smith," my father says. "I do apologize for the inconvenience. Let's continue our chat, yes? I have those documents you wanted to review-"

"That won't be necessary." Mr. Smith's voice is final. "I will send you an email when I can."

My father's eyes widen, a flash of anger that he tries to hide behind a smile. "But sir, just five minutes, I have everything prepared-"

"Goodnight, Mr. Kirstein." Mr. Smith looks at his wife, his face softening, and he gives her the gentlest smile as she tucks her hand further into his arm. "Let's go, my dear."

Erika looks at my father, her gaze cold and assessing, and then she nods once, and turns to follow her husband out the door.

The door closes behind them.

And then it's silent.

|♩♩♩- The Witching Hour|

By: Peter Gundry

So silent I can hear the wood burning in the fireplace. I could honestly hear the sound of a flame catching on a new piece of kindling. So silent I can hear my father's breathing. So silent I can hear my own heart beating.

Nile and Marie walk out of the kitchen, their faces flushed, crumbs on their lips, laughing about something, and they stop at the edge of the living room, their smiles fading as they take in the empty space.

Nile chuckles, wiping a crumb from his lip with the back of his hand. "Damn, what all did we miss, huh?"

My father doesn't laugh.

He starts pacing, just going back and forth, back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back. He had his head down and his shoulders hunched. The back door opens this time and Marco steps in with his parents. Clark is smiling as he usually is. I always liked that about him.

"Party's over, huh?" he says. "That was fast. We didn't even have cake yet."

Marco is looking around, his eyes scanning the room, searching for something, searching for me, and I watch his face change as he notices the tension.

And what does my father do?

He just keeps pacing back and forth.

"Is everything okay, Mr. Kirstein?" Marco asks, and he makes sure that his voice is careful when asking that question. My father finally stops pacing. He looks up, his eyes landing on Marco with a glare.

"Does everything look okay to you?"

The words are shocking to hear directed towards Marco, and Eleanor raises an eyebrow, her hand coming up to rest on Clark's arm.

"It was just a question, Louis," she says, and her voice is calm, but I can tell Louis struck a nerve. "No need to get so hostile."

My father's eyes shift to her, and I know that look. I know it from a thousand dinners, a thousand arguments, a thousand moments right before the door slammed and the shouting started.

"Clark," my father say, "get your wife."

Clark holds up his hands, the peacemaker, the mediator, always trying to smooth things over. "Okay, okay, let's all calm down-"

"Don't tell me to fucking calm down, Clark!"

The room goes still. The fire crackles. No one moves.

Nile steps forward with his hand out. "Louis, chill. What's got you so worked up?" He steps closer with his hand reaching out to place it on my father's shoulder. My father's hand comes up and shoves Nile's away, hard enough that Nile stumbles back a step, and his eyes go wide with shock.

"Don't touch me, you dumbass piece of shit!"

"Excuse me?" Nile's voice is angry now, his eyes narrowing, his posture shifting from concerned to defensive, so much so that Mile takes a step forward. "Don't touch me," my father repeats, his voice rising, "don't you ever fucking touch me-"

"Who the hell are you talking to, Louis?"

"Nile, baby, calm down-" Marie starts, her hand reaching for her husband's arm.

"He started it!"

"Louis, you need to calm down!" Eleanor's voice is firm, commanding.

"Eleanor, baby, come by me-" Clark reaches for his wife.

And then Marco's voice makes everyone's attention go towards him.

"Where's Jean?"

The room goes quiet again.

Everyone turns to look at Marco.

He's standing near the window, his hands clenched at his sides, with his eyes fixed on my father with an intensity I've never seen from him before. Marco, who is always calm, always reasonable, always the mediator just like his dad, looks like he's about to lose it.

"Where is Jean?" he asks again, and his voice doesn't shake.

My father looks at him, his eyes cold, his lip curling. "He's around."

"Around where?"

"Must you ask so many damn questions?" My father's voice is rising again. "He hurt himself. He's cleaning up. He's a big boy, he can fucking handle it."

"Handle what?"

"Marco." Eleanor says in a whisper. "Marco, sit down."

But Marco doesn't sit down. He doesn't even look at her. He keeps his eyes on my father, his voice growing in volume.

"I want to know what he means by that. What does Jean have to handle? Where is my friend?"

My mother steps forward with her hands clasped,and her smile fixed in place. "Please, everyone, let's calm down, okay? Let's eat and enjoy the night. I made sure to get a flavor everyone would love."

My father looks at her with flat eyes. "Céline, shut up."

But she doesn't shut up. She keeps walking toward him, her voice light, her smile bright, like she can't hear the danger in his voice, like she's choosing not to hear it.

Hoping and believing that her husband won't do anything to detrimental in front of guests and family.

"We can all have some cake. I didn't put any fondant on it because I remember a guest didn't seem to like it the last time." She chuckled and bit at the end as she was walking closer to the group. "Céline," my father says with a tone full of warning. "I said shut up."

She steps onto the Persian rug.

"I just want everyone to be happy today, okay? It is my birthday after all."

Her foot touches the edge of it, and my father's hand comes up and I see it happening. It was so fucking fast. The way his arm swings back, the way his palm connects with her cheek, the way her head snaps to the side, the way her body follows, crumpling to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

"CÉLINE I SAID SHUT THE HELL UP!"

For a long second, no one moves, no one breathes, we all just stand there staring at my mother on the floor, her hand pressed to her cheek with a streak of blood coming from her nose.

And then everything erupts.

"What the fuck-" Nile is already moving, his hands up, his face red with anger.

"Louis, what the hell is wrong with you!" Eleanor's voice is high, and she's pushing past Clark, her hands reaching for my mother. My father tries to step up to Elanor with a dangerous tone. "GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY WIF-"

"GET AWAY FROM HER!" Clark is stepping forward, his body positioned between my father and the women. "Don't you dare touch her, you son of a bitch-" Marie is shouting, her finger pointing at my father. She was shaking and crying.

And Marco is standing there. He looks stunned to the bone, but his look of shock turned to a look of horror as he gazed upon my face for the first time in a long while.

He's looking at me.

I step out of the shadows.

I walk into the living room, and I feel every eye in the room turn to me. Marco's mouth falls open.

His hand comes up to cover it, and I watch his face crumble, watch the realization finally dawn on him. It was very hard to see. Then I watch the tears start to form in his eyes. Nile lets out a gasp. I've never heard from him before.

My mother...

She just bites her lip and looks away.

"Oh my god," Marco whispers. "Jean."

My father turns to look at me now. "Look what you did," he says in a venomous tone. "Look what you fucking did, you useless piece of shit. You ruined everything. You ruined your mother's party, you ruined my reputation, you ruined everything I've built-"

I don't answer him.

I don't even look at him.

I look at my mother, still on the floor, her hand pressed to her bleeding nose. Am I a coward, huh? The stuff my father is saying is true. This was her special day, and I ruined it.

Nile is in my father's face now, shouting, his finger jabbing at his chest. "You think you can just hit her? You think you can just fucking hit her in front of all of us? Hit my fucking nephew? Who the hell do you think you are?"

My father shoves him hard, and Nile stumbles back, and Clark is there, his hands on Nile's shoulders, pulling him away, and Marie is screaming, and Eleanor is helping my mother to her feet, and Marco is standing in front of me now, his hands on my shoulders, his eyes searching my face.

"Jean," he says, and his voice is breaking, "Jean, what did he do to you?"

I open my mouth to answer, but nothing comes out.

I'm standing in the middle of the living room, surrounded by chaos, surrounded by people who are finally seeing the truth, and I don't know what to say, I don't know how to explain years of this. Years of hiding and lying and pretending.

Years of being the perfect son while my father broke me piece by piece.

"S'il vous plaît, arrêtez... s'il vous plaît."

The look on her face gutted me. My father puts that look on her face. I ruined her party by not complying, so I must have given her that look too.

My heart broke for the second time that night.

Then she turns and rushes up the steps.

Eleanor follows behind her as quickly as she can. "Céline, darling, please wait!" I watch as they both rush up the stairs, and I wait for a while. Just listening to the men fight. Then after a good two minutes...

I follow them.

I ignore Marco calling my name, ignore my father's voice shouting something behind me, ignore the chaos still erupting in the living room, and I walk up the stairs. Each step caused a headache due to the pain, but my mother is worth it.

