A Way Back To You

20| Intent

Definition: To be determined to achieve a purpose; to show eager interest or attention to a subject, person or situation.

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Trigger warning: This book deals with mentions and implications of abuse, mainly physical but potentially sexual. While the latter is never descriptive, reader discretion is still advised.

With Ant. Monday, 7:29 am.

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Waking up early had, most unfortunately, become a habit of Ant's in the past few months.

Ant hated the fact that he'd spent the entire night worrying about what his parents were going to react like when he spoke to them the following morning. Having said so, he'd made this decision and now he had to live with it, and he'd readily admit that in the wake of all the anxiety, and stress, and anger over Ariana's situation that evening, he'd likely taken some of it out on his mother.

That, he certainly felt guilty for.

However, he didn't feel guilty for what he'd decided on, even if it'd come out a lot differently than he'd planned it to. After all, he'd absolutely never chosen anyone, not even his best friends, over his parents.

And he was pretty sure that they all knew that. If ever Zelan asked him why he'd been absent at a gathering, or where he'd been after promising to help the boys study, his answer was almost always "my parents needed me to do something." 

It'd gotten to the point that the boys never asked where he was, just complained that he'd broken his word, again, and what was causing him an insane amount of guilt right now was the fact that he'd not realised how fucked up that was until Maddy had come back into his life.

Maddy.

Damn, that was yet another thing keeping him awake. Correction, she was another thing keeping him awake, and not by any small margin the cause of all of this. Not to say that she was the blame, but she was part of the reason, and-

Ant groaned, rolling onto his side and rubbing his eyes. He clapped his hands as his night lamp switched itself on, and glanced at his watch. 1:00 am? This was getting ridiculous. Ant tried to roll over, doing everything in his power to push those extremely distracting thoughts out of his head and closed his eyes, willing himself to sleep. If he was going to get anything done tomorrow, or today as it happened to be, he'd need as much sleep as he could get.

Just as he'd finally started to fall asleep, though, his door swung open, and Ant barely registered the sound of small feet hitting the ground before Ariana rushed in, pulling on his blanket. "A-Ant?"

"Hold on, Ari." Ant said groggily, clapping his hands for light and willing his eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness. When they finally did, all he processed was the sight of Ariana's red, teary face, and he knew she'd had a nightmare. "Hey, Princess." He said, likely still groggy, reaching for her. "Are you ok? Bad dream?"

Ariana shook her head, though she let him pick her up. "M-Mommy fwiend." She insisted, wiping at her eyes to no avail, since they continued to leak tears. "I scawy."

"Mommy's friends?" Ant frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I s-see Mommy fwiends." Ariana repeated. "A-a-at pawty."

Her speech regressing meant that she'd definitely had a nightmare, or, more worryingly, she'd actually seen one of her mother's friends at that party. Panicked, though he did his best not to show it, Ant pulled her into bed beside him. "I'm sorry, princess. Well track them down, make sure they don't get you, ok?"