Lights Will Guide You Home

Raelynn

I don't know why but I felt really nervous as I walked in. I gulped to see Aiden lying in bed, sporting a black eye which was swollen shut. He had dark red bruises all over, and there was a deep cut on the side of his lips. The doctor had told us he had a couple of broken ribs, but apart from that all other bones were intact. He looked terribly uncomfortably, like he didn't how to rest himself because every bit of him hurt. I resisted the urge to burst into tears and moved forward to greet him with a small brave smile. "Hi."

"Hi," he said back.

I sat down awkwardly on a chair next to his bed. Neither of us said anything. It took me a while to gather all my courage and when I finally did, I turned to look at him.

"There's something I need to tell you," we said simultaneously. We laughed.

"Okay, you first," Aiden said, smiling.

At first I was at a loss for words.

"I'm sorry," I finally managed to say. "I'm sorry for everything. I just...I mean, what you said the other night, I wasn't expecting any of that. I was just very confused and I couldn't wrap my head around any of it. I don't know how I felt or how to deal with anything. And that's why I left, because I needed time to think. But now, everything in clearer. Now I know how I feel."

"And?" he asked, subjecting me to that intense blue-eyed stare again.

"And now I think I need to come clean with you.
Remember when you told me about your dark past? Well, I have a dark past of my own too, and it's been haunting me all these years. I was eight when my father left me and my mum. I had just gotten back from school, and I found my parents in the living room, fighting. Before he left, my father said some really cruel things that day. Those things I've never been able to forget – the left deep scars in our hearts, especially my mum's. I never forgave my father for how much he hurt my mother, even though she forgave him. Things got worse one night when I was seventeen. My boyfriend Marcus tried to rape me in alley after a date, and in self defense, I accidentally killed him. I didn't get charged for anything as it had been no fault of mine. That night, my view on men changed. I began to despise them all. I hated how they made women feel inferior and how they just used them. With each day, the hatred grew stronger and stronger. It felt like there was an evil creature with a mind of its own living within me. Every time I came across a man who didn't treat a woman right, or hurt his family, the evil creature would take over. I found myself plotting ways to hurt them, destroy them. I began to lure those men into my trap and then kill them slowly. It was true I hated men, but I hated the dark girl inside me even more."

I paused for breath and continued.

"Although a part of me thought what I did was justified, it couldn't quieten my conscience. With each day, I grew to abhor the demon inside me, but I had no choice – it was powerful, and its grip on my being was strong. In the middle of all that, you appeared out of nowhere. That night in Spain... it left me very confused. I had never had to deal with something like that, and I didn't know what to do. I thought going to Barrington would help me sort out my feelings, but things just got all the more muddled up. Last night, Claire handed me my mum's diary. She had found it while helping me clear out my home in Barrington. To her, it was only a belonging of my mother's that she knew I would find special, but she had no idea how it would go on to change my life. Everything I read made me realise who I had been, who I had become, and who I really wanted to be. I realized that a part of me I thought I had lost had come back to life. Slowly it hit me – it wasn't last night, on reading the diary, that that part had revived. The truth is...you are the one who reawakened that part, Aiden.
All the time I spent with you – not even for a second did I feel the presence of my dark side. I felt more alive and...safe, somehow. Like I could trust you, no matter what. Being with you made me happier than I've been in a very long time. I was only confused because I've never felt the way you made me feel. The thing is...Aiden, I love you. I fell in love with you back in Majorca, but I just didn't realize it. And that's why I'm here now – to tell you how much I love you."