Eleanor is standing outside my mother's bedroom door, her hand on the handle, and she's trying to turn it, but it's locked, and she's calling my mother's name, her voice soft as ever. "Céline, please, open the door. Let me help you, please."

I walk up behind her, and she turns to look at me, and the moment she sees my face, her own face crumbles, tears spilling down her cheeks.

"Oh, sweetheart," she says, and her voice cracks. "Oh, sweetheart, look at you." She reaches out and takes my arms with her gentle hands. She was looking at everything now. Every bruise, every cut, every mark my father left on me.

"Are you okay?" she asks, and her voice is so full of care, so full of concern, that I feel something break open inside me again.

"No," I say, and my voice is hoarse, barely a whisper. "But I need to talk to my mom."

She looks at me for a long moment, her eyes wet, her hands still holding my arms shook for a moment and then she nods, once, and lets go. She steps back, her hand brushing my cheek, a feather-light touch, and then she turns and walks back down the stairs, her footsteps fading into the chaos below.

I stand outside the door.

I raise my hand and knock, once, twice, three times.

"Maman," I say, "Maman, c'est moi. Ouvre la porte, s'il te plaît."

There's a long silence, and then I try the door. It was unlocked. I take a deep breathe and I step inside. The room is dark cause the curtains were drawn, the only light was coming from the bathroom. It was just a sliver of yellow spilling across the floor.

She's not in bed.

|♩♩♩- After All- Piano Version|

By: Sarah Kinsley

She's not on the chaise lounge by the window, so I decided to head towards the bathroom. I walk in, and I see the bathroom is relatively empty. That's when I heard the humming coming from the large walk-in closet attached. I walk through the room, and I find her in the closet.

She's surrounded by boxes and garment bags, and she's holding something in her hands, something white and delicate and covered in dust.

Her wedding dress.

She's wearing it.

The lace is yellowed with age, the silk stained in places, and it all little tight on her frame, too small now, the woman she was at that time was smaller than the woman she is at fifty-three. But she's wearing it, her arms through the sleeves, the bodice at her chest, and she's spinning, slowly, her eyes closed, and she was humming.

I stand in the doorway of the closet and watch her, and I feel my heart crack open.

She looks so tired.

She looks so broken.

She must feel like the girl she had been before my father got his hands on her, before he broke her down and rebuilt her into someone who smiled and nodded and never said a word.

"Tu es belle," I say in a soft voice.

She opens her eyes and looks at me, and for a second, she doesn't see me, she sees someone else, someone from a long time ago, and then her eyes focus and she smiles.

"Tu trouves?" she asks, and her voice is light, girlish almost.

"Oui, maman." I step into the closet, my feet crunching on the carpet and the old tissue paper, and I kneel down in front of her, my hands reaching for hers. "Tu es toujours belle."

She looks down at the dress, her fingers tracing the lace, while her brows furrowed. "I wore this on the most beautiful day of my life. I thought I was so lucky. I thought he was so wonderful."

Her eyes meet mine.

"Je suis désolée," she whispers.

I take her hands, the ones that are still holding the fabric of her wedding dress, and I squeeze them gently.

"It's okay," I say, and the words feel hollow even as I say them, because it's not okay, none of this is okay, but I don't know what else to say.

She looks at me, and I see the tears streaming down her face, cutting tracks through the blood still drying on her upper lip, and she shakes her head.

After a long moment, I speak.

"You need to take a bath," I say, my voice gentle. "You need to get cleaned up. Let me run you a bath, okay?" She looks at me, her eyes red and swollen, and she nods in defeat.

I guide her out of the closet, and to the bathtub.

"I'll run the water," I say.

I turn on the faucet, the water rushing out hot and steamy, and I reach for the bottles on the edge of the tub, the expensive bath salts,and the citrus oil she bought years ago. I pour them in, watching the water turn milky and fragrant, and I test it with my hand, making sure it's not too hot, not too cold.

When the tub is full, I turn off the water and step back. She's standing where I left her, still in the wedding dress, her eyes unfocused, her hands hanging at her sides.

"The bath is ready," I say, and my voice is soft. "I'll be in the room when you're done, okay?"

She doesn't respond.

I step closer, and I take her face in my hands, gently, careful of the bruise already forming on her cheek, and I press my lips to her forehead.

"Je t'aime, maman," I whisper.

She blinks, and for a second, her eyes focus, and she looks at me, really looks at me, and she smiles, a real smile, the kind I haven't seen in years.

"Je t'aime aussi, mon fils," she says.

I let go of her face and step back, and I walk out of the bathroom, closing the door behind me. I walked out the room and shut that door too. I stand in the hallway, my back against the door, and I close my eyes.

I won't let myself cry.

I just won't.

I walk to the guest room, and I push open the door and step inside. The room is dark, the bed still unmade from this morning.

I walk into the bathroom and turn on the light.

The face that looks back at me from the mirror is worse than I thought. The bruise on my cheek has spread, dark and mottled, reaching up toward my eye. The gash above my eyebrow is still seeping, and the split on my lip has reopened, a fresh trickle of blood running down my chin.

I grab a washcloth and wet it with warm water, and I start to clean the blood off my face, wincing as the cloth touches the cuts, the bruises, the raw and broken places.

I work slowly, methodically, watching the water in the sink turn pink, then red, then pink again.

When I'm done, I look at my phone.

It's sitting on the counter where I left it before coming down to the party tonight.

No messages.

No missed calls.

She hasn't called.

She hasn't texted.

She's probably still angry, still hurt, still trying to process everything that happened, and I want to call her, I want to call her so damn bad, but I don't, because I know she's angry, I know she's hurt, and I know that if I call her right now, I'll say the wrong thing, I'll make it worse, I'll push her further away.

I've already lost her.

The thoughts that come are worse. I grip the edge of the sink, my head hanging forward, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps.

I've already lost her, and it's my fault, it's all my fault, because I was too much of a coward to stand up to him, because I let him run her off, because I was too damn weak!

"Fuck!"

I throw my phone.

It hits the floor with a crack, and I watch it skid across the tile and come to rest against the base of the toilet. I put my head in my hands and I stand there, my elbows on the sink, my eyes closed, and I try to breathe.

I don't know how long I stand there.

Long enough for my breathing to even out. Long enough for the ache in my ribs to settle into a dull throb. Long enough for the tears to dry on my cheeks without ever falling.

I finally decide to pick up my phone.

The screen is cracked, a spiderweb of lines spreading from the corner, but it still works, and I look at it for a long moment, at the picture of Y/N on my lock screen.

My beautiful kitkat...

I don't call her.

I put the phone in my pocket and I walk out of the bathroom, out of the guest room, back down the hallway to my mother's room.

I knock on the door.

"Maman?" I call through the wood. "Tu vas bien?"

There's a long pause, and then her voice, soft and tired. "Oui, mon fils. Je vais bien."

The door opens.

She's standing there in her silk pajamas, her hair wet and loose around her shoulders, her face clean of blood and makeup. Her caramel eyes look into mine before she looks away again. She walks to the edge of the bed and sits down, her hands clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed on the floor. I follow her, and I sit down next to her, close enough that our shoulders are almost touching, and we sit there in silence, both of us looking at our knees, neither of us knowing what to say.

I speak first.

"I'm sorry," I say, and my voice is hoarse. "I ruined your birthday. I'm a terrible son...I know that now and...I'm too much of a-" I stop, the word catching in my throat. "I'm too much of a coward. I've always been too much of a coward. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

I grip my knees, my fingers digging into the fabric of my pants, and I bite my lip, keeping me from falling apart completely.

She doesn't say anything for a long moment.

Then she reaches over and takes my hands, her fingers wrapping around mine, and she squeezes.

I look up.

She's looking at me with tears in her eyes. She takes a breath before speaking softly.

"I was 20 when I first met him.”

I don't say anything. I just sit there and let her hold my hands and wait.

"I was studying literature," she says. "Living in a tiny apartment with a roommate who kept stealing my food and a cat that belonged to the building but had decided I was its person." She pauses. "I was happy there. Happy enough. Twenty years old and in love with the city and the books I was reading and the life I was building for myself."

And then she met him.

