broken // branded sequel // heathers au

twelve

Elody's POV

I woke up in a part of town I didn't recognize. My father was beside me, drinking a slushie and staring ahead. I didn't know what he was thinking but it seemed like whatever it was, that it wasn't good.

"Where are we?" I asked after a few minutes.

"This is where I lived when I met your mother." He answered me. It wasn't what I meant but it worked.

"What?" I asked, confused.

"When I was seventeen, your mother climbed through that window right there." He said, pausing to point at a second story window next to a tree. "She stumbled in and my life was never the same, Elody." He told me.

"In a good way?" I asked him, trying to imagine my young mother entering through the window and changing his life. I couldn't do it.

"No." He admitted, his voice completely flat. "Her love made me hurt her because I was afraid of my own emotions. It brought three beautiful children who I hurt to varying degrees. It brought a prison sentence." He added, taking a large sip of his blue drink and looking away from me. I could swear that I saw tears in his eyes.

"If you had the chance to undo it, would you?" I questioned, bracing myself for a yes. That if he had the chance, he would have never met my mother and there would be no Giselle, Auden or I.

"No." He told me. "I would change the way I reacted to everything. I wouldn't have treated your mother so badly."

"That's all you'd change?" I asked.

"That one detail changes it all. If I wasn't as cruel to her, we wouldn't have broken up. I wouldn't have faked my death. I would have raised Giselle with her. Giselle would be here today." He explained, shaking his head slightly.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

"Because I want you to know that if I could have, I would changed a long time ago." He said.

"You're going to change?" I asked.

"In a way you can't prepare for." He mumbled, pulling away from the house he lived in so long ago to take us back to the one where we live at now.

As we opened the door, I could see my mother. She had taken off her makeup. I could see the bruise on her jaw and her cheekbone. She wore her blue pajamas and her favorite robe, a grey one. The second she saw me, her eyes flashed with joy. She hugged me tightly as I walked in. Auden did too. My father walked right past us and up the stairs. My mother trailed behind him, her face curled up with annoyance.

Veronica's POV

"Where did you go?" I asked my husband.

"I was just taking her on a drive. I showed her the house I lived in when we met." He answered me, continuing to do something I couldn't see.

"I still want to know why you had that gun, JD." I said.

"Because I wanted to have something for protection." He replied, lying to me for my own benefit. "I bought it the other day."

"You're not supposed to have guns." I reminded him. "What are you even doing?" I asked, exasperated with trying to see what he was doing.

"I'm packing." He answered.

"What?" I questioned. I swear the silence in the room was deafening enough to kill me. You could only hear the sound of my heart breaking. It cracked right down the middle.

"I don't do anything other than hurt you and our daughters. Seeing Elody break down made me realize that it's me. She never had episodes like this until I came home." He said, stiffening. "I was the reason Giselle had breakdowns too." He added, quieter now.