Flower Girl. (Chris Evans)

Chapter 61

SUSANA.

We park outside my sister's house and move quickly to the door, I know Luke is feeling as anxious as I am about not having Ben home last night, but both of us trust Flor and know he's safe with her.

Luke knocks on the door and Flor opens up for us "morning guys!"

"Morning." She lets us in "where is he?" She rolls her eyes before pointing to the living room, I walk fast, leaving Flor to greet Luke "good morning B."

He smiles and comes to hug me "good morning, thank your for letting me stay here." I kiss the top of his head before letting him go say hi to Luke.

"You want some coffee? We've been waiting for you guys to have breakfast and food's already here." I nod following her and the guys follow behind me "Ben helped set the table, so please take a plate and whatever you want to eat." After we all have our plates full everyone stays quiet so she takes a deep breath before patting Ben's hand.

He sighs but nod "I know I'm not an easy kid... The last few years I didn't have much chance to be or feel like a kid. My parents were great with us, dad was in the army and mom was a stay at home mom but after dad died she had to start working because money wasn't enough anymore between bills, us and debts." He takes a deep breath "I know she tried her best to give us everything, and all of our basic needs were fulfilled but we didn't have a mom anymore we had a provider."

"I had to watch my siblings after school, because she had 2 jobs, she gave us dinner, took us to bed and took us to school, that's it. From 8 to 9 she was gone. So I learned to cook from books, I was 12 the first night she didn't come home, but it was because her afternoon job let her go and she found a new one, so instead of her bringing us dinner, taking us to bed and school, she made us breakfast and took us to school, at first she made us something to eat before going to sleep, since she worked all morning and night, she slept in the afternoon." He takes a big sip of water before starting to talk again "we always had food in the fridge, but she started to get tired overtime, so I had to cook most of the days, she always made sure we had plenty in the fridge and once a month we got to eat out with her."

"Sometimes she didn't make it in time to take us to school, so we took the bus and I made sure the kids were in their classroom before going to mine, Jake's teacher realized something was going on, and called for me to talk about it, she told me we could get help with a social worker but I knew that was code for taking us away from my mom so I lied, I told everyone we had a babysitter, and started to call the TV babysitter so the kids would repeat and say we had a babysitter, I had a system and it worked for years, until ..." he gulps "until the dawn Luke knocked on our door."

He has been staring to his plate this whole time but he stretches his hand to me and I take it "I knew she was gonna die when Luke picked us up, because my mom always found a way to come back to us and that time she didn't." I can see a few tears running through his face but I don't want to interrupt him, luckily Flor sees it too and place a napkin close to his hand, letting him choose when to take it "you guys have been great with us and I don't want to add any discomfort into your life but..." he takes a deep breath before moving his gaze to us "I'm not okay." Seeing how broken he is makes me want to cry, but I can't, not right now. I stand up and go to him hugging him.

"You don't have to be okay right now, but I need you to let us know how to help."

He hugs me a little bit before letting me go "can you please go back to your seat? I want to talk some more." I kiss the top of his hand before going to sit down, Luke takes my hand and I squeeze his a little bit, Ben takes the napkin but instead of using it to dry his tears he starts to crumble it before speaking again "I have nightmares, I know you know because I had woken you up more than once, I don't like to sleep at night because of them and ... I don't like to feel scared, Flor told me about therapy and how it can help." I nod "I would like to start seeing a therapist."