"It was at a café near the university," she says. "One of those places with wobbly tables and oh you know." She looks past me, remembering. "He sat down at the table next to mine and asked what I was reading." She paused as she smiled.

"I looked up and saw a boy with dark hair and dark eyes and a smile that made my stomach flip, and he was so handsome." She turned to me with that same smile

"He was an architecture student," she says. "Just like you are now. He talked about buildings the way I talked about books." Her hands move through the air as she mimics him. "His eyes lit up and his voice got faster the more excited he got. He told me about the buildings he wanted to design one day."

She listened to him talk for three hours she said. That's more patience than he has now, so I was a bit stunned to say the least.

"Three hours," she says. "When he finally stopped and apologized for rambling, I told him I didn't mind. That I could listen to him talk about buildings forever."

And she meant it.

"We started seeing each other every day after that," she says. "Coffee in the mornings. Walks through the gardens in the afternoons. Dinner at whatever cheap restaurant we could afford in the evenings. He brought me flowers. Small bouquets from the market that I pressed them between the pages of my books. He held my hand when we walked. He kissed me goodnight at my door and waited until I was inside before he left."

She looks at me, her eyes searching mine.

"He was sweet," she says. "He was kind. He was everything I wanted."

I listen to her talk and I watch her face and I try to find the girl she's describing in the woman sitting next to me. I can't find her. She's been gone so long I don't think she even remembers what she looked like.

But she keeps talking.

"We got married six months after we met," she says. "Six months. I know now how fast that was. Know now what it should have told me. But I was twenty years old and I was in love and he was on his knees in my tiny apartment with a ring box in his hand and I said yes before he even finished asking."

She touches the silk of her pjs absently.

"The wedding was small. Just a few friends, a few family members. A dress I bought at a boutique that cost more than I'd ever spent on anything in my life. I walked down the aisle and I looked at him waiting for me at the end and I thought this is it, this is the beginning of everything."

She pauses.

"I kissed him at the altar and I meant it with my whole heart."

Then she tells me about their first apartment.

"It was small," she says, "but I loved it. Two rooms and a kitchen, with a window that looked out onto a courtyard where an old woman grew tomatoes in pots. We had a bed that took up most of the bedroom and a table that wobbled and a sofa that smelled like the previous owner's cat, and I was happy there."

She looks at me with a soft look.

"I was happy."

She decorated the apartment with things she found at flea markets, old lamps and mismatched chairs and a painting of a boat that she bought because it reminded her of the coast where she grew up. He teased her about it, called her his little collector, and she threw a pillow at his head and he caught it and pulled her onto the sofa and kissed her until she forgot what she was mad about.

"Those first months were good," she says. "Really good. The best of my life."

And then her voice changes.

"He came home late one night," she says. "Later than he'd said he would. I'd made dinner and waited and the food got cold and I ate it alone."

She looks down at her hands and she squeezes her hands tightly."

"He came through the door at midnight smelling of beer and something else. Something floral. And there was a mark on his neck. A dark bruise that I knew wasn't from me."

She looks up with a hitched breath before closing her eyes and continuing. "I shouted at him. I'd never shouted at anyone like that before. I asked him who she was and how long it had been going on and why, why, why."

She stops and opened her eyes again.

"And he slapped me."

Her hand comes up to her face, not the side that's bruised now but the other side, like she's remembering the feel of it. The heat and the shock and the way her head snapped to the side.

"I started crying. I stood there in our tiny apartment with my hand pressed to my cheek and tears running down my face and I didn't know what to do."

She takes a breath.

"And then he hugged me. He wrapped his arms around me and held me tight and told me he was sorry, so sorry, he was so sorry, it meant nothing, it was a mistake, I was the only one he loved, I was everything, I was his whole world. He kissed my face. My cheeks, my forehead, my nose, my mouth. Kiss after kiss after kiss. He told me it would never happen again, never, he would never hurt me again, I had to believe him, I had to."

She looks at me, her eyes wet with tears.

"And I believed him. I believed him because I needed to. Because the alternative was too terrible to consider. If I didn't believe him then what was I even doing, what was my life, what was the point of any of it?"

She shakes her head.

"So I forgave him."

I'm sitting on the bed next to my mother and I can feel my hands shaking where they're still held in hers, and I want to pull away, I want to stand up, I want to walk out of this room and find my father and put my hands around his throat and squeeze until he can't hurt anyone ever again.

But I don't move.

I stay.

|♩♩♩- Notre Dame|

By: Paris Paloma

Because she's still talking and I need to hear all of it, even if it kills me, even if every word is a knife sliding between my ribs, I need to know everything she's been carrying alone for all these years.

"It happened again," she says. "Three months later. And then again six months after that. And then again and again and again until I lost count. Until it became part of the schedule of our life together. The cheating and the fighting and the hitting and the apologizing and the forgiving. Over and over. A loop I couldn't find my way out of."

She looked down at her hands and she starts twirling with her ring finger as she spoke in a soft tone.

"I forgave him every time. Every single time. Because I loved him. And because I was scared. And because I didn't know who I would be if I wasn't his wife. And because every time he hit me he held me afterwards and told me he was sorry and I wanted so badly to believe him that I did."

She pauses again.

"I started to think maybe this was just how marriage worked. Maybe every wife got hit sometimes. Maybe every husband strayed. Maybe I was the problem. Maybe if I was better, prettier, smarter, quieter. Maybe if I tried harder he wouldn't need to find someone else. Maybe if I was perfect he wouldn't need to raise his hand."

I feel something crack in my chest when she says that, because I've thought the same thing, I've spent years wondering what I did wrong, what I could have done differently, how I could have been a better son so he wouldn't have to teach me lessons I didn't want to learn.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Except I'm not him.

I'm not.

I'm not.

I say it in my head until it sounds true.

She keeps talking.

"It was a month after his thirty-second birthday," she says. "I'd been feeling sick for weeks. Tired and nauseous and convinced I had some kind of virus. My friend Marie told me to take a test. I laughed and said Don't be ridiculous. And then I bought a test anyway."

She looks at me with kind eyes.

"I took it in the bathroom of our apartment. Two lines. I sat there for a long time, just looking at those two lines, trying to figure out what I felt. I wasn't happy. I wasn't sad either.

She wipes her eyes.

"I waited until he came home that night. I handed him the test. I watched his face change. Watched his eyes go wide and his mouth open and his hands start to shake. And he smiled. He smiled this genuine smile that I hadn't seen in years. He picked me up and spun me around the kitchen and told me I was amazing, I was incredible, I was going to be the best mother in the world."

She shifted and held my hand just a little bit tighter.

"I wanted to be happy. I tried to be happy. I told myself see, this is good, this is what we needed, this will fix everything." She looks at me when she says the next part, and her eyes are wet and her lip is trembling and she looks so so scared.

"I never-" She stops, swallows, starts again. "I never wanted- I wasn't expecting you, Junebug."

I took a deep breathe and I just nodded.

I wasn't expecting you.

She's looking at me like she's waiting for me to be angry, to pull my hands away, to stand up and walk out the door and leave her here.

But I don't.

I squeeze her hands instead.

I squeeze them and I wait.

"I wasn't ready," she says. "I was scared. So scared. I wanted to wait a year or two more. Wanted to have more time to figure out who I was before I became someone's mother." She pauses. "I cried that night after he fell asleep. Lying in the dark with my hand on my stomach and tears running into my hair. Wondering if I was going to be a good mother. Wondering if I even wanted to be a mother at all."

She shakes her head a bit, and I watched as a drip of water landed at her feet.

"But he was excited. So excited. He started planning immediately. Talking about nurseries and schools and what kind of father he was going to be. He told me this was what we needed. This was going to make everything better. This was going to change everything."

She shakes her head again.

"And after a while, I started to believe him. I started to get excited too. I started to imagine it. A baby. Our baby. A person who would be half me and half him and entirely itself. I started to talk to my stomach at night. Started to plan what the nursery would look like. Started to pick out names."

She looks at me with a smirk as she leaned forward and touched my cheek. "I loved you before you were born. I loved you from the moment I felt you move for the first time. But something changed in him too. Not the way I hoped. He started to get nicer. Started helping me put my feet up and rubbing my stomach and bringing me tea in bed. I thought it meant something. Thought maybe the baby was softening him. Thought maybe he was becoming the man I'd always believed he could be."

