Ruin Me

35. Betray me

Getting onto the roof was much harder without Grey's guiding hands to help me up. I struggled to heave myself up and scraped my leg painfully along the window causing me to bite my lip to stop myself from crying out in pain. It was as if I could feel my world crumbling around me hitting me to the ground with every blow and each time I tried to get up I would just get knocked down again more painfully every time.

As I sat there, finally on the roof, staring up at the stars that suddenly looked so much less beautiful without someone to admire them with beside me. I felt like I was looking at them differently too, through eyes more hardened by the world. Through eyes that now understood their dad, felt betrayed by their mom and as if everything they'd ever seen had been a lie.

The stars began to blur as my vision was obscured by tears. I pressed the balls of my hands into my eye sockets to try and stop my signs of weakness streaking down my cheeks. I wouldn't cry, because I was afraid that if I started I wouldn't stop, the tears would just take over until they consumed me.

My mom was a liar. She'd lied to me my entire life. She'd prevented me from seeing my dad.

My mind was going wild with all these crazy theories so quickly that I couldn't keep up. I just kept thinking how could she have smiled at me every day and known in her heart the whole time that she'd been depriving me of a relationship with my dad. How could she have looked me dead in the eyes and told me she had no idea where he was.

***

"Good morning sweetheart," mom yanked back the covers of the hotel bed we were sleeping in this week. She had already showered and was slinking about the room in a black silk wrap with her damp dark hair swept up into a pile on top of her head. Although her face was bare she'd painted her lips in her favourite fire engine red lipstick so they stood out starkly on her pale skin. She looked so beautiful even this early in the morning.

"No," I groaned tugging the duvet back up to my chin protectively against the morning. Also, because I knew what today was, the worst day of the year, Father's Day!

I hated Father's Day, all day I heard people going on and on about their dads and the gifts they'd brought them. The whole day just made me realise what I was missing, I knew none of them meant for each of their words to be like a knife in my heart but they were.

"You better get up quickly or you'll be late for school," mom warned swaying across the room with a powder brush to her face.

"I'm taking today as a mental health day," I stated decidedly.

"No such thing," mom threw a pair of jeans at me which I ducked under the covers to avoid, "what's the great problem with today?"

"It's Father's Day," I admitted propping myself up with a mournful sigh.

"Cara," mom tossed me a conflicted look over her shoulder as she sat in front of the vanity to do her makeup, "you don't need a dad when you've got me."

"It's just a hard day," I sighed but I automatically felt guilty, like I was making her feel as if she wasn't good enough. It wasn't that I didn't appreciate her, I just felt like I was missing out on something except I didn't know what. It felt as if there was something missing inside me that I could feel but never knew how to fill.

"It's only hard if you focus on it too much," mom chided as she widened her eye and stabbed an eyeliner towards it, "just pretend that it's not Father's Day."

"I can't just pretend," I huffed dramatically. I wanted her to at least to be sympathetic for me, at the moment she was acting like my problems didn't matter.