Hate is a strong word, but I still hate you.

Chapter thirty, Firsts

*Taylor's POV*

I woke up and I was hot and sweaty. My hair was stuck to my face and my pyjama top and shorts were clinging to my skin.
I threw back the damp covers and laid in the darkness for a short while.
I peered at the faint outline of my beautiful daughter, Rayne, and smiled. I was still beyond pleased that she had woken up. The doctors said she might never have woken up because of her concussion. When she slipped into the coma they didn't expect her to wake but she did and I still wasn't sure if this was real or not.
A burst of cold air hit me and I shivered, quickly pulling the cover back over me.
I slowly fell back to sleep.

When I woke up, again, light was pouring in through the window. Rayne had somehow managed to wrap her arms and legs around me as tightly as she could last night.
I slid from the bed and carefully carried her downstairs.
In a big basket, at the bottom of the stairs, was all of my dirty washing. I hadn't done any cleaning for the past two weeks because of Rayne.
I began pushing the clothes into the washing machine when I came upon the golden dress that I'd let Rayne borrow for the Ellen show interview. It was now covered in my blood from the cut on the back of my head and hers from the wound on her leg.
As I grabbed it from the basket Rayne came into the room. Her head moved down then up and her eyes opened wider. She looked down at the dress and gasped. Her eyes closed and she was tense.
Minutes passed and suddenly her eyes snapped open again.
She burrowed her head into my shoulder and cried, I think.
"Sweetie what happened?" I asked, dropping the dress and holding her with two hands.
"I remember. I remembered everything." She whispered. The doctors had told me that anything could bring back her memory.
I sat her down and she scrolled through her phone as I finished the laundry, the silence solidifying into tension and the tension was palpable.
As I clicked the button on the machine for it to begin washing the clothes Rayne dropped her phone on the island and stumbled towards the door.
When I caught up with her she was on the third step and was shuffling up them backwards.
I picked her up and she fell into my arms and cried.
"What happened?" I asked her. She used the hem of my top to dry her eyes then told me.
"They think I'm doing for attention." She unlocked her phone and showed me tweets, hundreds upon hundreds of them.
I sat on the sofa and stroked her hair as she slowly fell asleep. I read through all of the tweets, about six of which where wishing Rayne the best. All the other were telling her to kill herself and nobody likes her.
I wrote down each of the names of the horrible people then I went onto my account. I wrote a tweet where I ranted at them. I then tagged each of them in the comments section.
It took just over three hours to actually finish it and as I was finishing Rayne was waking up.
"Here." I handed her her phone, after logging out of Twitter, and she turned on her phone. It opened up on Twitter and she scrolled through, coming across my message. It wasn't very long due to the limited amount of characters.
She read the tweet then snuggled closer to me.
"Thank you Taylor." She began crying.
"I would do almost anything for you baby. I'm not going to let idiots like that hurt you." She pulled her knees up to her chest, her head on my chest, and her tears soaked my top.
"This is the first time I've made you cry for a good reason." I said.
"Yeah, how about another first, ordering pizza." She mumbled.
"Sure, later." I said, I put my head on her and Rayne pulled away.
"Help me." She said, standing. I held her under her arms as I held most of her weight whilst she walked.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"The bathroom." I carried her up the stairs then let her walk more. I didn't mind her falling over but I didn't want her falling down the stairs.
We got to the bathroom and I waited outside.
When she came out she held my arm and went to her bedroom. She pulled out a book and pulled herself up into my arms.
"My legs hurt." She mumbled.
"Good." She hit my arm and we laughed.
"You're boring so I'll just read instead."
"Oh thanks." I hit her this time, not hard, of course.
"CHILD ABUSE!" She yelled.
"It was more child abuse when you hit me." I threw her onto her bed then ran over and tickled her. "We don't even have to worry about my stomach this time." I lift up my top and showed off my healed stomach.
Rayne reached up and poked my stomach repeatedly.
"STOP! I'LL BRUSE!" I yelled. I pinned her arms down.
"Hey, that's not fair. That's cheating!" She giggled.
"It not cheating, there aren't any rules to cheat." I said, tickling her with my free hand.
"There are rules now. Rule one: no pinning people down." I let go of her arms but they were rendered useless because I began tickling her everywhere. Almost everywhere. There are some obvious areas that I avoided.
Tears fell from her eyes out of nowhere. I stopped tickling her.
"What's wrong honey?" I asked her.
"Do you think I'll ever be able to walk again?"
"Of course." I moved from my position and pulled her into a hug but she pushed away.
"Don't. It just confuses me." She curled into a ball I sat, watching.
I felt so annoyed, I thought we were finally getting along. Obviously not, she still hates me.
I admit, it did hurt a little but then again she saved my life. Why would she do that if she didn't care?
"Do you still hate me?" I asked.
"No. I don't like you fully but I wouldn't go as far as to say I hate you. You're half decent." That made me fell a little bit better but not much.
"Why did you save me if you don't like me?" I asked.
"Taylor, don't you understand? I may not like you but I need someone to bake cookies with. I don't think I can do that with Katy." I smiled at her snide joke about Katy's inability to cook.
I jumped from the bed and scooped her up. I ran to the kitchen and sat her on the island. I began thrusting different ingredients into her arms and she carefully put them to the side.
"You're way to excited! It's not like we haven't baked before." Rayne said.
"We've backed cookies once." I replied, grabbing a bowl and adding ingredients.
As I beat the eggs into the flour something hard hit the back of my head and shattered. Cold, wet sludge dribbled down my back and Rayne was laughing. I put down the bowl and turned to face my hysterical daughter.
She was laid on her back and clutching her sides.
I touched the goo on my head to find it was an egg.
"YOU'RE DONE FOR!" I yelled. Rayne stopped laughing and tried to run. She slid from the island and her knees buckled. She crawled to the stairs then up them.
I let her get to the top before I grabbed her by the waist and held her up. She let out a small scream and I rubbed egg into her hair.
"NOOO!" She squealed. I ran to the bathroom and we washed our hair before going back to the kitchen.
Rayne insisted she wanted to walk there so I let her and she made it, only stumbling twice.