She looks away and retracted her hand and she looked angry this time.

"But the cheating got worse. It was like the pregnancy made it worse. Like he needed more and more to fill whatever hole was inside him. He came home later and later and smelled like more and more women and I stopped asking because I didn't want to hear the answer."

A sigh escaped her lips as she continued to speak. "I stopped fighting. I stopped shouting. I just let him come home and take what he wanted and leave again and I told myself it was okay because I had the baby. I had you. I had something to hold onto. I tried to hide my pain. I read articles about how stress was bad for the baby. How I needed to stay calm, relaxed, and happy. And I tried, I really tried. But it was hard to be happy when your husband came home at midnight, smelling of someone else's perfume."

She puts her hand on her stomach, remembering I believe. I was in there, and I was her own safe place. She needed me too. "I made promises to you. Promises that I would protect you. Promises that I would give you a better life than the one I had. Promises that I would never let you feel the way I felt."

She looks at me, and there's something in her eyes that looks like she's asking for forgiveness, like she thinks she broke that promise somewhere along the way.

I don't know what to say to her.

I don't know if she broke it or not.

I don't know anything anymore.

"April 7th," she says. "I was in labor for sixteen hours. Sixteen hours of pain and fear and waiting. He was there the whole time. Holding my hand and wiping my forehead and telling me I was doing great, I was so strong, I was amazing."

She almost smiles.

"I believed him."

She looks at me, her eyes shining.

"And then you were there. The moment they put you in my arms, the moment I looked at your face, I fell in love." Her voice cracks as she chuckles a bit. "I looked at you and I thought I will die for this person. I thought I will kill for this person. I thought I will stay for this person, no matter what it costs me."

I feel tears falling from my eyes.

I don't know when I started, but I can feel the tears on my face, and I can feel my throat closing up and my chest heaving and I can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop.

She reaches up and wipes my cheek with her thumb, gentle, the way she used to when I was a kid and I'd scrape my knee or lose a game or come home crying because someone had been mean to me.

"Mon petit garçon," she whispers.

I shake my head.

I don't know what I'm shaking my head at, but I do it anyway, because this is too much, this is too much, I can't hold all of this.

She keeps talking.

"The first few years were okay. Not good, but okay. He was better when you were small. More present. More gentle. He would hold you on his chest and let you fall asleep to the sound of his heartbeat. He would throw you up in the air and catch you and you would laugh. I thought maybe things had changed. Maybe the baby had fixed him. Maybe we could be a family after all."

She shakes her head.

"But it didn't last. It never lasted."

She stops. Her hands tighten on mine.

"You were three years old at the time."

I watch her open her mouth then close it again, then open it again. "The sound of his hand connecting with your face. The way you looked at me afterwards. Confused and hurt and not understanding why Daddy had done that. The blood on your lip. Bright red against your skin. The way I had to lie to the doctor the next day. Had to say you fell. Had to smile and nod and pretend everything was fine."

She pauses as she puts one of her hands to her mouth and hold back a sob. "I thought about leaving that night. I packed a bag while he was in the shower. Put you in your coat. Got as far as the front door."

She looks at me.

"And then I stopped. Because I looked at you. Three years old and already so tired. And I thought about what kind of life I could give you if I left. I had no money. No job. No family nearby. I had a degree in literature and a dream of being a writer and nothing that could put food on the table."

She shakes her head.

"I put you to bed instead. I unpacked the bag. I stayed. I stayed because I thought I couldn't give you the life you deserved. I stayed because I thought a roof over your head and food in your stomach was worth more than my dignity. I stayed because I was scared, because I was tired, because I had nowhere else to go."

She looks at me with apologetic eyes.

"I stayed. I couldnt go."

I'm shaking now. My whole body is shaking, and I can't make it stop, and she's still holding my hands, still talking, still telling me things I didn't know about my own life.

"It got worse as you got older. The beatings got harder. The cheating got more frequent. The apologies got shorter. You know..."

And I did freaking know. "I stopped believing him somewhere around your fifth birthday. Stopped believing that he would ever change. Stopped believing that I could fix him. Stopped believing that love was enough."

She pauses.

"But I stayed anyway. Because of you."

She paused and really squeezed my hand this time. "You were at Marco's house for a sleepover. I was making dinner. He came home late from the office. I asked him about his day. He was short with me. I asked again. He snapped. I don't even remember what the argument was about. Something small. Something stupid. Something that shouldn't have mattered. But he hit me anyway."

Her hand touches her lip.

"He hit me so hard I split my lip. I fell against the counter. The pot on the stove rattled. The sauce I was making splattered across the stovetop. I stood there with my hand pressed to my mouth and blood running down my chin and I thought I can't do this anymore. I thought I can't, I can't, I can't."

She looks at me after taking a deep deep breath.

"And then I thought about you. About the surprise I'd been planning to tell him that night. The surprise I'd been holding in my chest for weeks. Waiting for the right moment. Waiting for him to be in a good mood. Waiting for the perfect time to share the news."

Her voice drops so much lower and so does my stomach, because what she told me next, shattered me. I was not prepared in the slightest.

"I was pregnant. I'd found out a month earlier. I'd been so scared, so scared, because I didn't know if I could do it again. Didn't know if I could bring another child into this house. Didn't know if I had the strength to protect two children from him. But I was also excited. Excited because I'd always wanted a big family. Always wanted siblings for you. Always wanted the kind of household I'd grown up in. I'd started picking out names. I'd settled on Lily. I'd imagined what it would be like to have a daughter. To teach her to braid her hair and read her stories and watch her grow up into someone strong and brave and nothing like her father."

My mother was sobbing now and so was I. "I didn't tell him that night. I couldn't. Not after he hit me. I went to bed with my lip swollen and my stomach aching and I thought tomorrow, I'll tell him tomorrow. But I didn't. I didn't tell him the next day either. Or the day after that. Or the week after that."

A sister....

I could have had a sister...

"I started to bleed three weeks later. I was at the grocery store when it happened. Standing in the produce aisle looking at oranges. I felt something wet and warm between my legs. I looked down and saw blood running down my inner thigh. I knew immediately what it meant. I didn't go to the hospital. I went home, and I took a shower, and I sat on the floor of the bathroom with the water running over me and I let myself cry. I let myself grieve for the daughter I'd already started to love. I let myself feel the weight of what I'd lost. The tiny person who would never exist. The future that would never happen."

She shakes her head.

"I never told him. He still doesn't know, to this day, that I was pregnant. That I lost the baby. That there was a girl who would have been your sister. I buried it so deep inside myself that sometimes I forget it ever happened."

She looks at me with distant, sad eyes and I can't look away. There was nothing but grief there, and rightfully so. Because my piece of shit father murdered my sister.

"But I remember. I remember Lily. I remember imagining what she would look like. Whether she'd have her father's eyes or her mother's smile. I remember the weight of her. The hope of her. The grief of her."

Lily.

My sister.

A girl who never got to exist because my father couldn't keep his hands to himself.

I don't realize I've stood up until I feel her hands fall away from mine.

I'm standing in the middle of her bedroom, in the dark, with my fists clenched at my sides and my jaw so tight I can feel the muscle jumping in my cheek and my chest heaving like I've been running. She's looking up at me, her face pale in the dim light from the bathroom, her eyes red and wet, her lip still swollen from where he hit her earlier tonight.

She looks so small.

She looks so broken.

"Jeanboy- she starts, and her voice cracks.

I shake my head.

"Maman."

The word comes out barely a whisper.

She reaches up and takes my face in her hands, her palms warm against my cheeks, her thumbs brushing away tears I didn't realize I was still crying.

"You are so strong," she says, and her voice is shaking but her hands are not. "You are so strong, mon fils. You have grown into such a beautiful man. I am so proud of you. I am so, so proud of you. Please believe me when I tell you that."

I leaned into her hand before giving it a kiss. I don't know if I can believe that right now. My mind is only focused on one thing. The arrogant, piece of shit downstairs.

He ruined my mother.

He ruined me.

He killed my sister. He killed her the same way he's been killing us, slowly, one hit at a time, one betrayal at a time, one secret at a time.

And he doesn't even know.

He doesn't even know what he did.

I'm crying harder now, the kind of crying that comes with hiccups and shaking shoulders and a sound that I can't control, a sound that comes from somewhere deep in my chest and won't stop coming out.

