Phoenix's Lies

Tattoos and Scars

River

Thinking over what I'm to say is hard, but Ari was right. I need to get this out before I choose what to do with him. Whether or not to let go. "Are you ok?" Nix's tone is soft and I know he's watching me. Seeing me for me now that I've dropped the barriers, the mask. Show him the real me he's been trying to find. "Riv?"

"Sorry, just hard to think about what happened." My tone is haunted and I know he hears it when he pulls me closer, letting me rest against him. "But I'm ready. I'm ready." I keep muttering it, hoping that one day it would make it better. Easier. "It all started when we fought that last time. I was hurt but I guess I didn't think it would be forever so I could keep going. Keep thinking it would one day fix itself. Only for everything else that happened to prove otherwise. Although I don't think I've ever been as terrified as when I saw you and Derek fighting that morning. How he kept beating you even when you were down like he wanted you dead." I stop and look Nix in the eye. "What happened?"

"He was being a bully. Laughing about you and about what we fought over. The pictures of me with Camilla. Something that happened because she decided to get to you and split us apart. Nothing happened the night I left and you thought I saw her. We crossed paths for a split second as I passed her and she used it against you. Us." He sounds sad and I guess it was over what he'd said to me. Not realising that my jealousy started it.

"I should have just let you explain instead of jumping to conclusions," I sigh, feeling a knot of emotion already in my throat. "I should have just stayed a little while longer and we would have realised that the stories didn't match up with what we'd heard. I'd have asked you and you would have explained it. I should have stayed."

He offers me a sad look. "We didn't know that at the time. But he already had some sort of twisted obsession with you and that made it easier since he wound me up until I hit him, I started it Riv. I wanted him to pay for saying what he did. Being like that to not just you but other people who couldn't stand up for themselves." He offers me a sad smile, "I tried to be the hero and ended up beaten down for it."

"And the arrest?"

He's quiet then, his eyes closed off. Irrational as I am, I'm tempted to jump to conclusions but instead, fight that part of me. Wanting to hear what he says. But he remains silent, both of us hearing the slow, sad song looping on my phone out on the porch-style area as the silence stretches. Keep going until he answers.

"Someone set me up with something in my locker that morning, I don't even remember what. All I remember is being convinced it was him so I did what I did before you found us. By then knowing I'd picked the one fight I could never win, besides the ones with you that is." I sigh and he carries on. "Between that set-up and the fighting I was in trouble. I was already in trouble that just finished it off for me."

"And you avoiding me?"

"I was mad at you but didn't want to lose you. But my anger was too volatile for me to risk hurting you more, you meant too much to me, and still do. By the time I cooled off, I was told you didn't want to see me and within the week we were gone."

I frown, "Who told you that? I never said that. I ran home from school after you that day to see if I could talk to you. I was confused, angry and sad. Worried too but I'd never say that. Do you remember who told you?"

He shakes his head.

I let out a breath and tried to figure out how to explain to him the rest of it. "I was lost after you left. My mother had always disapproved of our friends so when I was she decided to cut them out of my life for me. By the time I realised what she'd done, it was too late, though Hunt and Ari never gave up on me." He gives me another sad smile and I rest my head on his shoulder. "A few months after you left I found out Dad had cancer. I don't know how none of us saw it before but by the time they found it I was thirteen and he was being told he had a year to live, maybe even less. Unable to work, my mother carried the company for him. Or so she claimed at the time."