Bent

□CHAPTER: 24

Kathy's P.O.V

I cry hard as Jace wraps his arms around me holding me in a tight embrace. He whispers sweet nothing's in my ear to get me to calm down but I just continue to cry. I've haven't cried this hard since I was thirteen years old. Four years later and one slap is what gets me over the edge. But it's not just because he slapped me today.

All the other times he did worse things and I refused to cry is coming back to me. All the times that he told me that I'm ugly and pathetic and useless came crashing back. And the fact that my negative subconscious is up and alive makes me cry. But the fact that Jace is holding me in a way encouraging me to just let it all out. Cry until I have no more tears left to cry is why I'm breaking down like this. Eventually that happens because after a little while longer of unstoppable hyperventilating and sobbing I run out of tears. But still Jace never let's go of me and I'm glad because this way the fact that I have to look into his eyes and explain everything is prolonged.

"You're okay now. I'm here. Shh." He whispers rubbing my back gently until my breathing is back to normal. I'm still shaking but not as much as before.

"Come on, let's get out of here." He says pulling away from me slightly to look down at me with a small smile on his face. I can't decipher the emotions on his face and I can't tell you how happy that makes me at this point. Like I said, the mystery is more welcomed than all the other stuff that I'm used to getting.

"O-okay." I breath out although I can't tell if he heard me or not. But I make a move to stand up and he follows suit. We walk to his car and he opens the passenger door for me. I thank him with a low voice and get in the car. He closes the door for me and then jogs to the other side. Again I just stare straight ahead of me sitting idle.

He gets into the driver seat and flashes me one of his dazzling smiles and I try to return it but my smile doesn't reach my eyes. He doesn't say anything. Instead he just starts the car up and then starts driving. Where we're going right now I have no idea about but at this point I don't give a rat's ass. I know that Jace would never take me anywhere I don't wanna be. Strangely enough, I trust him. It's really hard for me to trust people and I can't tell you how long it took for me to trust Trisha. But with Jace it all came so easily. Our friendship came easily and whatever is happening between us right now came easily too. Everything that concerns Jace is just heartwarmingly easy. Except for my feelings towards him. Those are just flipping hard to understand.

I feel Jace slip a warm hand into my cold one. I don't pull away though because it feels nice. I look down at our intertwined hands and I can't help but smile. Although I can't bring myself to even look at him right now so I just look out of the window. I can see the outline of my reflection and almost cringe when I see that my right cheek is turning a little green and my face is stained with dry tears. I need to wash my face ASAP.

"Thank you." I whisper without even thinking about it, still looking out the window. I can feel him looking at me but I won't look at him. I know it's rude to talk to someone without looking at them. I'm rude like that.

"For what?" He asks and I sigh.
"For coming to get me. I'm sure you were busy so I'm sorry for disturbing you." I whisper. If the silence in the car wasn't so deafening then I don't think he would've heard me but at least he did.

"I'm never too busy for you Kath. And you didn't disturb me so there's no need to apologise." He says pulling into a driveway. I look in front of me and I see the most incredible house I've ever seen in this whole entire town. He lives here! I can't help but admire the design, the warm colours it's painted in. Just the whole house is breathtaking.

"Are we just going to sit here while you stare at my house or are we actually going to go in." He asks and I shake my head getting out of the trance I was in. I turn to look at him and roll my eyes.