She pulls me into her arms and I let her.

I let her hold me the way she used to when I was small, her hand on the back of my head, her cheek against my hair, her body warm and familiar and safe.

"Why didn't you leave?"

The question comes out between hiccups, muffled against her shoulder, and I feel her arms tighten around me.

"I tried," she says, her voice soft. "I tried twice, Junebug. One night, when you were seven. I packed our bags and I got you out of bed and I put you in the car and I drove."

She pulls back just enough to look at me, her hands still on my face, her eyes searching mine.

"And then I stopped."

"Why?"

She shakes her head slowly, her thumbs tracing my cheekbones.

"Because I looked at you in the rearview mirror. Sleeping in your car seat with your mouth open and your blanket clutched in your hand. And I thought about what kind of life I could give you. I could put a roof over our heads but it would be a cheap one. In a bad neighborhood. With a landlord who didn't care if the heat worked or not. I could feed you but it would be the cheapest food I could find. The kind that fills your stomach but doesn't give you what you need to grow strong."

Her voice cracks.

"I thought about the schools you'd go to. The friends you'd make. The future you'd have. And I thought about the future you could have here. With his money, his connections, his name. I thought about how you could go to the best schools and meet the right people and have opportunities I could never give you on my own."

I tried to look away, shaking my head but she pulls my face back to her. "I made a choice, Jean. I chose to stay so you could have a life. So you could have a future. So you could be something."

"At what cost? At what cost, Maman? Look at us. Look at what he's done to us. Look at what he's still doing."

She's crying now too, tears running down her face, mixing with the blood still drying under her nose, and she shakes her head.

"I know," she whispers. "I know, I know, I know."

"Then why didn't you-"

"Because I couldn't." Her voice breaks. "I couldn't, Jean. I tried. I tried so many times. But every time I got to the door, I thought about you. I thought about what I would be taking from you. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't take it all away."

I want to be angry at her.

I want to be angry that she stayed, that she let him do this to us, that she chose this life even after everything he's done.

But I can't.

Because I see her, really see her, and I understand.

She was trapped in the same way I've been trapped, in the same way Y/N was trapped, in the same way anyone who grows up in a house like this is trapped. The walls are invisible but they're real, and they're higher than any prison I've ever seen.

"Je ne pouvais pas partir, mon fils, je ne pouvais pas, je suis désolée, je suis tellement désolée."

I close my eyes and let her hold me. I let her whisper apologies into my hair. I let myself be her son for one more minute. I open my eyes and I look at her, at her bruised face and her and her hands that have been holding me for twenty-one years, and I know what I have to do.

I pull back gently, my hands finding hers, and I squeeze them once.

"Stay here," I say. My voice sounds different to my own ears, lower, harder. "Stay here and lock the door."

Her eyes widen.

"Jean-"

"Lock the door, Maman. Don't open it for anyone."

"Jean, don't-"

I let go of her hands.

I stand up.

My legs feel strange under me, like they're not quite connected to my body, but I don't let that stop me. I walk toward the door, my footsteps quiet on the carpet, and I can feel her watching me, can feel her fear and her hope and her love all tangled together behind me.

"Junebug, please-"

I stop at the door.

I turn around.

She's still sitting on the edge of the bed, her wedding dress pooling around her, her hands clasped in her lap, her face wet with tears and blood.

I look at her and I think about all the things she's told me tonight. The girl she used to be. The woman she became. The mother she's been. The sister I never got to meet.

And I think about my father.

About his hands.

About his voice.

About the way he's been taking from us our whole lives and never once had to pay for it. I don't say anything. I just look at her.

And then I walk out the door.

My feet carry me toward the stairs without me telling them to, and I can hear voices dodownstairs again.

The stairs creak under my weight in that specific spot, third step from the bottom, the one I learned to avoid when I was twelve years old because sneaking down for water at night meant not getting caught, meant not having to explain why I was awake.

I can see them now, clustered in the foyer near the front door, the light from the chandelier throwing shadows across their faces that make them look older than they are, more tired, more worn down by whatever has been happening while I was upstairs with my mother.

Marco is standing closest to the stairs, his jacket still on like he was about to leave but someone stopped him, and his face looks pale in the yellow light, paler than I've seen it since we were kids and he got that stomach bug that put him in the hospital for three days.

His parents are behind him, Eleanor with her coat half-buttoned and her hair coming loose from the clip she was wearing, and Clarke with his hand on her arm like he's holding her back from whatever she was about to do.

My father is in the center of the room, his jacket off now, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and there's a glass in his hand that I know isn't water because I've seen that amber color a thousand times before, watched it disappear down his throat on nights that ended badly.

He's talking, no, he's ranting, his voice bouncing off the marble floors and the high ceilings and the fancy vases, all of it bought with money that came from buildings that crushed people like Y/N's father.

"There he is," my father says, and his voice is a bit slurry now. "The man of the hour. The one who ruined my party."

Your party?

Like this wasn't my mother's birthday, the jackass.

I keep walking down the stairs, one step at a time, and I can feel Marco's eyes on me now, can feel him trying to send me a message with his face that I can't read because I'm too focused on the shape of my father's face.

"Jean." Marco's voice comes out quiet. "Hey, man, maybe we should-"

"Don't tell him what to do in my house." My father doesn't even look at Marco when he says it, keeps his eyes locked on me as I reach the bottom of the stairs and step onto the marble floor. "This is my house. My rules. And right now my son is going to go upstairs and bring his mother down here so she can explain why she let her little guest destroy everything I've built."

The chandelier light catches the edge of his glass and throws a small reflection onto the wall behind him, a brief glint that disappears when he moves his hand.

"My mother," I say in a low tone and serious eyes. "Is not coming down."

My father's eyes narrow.

"Excuse me?" he says, and he sets the glass down on the side table near the door. Now I've got his full attention. "What did you just say to me?"

I look at him and I think about all the nights I spent lying awake in my room, listening to his voice through the walls, listening to my mother's screams and cries. I think about the way I learned to read his moods by the sound of his footsteps, heavy meant angry, quick meant searching, slow meant dangerous.

I think about that little boy who's dreams perished in a fireplace and burned to ash. Of the boy who's blood was stained on that damn Persian rug along with his mother's.

I wanted to draw. To do comics.

My first comic was gonna be of a superhero.

Someone strong and who could protect the people he cared about.

I can be strong like Y/N.

Right...

"I said she's not coming down," I repeat in a more confident tone.

|♩♩♩- Tous Ces Mots|

By: Faouzia

My father's face shifts through a series of expressions that I've seen before, each one passing a little too fast.

Surprise first, then confusion, the anger.

"You ungrateful little shit," he says, and his voice is low now. "After everything I've given you. Everything I've done for you. You stand in my house and talk to me like I'm nothing."

He takes a step toward me, and I can feel the space between us shrinking, can feel the air getting thinner, and somewhere behind me I hear Eleanor say something, her voice coming out worried, but I can't make out the words because my father is still moving toward me and his hand is coming up.

He's going to hit me.

He's gonna fucking hit me again..

This time I don't flinch.

This time I remember Y/N's face in the mirror this morning, the way she looked at me when I was staring at my own reflection and couldn't find anything worth seeing, the way she made me smile even when I didn't think I had the right to be happy.

She looked at me and she saw something worth staying for.

She fought for me.

She fought for me in that ballroom when everyone else was too scared to speak.

And I've been letting her fight alone.

My father's hand is still coming up, and I can see the shape of it, the thick fingers, the signet ring on his ring finger.

My fist connects with his face before I fully decide to throw it, and the impact travels up my arm, through my wrist, into my shoulder, and the sound it makes is wet.

Was that bad...or wrong?

No.

Not wrong.

Right.

It's right because it should have happened years ago, should have happened the first time he raised his hand to my mother, should have happened the first time he knocked me to the ground and told me I was nothing, should have happened every single time I stood there and took it.

My father stumbles backward, his hand going to his face, blood already starting to seep through his fingers from somewhere near his nose. He growls. "You-" he starts, but I don't let him finish.

I step forward and hit him again.

This one catches his cheekbone, the ridge of bone just below his eye, and I feel something in my knuckles shift with the impact. He's still standing and I need him down, I need him on the ground where he belongs, I need him to feel even a fraction of what I've felt for years.

