Halfway In Love (#Wattys2016)

47 - We were so happy.

<Update : 28/06/17>

A/N : Welcome to the last chapter everyone! Thank you everyone who stayed till the end. It means a lot :)

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Happy Reading! 

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Chapter 47 - We were so happy.

Stephanie

I quietly disentangled myself from Dave and walked to the bathroom with him following me lightly, afraid that I might crumble, that the fragile little me might fall down and break. He need not have worried though, I was already in pieces and last night had been the final straw.

I knew that it was my fault, they had been coming for me. For me. In the car they had bought for me. For me. It was their love for me that made them do this. For me. For the last fifteen days I had had the same nightmare, my parents blasting up in the car, last night I saw the truth, I saw myself lighting up the lighter and putting their car to fire.

I splashed some water by the sink and looked up in the mirror to see Dave standing by the door, leaning against it. Our eyes met and his held nothing I had been expecting. He didn't look at me with pity. More than that, he didn't look at me with accusation. Why didn't his eyes hold the blame that was coursing through my veins like fire in a forest? Why didn't he look at me with disgust that had made me hate my own self? Why had he kept me here and taken care of me? Why were his eyes so filled with love? I couldn't look at it, at him. I crossed the distance and closed the door on his face. It had been so much easier to be numb. It was so easy to feel nothing.

I slid down against the door, wishing I could go back to yesterday when nothing had mattered, nothing had made me feel anything. Because right now, I could do with that rather than deal with these bursting range of feelings threatening to spill over.

Dave was nowhere to be seen when I re-entered the room. He did leave a note :

Be back. Just noticed one of your medicines needs a refill.

He shouldn't have been doing this. For me.

~~~

I don't know what I had been expecting when I decided to go back home.

Ruins? Black and burnt, demolished house? A disintegrating place, falling to pieces? Something, anything, that resembled my current state of being?

Yes.

But it stood there, warm and homely, like it had for the last twenty years, as if still waiting to welcome back its residents. It was difficult to walk up the door, to open it and find it completely empty.

Dammit.

It hurt a lot.

I dropped on the floor in the middle of the living room as tears gushed out making my heart clench so hard it hurt physically. I sat there sobbing on the floor, clutching my aching chest before realizing this was not what I was there for. With desperate efforts I pushed myself up to a standing position, swayed unsteadily and then started walking up towards my room.

One foot after the other.

Don't look around. Don't look at the pictures.

Right. Left.

It won't hurt if you don't think. Stop thinking.

Right. Left.

Just do what you are here for and then you can leave. For good. Don't look anywhere else.