Lost in the Game {Brollins}

| Chapter 37 |

When the long night finally turned to morning, the three guys gathered in the kitchen having breakfast. They were still unsure of how to approach the topic so in the meantime they decided to ignore it, leaving reoccurring, large gaps of silence in their short conversations.

Meanwhile, Rebecca awoke to multiple issues at once. Her head was in unimaginable pain, and she wasn't sure why her face was throbbing. Her neck hurt and even worse, she had no clue where she was.

She slowly sat up, mindful of her aching body, and gazed around the room. She looked down and noticed she was in some sort of black oversized hoodie, with some large basketball-style shorts. When her mind properly woke up an unsettling feeling instantly hit her and she started trying to retrace her steps from the night before.

After coming up short, and barely being able to remember anything, she slowly got out of the soft bed that was calling for her to come back and left the room begrudgingly.

She walked through the strangely familiar hallways, eventually coming across a mirror and seeing the state of her face. The entirety of her cheek was swollen and bruised, and there was the slightest amount of bruising and redness on her neck.

She pried her eyes away from her battered complexion and quickly turned her head when she heard voices coming from another room. She gripped her neck in pain after turning too quickly, but pushed the discomfort aside, before walking in the direction of the noise.

She slowly shuffled to the kitchen, seeing Joseph and Jonathan sitting on barstool-like chairs by the counter, while Colby was grabbing something from a cupboard.

"Hey." The sound of her own voice took her by surprise, and she despised how the strangled and quietness entangled with it made her seem so small.

Colby fumbled around with what he had grabbed, as he turned around quickly. While, Joseph and Jonathan stopped eating and just looked at her, unsure of how to address anything.

"No, I don't know what happened," She whispered, fidgeting with the hoodie's strings. "But I'm okay, I'm fine."

She walked to an empty barstool chair and sat on it as normally as possible, ignoring her roaring headache.

Joseph shook his head, "Rebecca-"

"Don't call me that." Rebecca quickly cut him off.

Joseph paused, receiving strange looks from both Colby and Jonathan. "Becks, come on. It's your name, I thought you were over this."

"I'm not like him, you know that." She looked at Joseph in an obvious state of both physical and emotional pain, "I'm not him Joe, I-I'm not."

"I know, I know." He quickly stood up, consoling her with a hug.

"He gave me that name, I don't want to be reminded." Rebecca paused, "I'm so damn tired of being reminded. I see myself in him, it scares me."

"It's okay," Joseph let her vent while rubbing her back, knowing she wasn't vulnerable often, especially not when it came to her father.

It was obvious to the guys that the prior night took a major toll on her, and her emotional state was definitely a side effect. Rebecca was obviously in a state of shock, and she didn't know how to cope, so instead, she was lashing out.

"So much rage, so much pain, the inability to love." She let go of him, losing herself more and more into her own words, fighting back tears, "He's ruined me. He was the one person I trusted with everything I had, and it never mattered. Meanwhile, she just laughs as I desperately try to pick the broken pieces of myself back up again and again."

Rebecca continued talking, and she looked as if she forgot where she was and instead was trapped in a room with every horrible memory she's ever had. "He left, for years at a time, over and over, not caring about how it affected me whatsoever."

They all stared at her, taking in the words she continued to spew about both her father and mother. The guys had no idea how much she had to deal with, and they had a feeling that it wasn't even scratching the surface.

They watched as Rebecca stared with a pained expression at the counter for the longest time, unmoving in silence, until suddenly it seemed like some sort of reset button was hit. Her face turned blank and she looked up from her focus point, meeting concerned glances from all directions.

"I want to know what happened." She spoke, completely disregarding the partial breakdown she just had.

"I don't know if that's a good idea right now," Colby said slowly, his words laced with worry.

Rebecca nodded, "Yes it is, I want to know."

Colby looked to Jonathan who shrugged and Joseph nodded his head, gesturing for him to tell her. When Colby finally spoke up and explained the series of events, he watched her face carry the same blank look the entire time.

She sat in silence for a minute, before responding, "So they were going to-"

"Yes, but they didn't," Colby spoke while staring at her cautiously.

Rebecca nodded, cementing the information and series of events in her head, before recalling a key detail.

"My drink." She whispered, "They spiked my drink. That's why I wasn't feeling well. Not because I was wasted, because they spiked my drink."

The dots all connected for the four, as everything lined up.

"My drink was spiked, they took me upstairs, and then-" She paused before looking at Colby. "You stopped them."

Something in the way Rebecca looked at Colby made him feel an evident shift in whatever their relationship was. She seemed more open, even if it was just for a split second, and Colby was smart enough to know that if she didn't want him to hear about some of her past, she wouldn't have spoken about it in a room with him in it.