[COMPLETED]
❝Death is inevitable. It's a promise made to us at birth.❞
Arielle is a studious young woman striving to be a chef. Her life is full of going to class, reading textbooks, and hanging out with her friends, until she meets Zayn. Zayn's an...
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➳ ARIELLE'S POV
I curl into Nyjah's chest as he hugs me tightly. His hand instantly cradles the back of my head as my body begins rocking violently with sobs. "Shh," he soothes as his palm runs softly over my hair. "It's alright, Ari."
He holds me like that for several minutes before I've managed to gain some sort of composure. I keep my head down against his chest and shyly wipe away the tears on my cheeks. With a small sniffle, I barely pull away from him, not even daring to look up at his gaze.
I know the exact facial expression he's going to have because I've seen it so many times before. I know that look, that look of sympathy that I hate so much. That look does nothing but make me feel weak.
Don't look at me with pity for the things that have been done to me, look at me with admiration for the things that I've overcome.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Nyjah ducks his head in an attempt to look me in eyes, but I do the same. Pulling my hair out of its bun, I use it as a defence mechanism—hiding my flushed face behind the locks of brown.
I don't want him to see the way my eyes have swollen, how my cheeks have turned a shade of pink from crying. I'm aware he knows I've been crying, and he'd realize that I look swollen and hideous—hell, he probably couldn't care less—but I've never liked it when people actually see my face while crying, or right after having a good cry.
"If you don't want to, I'd understand. I mean, I don't entirely realize what just happened, but from what I can decipher, it's pretty fucked up."
I shake my head, silently telling him that I do not want to talk about this.
"Can I just ask you one question?" I nod my head weakly, and so he questions, "Who's Ezra?"
I sink my head in my hands. He just had to ask that question. "One of my step-fathers. You know him as Sullivan." My hands quiver at the mention of his name and I swallow back the lump that's formed in my throat. C'mon Nyjah, don't make me cry again.
"Wait. Sullivan? As in my boss?"
"Yes," I mutter out as I turn to walk away from him. I saunter down the hallway, still hiding behind the thickness of my hair, but he follows behind quickly. I play with the ponytail looped around my small wrist to distract myself, but it doesn't seem to help because of Nyjah's presence reminding me of what just happened.
Another person knows of what I come from. Another person has seen the true horror of my mother. I come from those genes. I am half her genes and now three people know about her. Nyjah, Jonah, and Zayn. Granted, Zayn's forgotten about my entire fucked up past, but the whole reason I moved here was so people didn't know where and who I came from. Yet Jonah still knows my mother's a horrible person—he overheard our conversation on campus, back when I slapped her. And now Nyjah knows that my mother's Satan and has probably already realized that I was sexually abused when I was a teenager.
