Accused + Silence (Continuation) 💣🤍 criminal bromance

17. I believe you ✨

Saturday 14.05 :
09:10

Mom left me last night... I didn't want her to stay with me any longer than necessary because there was a risk that this J.H. guy might show up. I was feeling better, my fever had broken and I needed to distract myself a bit. I decided to go for a walk, maybe go to the park, or go for a little run in the stadium.

I put on some shorts, a loose, flowy t-shirt, and took a bag of water with me. On my way up the stairs, I was stopped by my neighbor – Mr. Brown.

"Hello, how are you?" - he asked curiously.

"Hello, I'm fine and how are you?"

"Oh good, good... Well everything okay yesterday?" - he tried to pry as much as he could.

"All right." - I said in a closed and measured manner. I didn't feel like talking to him, I didn't even know what to talk about. We hadn't talked at all, only now he'd like to know the gossip, but otherwise he wasn't interested in anyone.

"I only wonder if I did the right thing by letting that man come to you." - he said cautiously.

"Nothing happened, but if anyone else wants to come here, don't let them in. Okay?"

"Sure, forgive me." - he said with his gruff voice.

"Everything's good. Goodbye." - I said with a fleeting smile and closed the door.

If he let anyone in like that it could start to get dangerous. I wanted to live a normal life without fear already. It was hard to stop thinking about what if he was watching me, but I had to forget at least for a little while. I went to the marathon track, which was about a mile away from my apartment.

...
I started walking around and breathing fresh air. It was beautiful weather and I wasn't going to ruin the day. There were about ten people and four of them were children. So I started sprinting gently around the elliptical. Using the adrenaline rush from the sport, I wanted to let off some steam. It was fine, but not like the wild times when I didn't think about anything – like two years ago when our family didn't have any serious problems.

I was looking around at those happy – on the surface idyllic families. Was ours like that? Was it idyllic? Mom said things had ended earlier between Dad and her, but when? I didn't notice anything, and neither did my sister. She was just as derailed as I was when we found out what was going on. I know Mom had quite an argument with Dad at the time, but who wouldn't? It was a bad time that I see continuing, just in a different light.

I sat down on a wooden bench and took a drink of water. I just sat there for a while and let the sun shine on me. I noticed that someone had sat down on the next bench, it was about three meters away from me. I subtly looked to my right and was a little startled by who I saw, but not surprised – I shouldn't have been.

Tony was sitting there and we were both staring at each other. I stopped looking to that side and kept my head pointed forward – I was doing as if nothing, I had no desire to even start a conversation.

He didn't speak until after some time he opened his mouth and said:

- "It's my fault."

I let him speak, I continued to look forward, but I could feel him looking at me.

- "I shouldn't have gone into that forest, and I shouldn't have written to you at all." - he spoke in a sort of unfamiliar tone.

What he said was absurd, he couldn't have known any of that was going to happen, but I let him go on.

- "I wish I could turn back time before I knew you. Maybe things would have turned out differently and I wouldn't have this bad feeling of GUILT." - he spoke thoughtfully and deeply.