He recovers faster than I expect him to, faster than I remember, because his fist catches me in the ribs before I can pull back, and the air leaves my lungs in a rush that leaves me gasping, leaves me stumbling sideways into the wall.

The wall is cold against my back, and I can hear voices now, Eleanor and Marie both yelling, telling us to stop, telling someone to do something, but I can't focus on them because my father is coming at me again.

His face is red and his nose was bleeding and his eyes were so familiar. I've seen before, in the mirror, in my own face when I couldn't stop myself from breaking things just to feel in control.

I remember seeing it when I beat the shit out of Floch.

We're the same.

His fist connects with my jaw and my head snaps to the side.

I push off the wall and swing at him again, and this time I catch him in the mouth, feel his lip split under my knuckles, feel the warmth of his blood on my skin, and I keep swinging, keep moving forward, keep hitting him because if I stop I'll have to think about what I'm doing and if I think about what I'm doing I might not be able to do it.

He grabs my shirt, bunches the fabric in his fists, and pulls me toward him, and we go down together, hitting the marble floor with a sound that echoes through the foyer, through the whole house, through every room where I ever hid from him.

We're on the ground now, rolling, hitting, grappling, and I can feel his weight on top of me, can feel his hands around my throat, can feel the pressure building in my head as he squeezes, as he presses his thumbs into the soft part of my neck.

This is how I die.

This is how he kills me.

I just can't let that happen... not now at least.

I bring my knee up hard, catching him somewhere that makes him grunt and release his grip on my throat.

I roll out from under him and scramble to my feet, gasping, my throat burning, my vision spotting at the edges, and I see Marco moving toward me, his hands out, his mouth moving, but I can't hear what he's saying because all I can hear is the blood in my ears and the sound of my father getting up behind me.

"Jean!" Marco's voice finally breaks through, and I turn to look at him, really look at him, and I see the fear on his face, the fear that I'm going to die, the fear that I'm going to kill someone, the fear that neither of those things is something he can stop.

But I also see Nile behind him, moving toward my father, and Clarke, both of them grabbing his arms, pulling him back, and my father is fighting them, cursing at them, telling them to get their hands off him, and his face is covered in blood, his nose and his lip and a cut above his eye that I don't remember giving him, but it's there.

I did that.

I have always been capable of this, but the only thing stopping me was the hope that if I was good enough, quiet enough, small enough, he would stop hurting us.

But that was never the case.

Marco grabs me by the shoulders and I let him pull me back, let him put distance between me and my father, and I'm breathing too fast, my chest heaving, my hands shaking, my knuckles bloody and swollen and throbbing with every heartbeat that pounds within my chest.

"Jean." Marco's voice is close now, right in my face, and his hands are on either side of my head, forcing me to look at him. "Jean, look at me. Look at me. You need to breathe. You need to breathe, man."

I try to breathe and it comes out as a hiccup, a sob. Im breaking down.

"He made her lose her baby! THAT ASSHOLE MADE HER LOSE HER BABY!"

Marco's face goes through a series of changes, confusion first, then something that looks like dawning horror. He doesn't ask what baby, he just holds my face and waits for me to keep talking.

"He didn't even know," I say, and my voice is getting louder now, carrying across the foyer, carrying to where my father is still struggling against Clarke and Nile, still trying to get to me. "She was pregnant with my sister, and he hit her, and she lost the baby, and he never even knew."

I'm crying now, I realize, tears mixing with the blood on my face, and I can taste salt and copper and everything I've been holding in for twenty-one years.

"He ruined her l-life. I...I ruined her life too.." My voice cracks on the last word, breaks apart, and I'm shouting now, shouting at him across the foyer, across the marble floor that's smeared with both our blood. "He ruined her life, and he ruined mine, and I am so tired, I am so fucking tired of being scared of him."

"Get out of my house. You are no longer my son."

I look at him and I feel nothing.

Not anger, not fear, not sadness, not relief.

Just nothing.

"Gladly," I say, and I spit on the floor at his feet.

There's blood in my spit, red and thick, and it lands on the marble between us, a small pool that catches the light from the chandelier, and I watch it for a second before I turn away.

Eleanor is already grabbing keys from the hook by the door, her hands shaking as she pulls them down, and Clarke gives Nile a nod before letting go of my father's arm and walking towards his family.

"Marco, come on. Get Jean and let's go."

Marco's hand is on my back, guiding me toward the door, and I let him move me because I don't think I can move on my own, don't think my legs would know where to go without someone telling them.

My father's voice follows me, rising again as I reach the door. "You hear me, Jean? You are cut off. Every penny. Every connection! Everything I built for you. It's gone. You're nothing without me. NOTHING!"

I stop with my hand on the door frame, and I turn back to look at him one more time.

He's standing in the middle of the foyer, blood on his face, his shirt untucked, his hands hanging at his sides, and he looks small suddenly.

Good.

"Thank you," I say, and my voice is quiet now from the pain and shouting. "For finally making it easy."

I walk out the door before he can respond.

The night air is so cold against my bruises and scats and I realize I don't have a coat, don't have anything except the clothes on my back and the blood on my hands and the ringing in my ears.

Marco is beside me, his hand still on my back, and his parents are coming out behind us, Eleanor already on the phone with someone, lets hope the police, and Clarke is unlocking the car doors.

"Get in," Marco says, and his voice is gentle and it almost makes me cry as I look at him. "Come on, man. Get in the car."

I let him lead me to the back seat, let him open the door, let him guide me down into the leather seat that smells like his mother's perfume and the air freshener she keeps clipped to the vent.

Clarke starts the engine, and the sound fills the car.

Eleanor gets in the passenger seat and twists around to look at me, her eyes scanning my face, cataloging the damage the way a mother does, the way my own mother used to do.

"Jean, honey, we need to get you to a hospital-"

"No." The word comes out before she can finish, and I shake my head, wincing at the pain that shoots through my neck. "No hospitals. Please. Just take me home. I just want to go home..."

She looks at Marco, and Marco looks at me.

"Okay," Eleanor says finally, turning back around in her seat. "Okay. We'll take you home."

The car pulls away from the house, and I watch it shrink in the side mirror, watch the lights of the foyer get smaller and smaller until they disappear behind the trees at the end of the driveway, and then the house is gone, just gone, like it never existed at all.

Marco doesn't say anything.

He just sits next to me in the back seat, close enough that I can feel the warmth of his body, close enough that if I needed to, I could lean into him and let him hold me up.

But I don't.

I stare out the window at the trees passing in the dark, at the road that I've driven a thousand times, at the sky that's starting to lighten at the edges, the first hints of dawn creeping over the horizon.

It's going to be a long drive back to the city.

And I don't know what I'm going to do when I get there.

I don't know where she is.

I don't know if she'll even want to see me.

But what I do worry about is the fact that I left my mother there. More poor defenseless mother all because I was selfish and wanted to get away from him. I put my own needs above hers and I left her.

I let out a sniffle and my nose began to hurt. Then my vision started to blur with tears...

Why did I leave my mother...

 

|♩♩♩- Saturn|

By: Sleeping at last

The apartment smells like nothing when we walk in.

Marco shuts the door behind us and I hear the lock click into place. It's supposed to mean safety, but it doesn't mean anything anymore, hasn't meant anything since I was old enough to understand that locks don't stop people who already live inside the house.

The keys hit the counter and I watch them slide across the surface before stopping near the edge, and neither of us moves to pick them up or put them where they belong because nothing about tonight belongs anywhere.

I'm standing in front of the living room windows with my hands in my pockets and my back to everything else, looking out at the city lights that stretch across the skyline.

All those windows with people inside them who don't know what happened tonight, who don't know that I swung at my father's face or that I watched my mother spin in her wedding dress or that I left her there, I left her there with him.

The glass is cold against my forehead when I lean into it, and I can see my breath fogging up the surface in small clouds that disappear as fast as they form, and I keep doing it, keep breathing, keep watching the fog come and go because it's something to focus on that isn't the image of my mother's face.

Marco doesn't say anything for a long time.

I can hear him moving in the kitchen, then the sound of cabinets opening and closing, water running from the faucet, the click of the stove being turned on and then off again like he's looking for something to do with his hands, something to occupy the time until he figures out what to do next.