"Hey Rayne!" I said, suddenly realising something.
"What?" She asked, stirring the almost done cookie dough.
"I can predict the future!" I laughed at my own little joke.
"How so?"
"Remember when you hit the brakes too soon, Twenty stitches in a hospital room!" I sang.
"Taylor no!" She said sternly.
"It's true. I wrote that song long before our accident and you had twenty stitches."
"No wonder all of your boyfriends leave you, you're crazy!" She threw a cloth at me and I caught it.
"You're probably right." I say, sighing and brushing flour from the workbench.
"We should totally make a carrot cake!" Rayne said, cutting out letters from the dough. She wouldn't let me see what she was doing.
"Okay!" I began on the cake and Rayne put the cookies into the oven.
"They'll be ready in about twenty minutes." She said, brushing yet more flour from top.
She put her hand to her pocket and pulled out a vibrating phone.
"Hello ... Baking cookies!" She spoke in a child-like voice. "Yes, of course, with Taylor ... She's, like, famous for making cookies ... I can't just leave ... Of course I actually like her, I don't have much of a choice ... She's my mom, unfortunately." I slapped her playfully and she stuck her tongue out. "Yeah, okay, I'm going to hang up. I'm busy baking cookies." She put the phone down and began pushing me from the room.
"Who was on the phone?" I asked.
"Katy, now get out. You can't see, it's a surprise." She closed the door and I stood in the hallway for a moment before I made my way to the sofa and flopped down.
I close my eyes and soon began to fall asleep when Rayne burst into the room. I sat up and she put a tray of cookies down. She had written 'I love you Mommy' in cookies. I looked up at my beautiful daughter and saw her smiling.
I pulled her into a hug.
"Really?" I asked.
"Yeah." She whispered. A single tear slipped from my eye and I lifted Rayne onto my hip.
She put her head on my shoulders and I picked up a cookie. I gave it to Rayne.
"You try one first, I don't want you poisoning me." I joked.
"If I die then it's your fault."
"Don't eat it then."
My hand touched the ends of her short hair.
"It looks weird, you having short hair, I'm not used to it." I said, putting her on the sofa besides me.
"I guess I take after my amazing mother." She said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
"You bet I'm amazing. Without me you wouldn't be alive." I muttered.
"Whatever." She tossed a cookie at me and looked away, whistling.
"I saw that." I poked her and she frowned at me.
"So, what are we watching?" She curled into a ball and rest her head back on my shoulder.
"House at the end of the street." I said jumping up and going to get the movie. As I got up Rayne fell down onto the sofa and I laughed.
"That's not funny." She yelled after me.

The rest of the day was spent eating cookies and watching an array of horror movies. I sat scared through most of it whereas Rayne wasn't.
She claimed 'it takes a lot to scare me' and based on how the past year has gone I find it easy to believe her.