Bold Bella (Book 4)

Chapter 23:

            “Bells, come on, you can’t deny that they miss you after your sister sang that song!” Perry tried to tell me as I walked into my apartment. He kept talking but I was ignoring him not wanting to hear the truth in his words. I dumped my bag on the empty couch and Perry flicked the lights on. Andrew and Helena weren’t home to make a bigger deal out of everything, which I was thankful for.

            “Why are we still talking about this?” I snapped back.

            “Because you’re not saying anything!”

            “Maybe I don’t want to talk about it!”

            “Bells what’s going on in your head?” he murmured.

            “Everything and nothing at the same time,” I muttered. “I just, after hearing and seeing Oly, I know that I caused them more pain then good. Before this I could at least pretend that they didn’t care that I was gone and I could hide from the fact that they didn’t care about me but Oly’s just washed all of that away.”

            “You feel guilty?”

            “And selfish.”

            “Who was that guy?”

            “That was the guy I told you about, the one who played me.”

            “What was he doing here?”

            “Beats me,” I muttered.

            “Do you still love him?”

            “I,” I started to say as I flashbacked to what I felt when I saw him. He made me feel weird. The good kind of weird. He made me want to run away and hide but at the same time I just wanted to run up and hug him. He made me want to curl up in a ball and smile but he also made me want to scream at the top of my lungs. I wanted to walk up and slap his face but at the same time I wanted to walk up and kiss him. Isn’t that what love was? When you can’t stand the person but you still want to be around them. “I think I do.”

            “After all this time,” he muttered.

            “I don’t think it ever went away. I think it’s just always gonna be Niall. No matter how much he hurt me. But I don’t think I could ever go back to him. He hurt me too much.”

            “You deserve better.”

            “No,” I counteracted, “I don’t. What I’ve done to my family, I deserve to never be spoken to again.”

            “You made a mistake. It happens.”

            “But I’ve just been so stupid!” I expressed. “All this time I thought my consequence for leaving was that I would never see my family again when the real consequence was that I hurt them when I left. I was just being so irrational and stupid.”

            “You weren’t being stupid,” Perry comforted me, “You were upset and lonely and hurt. Those aren’t a good combo, so you did something rash. You packed up and left. You could’ve done worse.”

            “Like what my parents did?” I asked and he nodded.

            “You’ve still got time to fix your mistakes. Don’t waste it.”

            “So what do you suggest I do?” I asked getting angry again. I stood up and paced. “Go back to London and knock on my mum’s door and ask for her forgiveness? ‘Hey mum, I know it’s been six and a half months but I’m really sorry please forgive my stupidity’! Yeah because that’s gonna cut it!”