Bad Boy's Girl

Chapter 3

  TW: Mentions of self-harm

   My parent's death was a surprise to everyone. No one really talks about it, and it took me years to figure out exactly what happened. My parents worked for a well-known science academy, and we were never able to find out what they were working on. Connor once told me they were working on technology stuff, but it didn't add up to what my mom had her degree in. My dad could have very well worked on it. The night they died, a fire broke out in their lab and no one was able to stop it. The fire took over the entire academy; that night, 60 people were working throughout the building. Five people survived. The flames took over my parents first, then spread through the west wing, and then spread out. Killing a lot of well-known scientists, and many intern college students. It took me a long time to understand they were never coming home. I feel guilty for ever missing them because I didn't know them as much as Connor. Connor never cried about them in front of me. In fact, the only time I've seen him cry was when he got married to Grace, even then he fought hard to appear "manly" or whatever it was he had in his head. 

     Growing up with no parents was incredibly difficult. Connor had done a great job raising me, but I always felt like something was missing. It wasn't that Connor wasn't enough, he took me to every ballet recital, took me to the Daddy and daughter dances I had at school, he made sure I had everything I wanted and needed, but he just wasn't my dad, and he wasn't my mom. Connor was incredibly strict with me, especially with my safety. Looking back on it, I understand why he was so overprotective, but in the long run, I think it hurt me more than it protected me. Connor was so strict during my adolescence, it was hard to even exist. He expected the best of the best from me, and I wonder if my parents were the same way with him. I was in Catholic school before my parent's death and stayed in Catholic school from then on. Connor thought that it would teach me to be a "proper" young lady, but I hated every minute of Catholic school. When I hit 13, my school had a purity ball for the girls, in which we promised to save our purity until we decided to get married. During the purity ball, we are given a ring that we wear on our left ring finger and we can replace it when the time is right.  I was supposed to be given my mother's purity ring, but we all know that teenage pregnancy is a sin among all sins. Instead of receiving my mother's ring, Connor bought me a different ring. It was a dainty diamond band with James 5:16  inscribed in it, " Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed," Connor wanted me to be able to wear it as I got older, so I used to wear the ring on a necklace until my hands grew. It wasn't even a religious thing for Connor, we barely said grace before meals, and we hardly went to Church on Sundays. I think he just wanted to control me and make sure I was safe in every aspect. 

     Connor made sure I was "safe", I was never allowed to date, never allowed to hang out with any boys by myself unless it was Matt, and if I missed curfew it was a whole ordeal, I wasn't even able to go to bonfires. Connor blamed the "safeness" of the bonfire but deep down I knew he just didn't want me hooking up or drinking. After graduation, I snuck out of the house with Matt and we finally went to a bonfire, it was there I had my first kiss with Frankie Owens, and he tried to slip his hand up my skirt which was fine, but Connor had discovered I snuck out and embarrassed the hell out of me. I had never seen him so angry with me, he yelled at Frankie and tried to punch him, but I managed to stop him, reminding him that he would very well be charged as an adult for hitting a minor. Frankie was only 17 at the time and was a week shy of turning 18, but knowing Frankie and his parents, they would have pressed charges and I didn't want anything to do with that. 

     There were other things that Connor put on me. Connor developed a fear of fire ever since what happened to my parents, and in turn, I was scared of fires. Our home never had candles in it, and when I moved out for college, Connor came into Matt's and my apartment and had the gas stove removed and an electric stove installed. I had an app to manually turn on and off the stove and could check it from home, it gave a warning on our phones if we had left the burner on and whatnot. I think Connor and I are just overly cautious about the whole fire issue.