"How long?"

Marco's voice comes from behind me. I close my eyes against the glass and let the question replay in my head for a moment before I answer. I don't turn around when I speak, just keep my forehead pressed against the window and my hands shoved deep into my jacket pockets, and I say, "What."

"How long?" His voice is louder now, not quite shouting but close to it. "How long has this been happening?"

I let out a breath that fogs the glass again, and I watch it spread and fade, and I think about how many times I've answered this question in my head, how many times I've practiced the words in front of mirrors or in the shower or lying in bed at night, and none of those practice runs prepared me for the actual moment of saying it out loud.

Especially to Marco.

"Since I was a child." My voice comes out empty, the same voice I used when I told my mother I'd clean up the broken vase, the voice I used when I told teachers my black eye was from a soccer accident, the voice I've been perfecting for twenty-one years.

"Since I was old enough to understand what was happening."

I hear Marco's breath catch, and then I hear something that makes me turn around, a sound I wasn't prepared for, a sound that splits something open in my chest.

He's laughing.

Marco is standing in the kitchen with his hands braced against the counter and his head bowed, and he's laughing, not because anything is funny but because his brain doesn't know what else to do with what I just told him, because laughter is the body's way of short-circuiting when it can't process information.

Or so I heard on Reddit.

"Since you were a child," he repeats, and his voice cracks on the last word, the laughter turning into hiccups. "Since you were a child, Jean. And you never told me. You never told me anything."

I turn fully now, and I see him, really see him for the first time since we walked through the door, and Marco is standing in the dim light from the window with his hands gripping the counter so hard, and he's crying.

He had tears running down his face.

"Why didn't you tell me?" His voice breaks on the question, and he's not laughing anymore, not even close, he's standing there with his whole body shaking and his face wet and his eyes fixed on me. "Why, Jean? I'm your best friend. I've known you since we were in diapers. We tell each other everything. We've always told each other everything."

I open my mouth to answer, but nothing comes out at first, and I have to swallow twice before I can find the words, and when they come they sound stupid.

"I didn't want you to worry." I say it and it sounds stupid even to my own ears, sounds like the kind of excuse a child would make, and maybe that's what I am, maybe I'm still a child who doesn't know how to ask for help. "I didn't want anyone to know. It was easier to just... not talk about it."

Marco shakes his head, and more tears fall, and he wipes at his face with the back of his hand but it doesn't do any good because more keep coming, keep falling, keep tracing lines down his cheeks.

"So that's why she knew before me."

His voice is devoid of any emotion. "That's why Y/N knew about your father before I did. Because you told her before you told me."

I go silent, and I look away.

"I thought she was drunk." Marco's voice is quieter now, and when I look back at him he's staring at the counter, not at me, his eyes fixed on some spot near the sink like he's seeing something else entirely. "When she was yelling at your father at the party, I thought she was just drunk and being dramatic. I thought she was saying things she didn't mean, things she'd regret in the morning. I was ready to be mad at her for hurting you."

He looks up at me, and his eyes are red and his face is blotchy and he looks like someone who's been hollowed out from the inside.

"But she wasn't lying." His voice cracks on the last word. "Everything she said was true. And she knew about it before I did."

"I'm sorry." The words come out before I can stop them, and they keep coming, one after another, pouring out of me like water from a broken pipe. "I'm sorry, Marco. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I'm sorry you had to find out like this. I'm sorry for everything. She just...she understood me better and I-"

"AND I WOULDN'T?"

"THATS NOT WHAT IM SAYING!

"THEN WHAT ARE YOU SAYING JEAN?"

We were both breathing heavily and I couldn't bare to look at his eyes anymore. I just looked down at my feet and I just cry. "I didn't...I couldn't worry with this... I- I dont know what to say Marco besides Im so fucking sorry."

He doesn't say anything for a long moment, just stands there with his hands on the counter and his shoulders shaking, and I can feel the silence pressing in on all sides.

And then he moves.

He crosses the space between us in three steps, and his arms go around me before I can prepare for it, before I can brace myself for the feeling of someone holding me like I matter.

Marco hugs me the way he used to hug me when we were kids and I fell off my bike, the way he hugged me when my grandfather died when we were fourteen, the way he hugs everyone who needs it because that's who Marco is, that's who he's always been, the person who holds other people up even when his own hands are shaking.

"I'm so sorry, Marco. I'm sorry...I'm just so tired."

"You're my brother." He says it into my shoulder, his voice muffled by my jacket, and I can feel his body shaking against mine, can feel the tears soaking through the fabric. "You're my brother, Jean. And I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I never saw it."

"It's not your fault. You couldn't have known."

He pulls back and looks at me, and his face is a mess, red and wet and blotchy, and I probably look the same, probably look like someone who's been pulled apart and put back together wrong.

"I feel like I've fucked up everything." The words come out before I can stop them, and once they start they don't stop, they keep coming, all of it, everything I've been holding in since she walked out that door. "I feel like I've fucked up my relationship with Y/N and I don't know if she's going to come back. I don't know if she even wants to come back. We said some things, Marco. We said some... terrible things to each other. And it got out of hand. It got so out of hand."

Marco's face changes when I say her name, shifts into something that looks like anger, not at me but at her, and he opens his mouth to say something, probably something about how she shouldn't have yelled at me, how she shouldn't have said what she said.

"Don't be mad at her."

I hold his eyes when I say it because I need him to understand this, need him to know that whatever happens between me and Y/N, I won't let anyone blame her for it. "It's not her fault. None of this is her fault."

Marco looks at me for a long moment, and I can see the conflict playing out behind his eyes, the war between his loyalty to me and his understanding that I'm asking him not to hate the person who hurt me.

"She told me about her father." My voice is quieter now, and I look down at the floor, at the dark wood that Marco's parents helped us pick out when we moved in here, at the scuff marks from our shoes and the spots where we've spilled things. "She told me about the accident. And I already knew. I knew about it because my father's company was responsible. I knew, Marco. I knew and I didn't tell her and I knew, dammit."

I can feel him watching me.

"I kept it from her for months. Every time she talked about her father, every time she visited him in the hospital, every time she told me how much she wished she knew what happened, I sat there and I didn't say anything. I let her believe it was just a random accident. I let her think there was no one to blame. And I knew the whole time. I knew my father's company built that scaffolding. I knew it was his fault she lost her father."

I look up at him, and I can feel the tears on my own face now, can feel them tracing paths down my cheeks that I don't remember crying.

"She was right to be angry. She was right to yell at me. I lied to her, Marco. I lied to her every single day for months."

Marco doesn't say anything for a long time, and I watch his face cycle through emotions, anger and sadness and understanding and grief, all of them passing across his features.

"She told me her father was in a coma," I say, and my voice cracks, "She told me he's been in a coma for four years. And I knew. I knew that the accident that put him there was my father's fault. And I just... I didn't say anything."

Marco's hand finds my shoulder, and thank God for it because I feel like I'm about to fall. "He ruined her life," I say, and the words come out wet, messy, barely intelligible through the tears. "My father ruined her life. And I'm just like him."

"You're not."

"I hit him tonight." I look at Marco when I say it, need him to see my face when I tell him this, need him to know exactly what I'm capable of. "I hit my father. I hit him more than once. I wanted to kill him, Marco. I wanted to kill him and I almost did."

Marco's hand tightens on my shoulder, but he doesn't pull away, doesn't flinch, doesn't do any of the things I expect him to do.

"He deserved it."

"He's still my father."

"Fuck him." Marco's voice is firm now, not angry but certain. "And you're not like him. You could never be like him. Because you feel guilty about what you did. You feel guilty about hitting him."

I see the understanding in his eyes, and I'm so sorry happy for it. So fucking grateful.

"I don't know what to do now. I don't know how to fix this."

Marco pulls me into another hug, and this one is tighter than the other. "We'll get through this," he says. "One day at a time. We'll figure it out together."

I nod into his shoulder, and I let myself believe it, just for a moment, just long enough to breathe.

Just for a moment, I believe it.

Just for a moment.

 

Two days pass.

I don't leave my room.

Marco brings me food that I don't eat and water that I don't drink, and he sits on the edge of my bed sometimes and talks to me about nothing, about the weather, about his classes, about Mina, about anything that isn't what happened at that house.

