Tethered Hearts | ✓ | Books 1 & 2

Episode 32| Hard to Love

Bryce's P.O.V.

Most couldn't admit when they messed up. They tried every trick in the book to avoid saying they did something wrong.

I was a member of that small group, unable to confess to my own errors.

I wasn't stuck-up or full of myself—so don't conclude to that. I was stubborn though. That much I would admit.

The issue with me was that, no matter if the ending result was positive or negative, I persistently tried my best to hold back the painful parts in life. Either painful things that I couldn't admit or painful truths that were hard to face. It started off as a bad habit when I was a child and it expanded into a destructive tool as the years went on. I never lied with the intent to hurt people.

I used this tactic when my sister's pet bunny died. I also used it when my mother called me up last Spring, asking me if I would be attending my father's birthday alive - a birthday that possibly could be his last. I didn't explicitly go into detail on why I wouldn't attend, but I had danced around the truth and dodged the honest response I wanted to tell her. Sadly, later I found out that it wasn't his last birthday after all and that the tired old man would be living to see another year.

Like those moments, I felt that habit creep back in when I wanted to tell Sophia.

Things were going well for us. Last night we made progress. I had opened up on my feelings and Sophia had opened up her legs. What else did you need to form a strong foundation? We were heading down the right path.

In addition, it wasn't as if I was going to sweep Lora's death under the rug – that wasn't my plan. I had strategized on how I wanted to present the information to her. While in the grocery store with Nicolas and Kelsey, I found a way to approach the subject to her, thinking about it for a solid hour. But when I walked into the apartment and saw her, that plan of mine had flown right over my head.

What plan? I had thought. Everything I wanted to tell her disintegrated, parting from me the moment she descended from the stairs and offered me a welcoming smile.

That smile, the one I woefully wished to see, was absent after the news of Lore's death.

Sophia was glowering at me, tapping her foot impatiently to a nonexistent beat. Her furry stare didn't weaken when I couldn't come up with a rebuttal. Somehow, it had intensified at my speechlessness.

"You knew, didn't you?" Her chin began to quiver. "You knew she was dead and you hid it from me."

Up in the room, I told Sophia that I would screw things up for us. How could've known that we would come across a problem much sooner than I thought we would? It hadn't been an hour since that conversation. I had underestimated my capability.

"I wouldn't quite put it like that. I didn't hide it from you, per se." Hesitantly, I went to stoke her arm in a comforting manner. In the past, whenever I did this her hard feature transformed, turning tender. "I didn't mean for it to get this far. I was going to tell you."

"If that was the case, then you would've told me the second you had the chance to." She shuffled backwards, repulsed by my touch. "I know you said you aren't good at listening to the social cues in how to act in a relationship, but one of the international rules is to not blatantly lie to one another."

"I wasn't lying though."

"Yes, yes you were," she spat. "If you weren't lying, then tell me this then. Was there really an EMT in front of Kappa Kappa Sigma because a drunk guy passed-out?"

"That could've easily have happened." I scoffed. "They have a severe drinking problem."

"So, you were lying?"