What's Enough?

Chapter 147

The silence in the room is haunting. All I hear is my breath and his, coming going in and out of our mouth at the same time. I stopped crying, maybe like two minutes ago. I would have stopped earlier, but I had no control over them. They just kept coming and coming, like water flowing out of a rock.

Every other second I feel a tear roll down my cheeks, so I guess I am still crying, just silently.

My appetite is gone; he just bought all those snacks for nothing; I can't eat right now. Eating is the last thing on my mind. Ryder, on the other hand, did not mind indulging in my unhealthy snacks; while I was crying, I heard bag after bag opening.

The rattling of chip bags and candy stopped some minutes ago; he better not have eaten everything. Just because I don't want it now doesn't mean I won't want it later.

"My brother," he says out loud.

My head is still between my knees, "Huh?" I say weakly. My throat is killing me.

"My brother did this to me, my face."

I bring myself to look at him; the light in the room burns my eyes as I come out of the darkness of my knees, "Why would he do this to you?" I scan his bruised and cut face.

"To make me tough," he states robotically.

"I don't understand,"

He looks away from me and stares straight ahead at the other bed, "When I was a kid, he..." he takes a deep breath, "He used to fight me, all the time, and not like an older brother just messing with his little brother, he beat me up, for anything,"

"I-"

"My mom and dad were never home, and when they weren't home, he did whatever the fuck he wanted to do to me," there's a pain in his voice as he relives what he is telling me,'

"You don't have to tell me," I want to know, but it's not worth it. If him telling me about his childhood is too painful for him, it isn't worth it.

He looks back at me and says, "I need to tell you,"

I say softly. "Okay,"

"My mother and father did there best to raise me, but they were always more dedicated to jobs; my brother mostly took care of me when I was young,"

"But your mom and dad are around?" I didn't know that Evelyn and Josiah were absent parents.

"They weren't always around. After my brother left and went off to college, they took some time off to be here for me because I was entering high school, but by then, it was too late,"

"Too late?" I question; he's scaring me. I have never seen him like this before, he's rigid up, and his breath is shaky; he can't even look at me; he just keeps his eyes and heads straight ahead.

He says, "As a child, I watched him; he made me watch as he hurt people, multiple people. One day he came to pick me up from school; his friends were with him. We were walking back to the house, and this guy that went to their school walked past; he bumped into my brother's friend, then the friend beat him up...bad; I couldn't watch. I couldn't do anything, so I just turned away. Later back at the house, I got the shit beaten out of me for not watching,"

Everything clicks. I have gone over a thousand scenarios trying to figure out why Ryder is the way he is, and now it all makes sense.

"He drilled it into my head every fucking day, that I had to be like him if I ever wanted to get somewhere in life; he told me that anyone below me didn't deserve respect,"

In the beginning, I thought Ryder was just a bad person, an arrogant asshole who thought he was better than everyone else. Slowly I started to see him, the real him, the person he truly is. But I couldn't understand for the life of me why he was only like that with me and not anyone else.