❀Cutie-Pie||l.h❀

Prologue||v.d.

a/n: the initials by the chapter will be the POV that it's in

My father was dead. Six years ago today. Maybe I would feel different if I'd known about what was happening. That he was sick, that he was ready to die, even. But Mom hid that from us all those years, and Daddy had never said any different.

And then one day, I'd gotten home from school and Daddy hadn't been there. Both my parents were always home back then. I was only ten, to be fair. But Daddy wasn't home that day. It was just Mom, sitting on the couch, crying.

"Where's Daddy?" I had asked, curled in her lap. She looked down at me, fresh tears brimming in her eyes.

"He's...your Daddy isn't here anymore, Violet," she said, "He's in heaven now." I hadn't cried that first day. I was shocked mostly. But I cried all the next two weeks, so much that I nearly flunked fifth grade due to missing days.

Liam was my rock. He kept me grounded. He moved in with us since his parents had gone through a nasty divorce then, and we'd gotten really close. He was my first cousin, so my Mom, even after the Death issue, was thrown into the middle of the divorce, too. It was a sucky four months, but everything subsided, and after ten months, we'd gotten used to Daddy not being around anymore. Liam had helped out a lot, but he'd gotten super-protective of me.

I'd gotten quiet. I shut Mom out. I shut family out. I kept Liam on my good side. He knew everything about me, and was viewed as my messenger, no doubt. The girls at school always giggled around him and tried to be my friends because Liam was attractive, and I guess they all hated me now. It was like I was popular without trying, though. They all believed that I thought I was better than them, but I was just quiet. Whatever. That was a long time ago, and with Liam's tour coming up, I was just going to have to be quiet for the next three months.

It was no big deal.