Love me 'Til it Hurts

Chapter 05 - Home!

Jeremy Irvine...

The house lay dormant around me. The house where I have so many memories. Memories that played out like some sort of looped movie projection. Everywhere I turned there seemed to be a memory clinging to the atmosphere. I practically grew up in this house.

I have laughed here.

I have cried here.

I have raged here.

Hell, I have even felt hopeless here.

I fell in love here.

This was my home. Not the house where my parents resided. No, that had never been my home. I had never felt safe there. I never felt like I belonged there. It was this house that I felt like I had a place to fit in. It was this house where I felt like I had a family.

As I placed my bag in the guest room that was actually Juliette's childhood bedroom, a thousand more memories bombarded me. One in particular sticking out above all the others. It was about a month before Janet and Donald had died, Jensen was out on a date with Rayne, one of their first if I am correct. Donald and Janet were asleep in the master-suite just to the left of the front door, which just so happened to be Juliette's room now. Anyway, that night I had been at home, it was a rarity for me at that time because my parents had been partying harder than normal at that time.

There were people I didn't know coming and going from the house at all hours. Drugs and alcohol were a regular staple in my house, fuck there were times when my parents didn't even have food for me, but there was always alcohol and little sachets of white powder that would be tipped out on to mirrors to be snorted like a warped cliché. The partying was getting out of control and that one night I had stayed home because like I said Jensen was on a date. I had gone to bed, just about to fall asleep when a man let himself into my room and proceeded to strip down and try to get into bed with me. I freaked out and beat the shit out of the guy, I don't know who he was, and I didn't care. All I knew was that he had tried to get into bed with me and that was not happening.

Tearing a path out of my room, I had cornered my dad and told him that some guy that I had never seen before had just tried to get into my bed, my dad, high as a fucking kite told me to stop being so dramatic. That I must have misinterpreted his intentions. I roared that he was being an asshole by opening his home to all these fucking junkies - that some predator had just climbed into my bed while I was in it, what would he have done if I had been a girl, would my dad have had a different reaction? I got a punch to the face for that. I can remember the feel of my flesh splitting open, my nose gushing with blood but I didn't allow it to stop me - I reared back and ended up pummelling him before I tore a path out of the house. I didn't even bother to get dressed; Hell, I didn't even have shoes on as I ran straight to the Ackles house.

The Ackles had always been more like parents to me than my real parents were. I just knew that I would be safe at their house. I would have a place to lay my head and not have to worry about Goddamn paedophiles trying to climb into bed with me.

Donald and Janet never judged me. They always just opened the door and never forced me to talk about what was happening at home. They knew that I talked to Jensen about my home life, and I am not stupid enough to think that my friend didn't share with his parents because that was just the type of relationship that he and Juliette had with them. It was open, it was honest, and it was born of respect.

That night when I showed up - Don and Jan were already in bed. It was Juliette that let me in. It was Juliette that helped clean me up. It was Juliette who tended to my wounds, and it was that night that I confessed all of the shitty things that happened at my house with her.