I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and think about all the ways I've failed everyone who ever believed in me.

Y/N's face appears every time I close my eyes, the way she looked at me when I told her I knew about her father, the way her face crumpled when she realized I'd been keeping it from her.

She hasn't called.

I check my phone every few hours, staring at the screen, willing it to light up with her name, but it stays dark, stays silent, stays empty and to me, it confirms that I may have lost her.

And whose fault is that...mine of course.

I think about my mother in that fucking house.

I left her there.

I left her in that house with him, and I don't know if she's okay, don't know if he hurt her after I left, don't know if she's sitting in her room right now wishing I had been strong enough to take her with me.

I think about my sister.

The sister I never got to meet, the sister who died before she had a name, the sister whose blood is on my father's hands and no one knows it.

That's all I've been fucking doing. Thinking and dwelling, thinking and dwelling.

I think about how tired I am.

God, I'm so tired.

On the third day, I get out of bed.

The motion takes everything I have, every ounce of strength I can muster, and I sit on the edge of the mattress with my feet on the floor and my head in my hands, and I breathe. Just take a breath. The room is dark, the curtains pulled shut, and I can hear the sounds of the city outside, cars and sirens. The world just keeps on spinning.

I stand up.

My legs just feel so weak, unstable, like they might give out at any moment, but I steady myself against the wall and I walk toward my desk.

The desk is covered in papers, sheets and sheets of paper covered in my handwriting, notes I've been writing over the past two days, things I needed to get out of my head before they drove me insane.

I pick up the top sheet and look at it.

It's about her.

Most of them are about her.

Words I wanted to say but couldn't, apologies I wrote and rewrote and will probably never send, descriptions of the way her hair looks in the morning light, the way her voice sounds when she says my name, the way her hand fits in mine. The way her laugh makes me smile, and how I miss the sound of her voice is my ears. I've never missed someone like this in my entire life.

I write another page.

And another.

And another.

My hand cramps and I keep going, keep writing, keep filling pages with words that don't matter because she's not here to read them, because she might never be here again.

But God, I'm so tired.

I drop the pen, and it rolls across the desk and falls onto the floor, and I don't pick it up, don't have the energy to bend over and grab it, don't have the energy to do anything but stand here and breathe.

Marco's not here.

I don't know where he went. He might be out studying, might be with Mina, might be anywhere. The apartment is empty. It's so empty and I feel like I'm going insane or maybe I'm at peace with the silence now. I finally muster up the strength to stand up again and I walk to the bathroom.

The floor is cold under my bare feet, marble that feels like ice, and the light from the hallway casts long shadows across the tile as I step inside and close the door behind me.

I stand in front of the mirror for a long moment and look at myself.

I look terrible.

My eyes are red and sunken, my jaw is bruised from where my father caught me, my hair is a mess, and my skin is a bit paler than usual.

I look like someone who's given up.

I look like my father.

And I look away.

I open the cabinet under the sink, the one where I keep my hair products and my face creams and all the things I use to make myself look like someone worth looking at. My hand moves automatically, reaching past the bottles and the jars, reaching all the way to the back where I keep things I don't like to think about.

The bottle is small, white, with a label that says my name and the name of a doctor I saw once, years ago, after my mother found me unable to sleep for three days straight.

Sleeping pills.

I hold the bottle in my hand and I look at it, and I think about how easy it would be, how simple, how quiet it would be to just go to sleep for a while you know.

I'm so tired.

|♩♩♩- I'm Tired|

By: Labrinth and Zendaya

I sit down on the cold marble floor, my back against the cabinet, the bottle in my lap, and I stare at it.

The label is faded, the print small, and I think about the last time I took one of these, the way it pulled me under, the way it made everything soft and distant and far away, but the dreams were painful.

To hell with dreams though. I just want sleep.

I want that.

I want the softness.

I want the distance, so I do whats best and I open the bottle.

The pills are small and white and there are more of them than I remembered, probably thirty or forty, and I pour them into my palm and I look at them with a smile. A little sleep wouldn't hurt right?

I ruined it.

I ruin everything and I just want to escape the reality of that. To just escape to a happier place and remember all the good times with Y/n. With my mom and my friends.

A nice and simple place.

I swallow the pills.

One by one, handful by handful, I swallow them all.

The taste is bitter and it coats my tongue and my throat and I chase it with water from the faucet, cupping my hands under the stream and drinking until the taste fades.

And then I sit.

The marble is cold under me and I can feel it through my sweatpants, can feel the chill spreading up through my legs, through my spine, through my chest.

I sit and I wait and I think about nothing.

I think about everything.

The room starts to blur at the edges. The light from the hallway seems softer, dimmer, like someone turned down the brightness of the apartment. I feel my heart beating in my chest, slower than it should be, maybe my body is finally ready to sleep.

And then I see her suddenly.

She appears in the doorway of the bathroom, framed by the light from the hallway, and she's glowing, literally glowing, her skin looks warm and her hair is soft and her eyes fixed on me with an expression of pure devotion.

She walks toward me, her bare feet silent on the marble floor, and she kneels down in front of me and reaches out and touches my face with her soft hands.

Her hand is cold against my cheek, colder than it should be, and I lean into the touch, let myself feel it cause it her touch. Any touch from her will bring me peace. "I'm sorry," she says, and her voice is soft, softer than I remember, and she leans forward and kisses my forehead, her lips cold and gentle against my skin.

I look up at her, and my eyes are wet, and I can barely see her through the tears, but I can feel her, feel her presence, feel her here with me, and I open my mouth and the words come out in a rush.

"I'm sorry." I say it over and over, the words spilling out of me like water, like blood. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry Kitkat. I'm so sorry sweetheart. Forgive me..."

She doesn't say anything, just holds my face and looks at me with those eyes, the ones I drew, the ones I've been looking for my whole life.

And then she starts to fade.

The glow around her dims and her features blur and she's slipping away, slipping through my fingers like sand, like smoke, and her eyes were the last things to fade away.

"No." The word comes out desperately, and I reach for her, try to grab her, try to hold on, but my hands pass through her like she's made of air, like she was never really there.

And then I'm on my back on the cold marble floor, and I'm staring up at the ceiling, at the light fixture that's too bright, too white, and I'm reaching up, reaching toward something I can't see, can't touch, can't hold. "Hhhgh..."

I can't seem to breathe...

"Hhhgh..."

I feel my breathing going shallow and its so hard, so fucking hard to breathe. My father would be happy huh?

The ceiling is white and it's getting whiter, getting brighter, and I can hear my heartbeat in my ears, and it was growing slower by the second.

I don't want to go...

I still need to see my mom...to help her...

"Hhhgh..."

My hand is reaching out towards the ceiling while my other hand grabs at my chest. My eyes can barley stay open and I can barely breathe, but this is good right...

I can finally get some sleep.

But what would my friends think...

What would Y/n think?

"Hhhgh..."

The ceiling is so white and I'm crying cause I don't want to go. I don't want to die. But I'm so tired.

I'm so tired I can barely keep my eyes open, can barely hold onto the thought of her face, can barely remember what it felt like to be happy.

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry, Kitkat.

I'm so sorry for everything.

For lying to you.

For keeping secrets.

For not being strong enough to tell you the truth before, you had to find out in the worst way. I'm sorry I couldn't be the man you truly needed and wanted. I'm sorry I couldn't help you with your dreams of being the most beautiful ballerina to grace the stage.

But you'll get there, I know you will, cause your strong.

You're so much stronger than me, sweetheart and... I start crying and smiling again. I'm so sorry...my love.

Forgive me.

I'm so sorry, Mom.

For leaving you there with that sorry excuse of a man. For not being strong enough to take you with me. For being a coward, the same kind of coward I've always been. Dad was right about one thing, I am still just a pathetic kid. I'm so sorry I ruined your life mom. You had dreams and having me caused you to stay with a man like that.

Forgive me.

I'm sorry, Marco.

For lying to you for all these years. For making you find out the way you did. You of all people didn't deserve that. My brother, I cherish you so so much. You deserve so much and I promise you will get it. Thank you for helping me with my comics too, even if they never got to see the world.

Forgive me..but..

I'm just so tired.

I'm so damn tired.

I'm so…

Notes:

Go to my Pinterest to get a good idea of Y/n and Jean

Pintrest: cookiemonster1776