The Ones For Him

|35|

"Why did you run away?" Levi asked me and I sighed.

"I was getting annoyed with you guys always questioning me where I was running off to. You guys were just getting me mad and I felt like I couldn't even have time to myself because you guys would always question me where I was at that exact moment, or where I ran off to. I ran away because I had enough of it, but I knew that you guys were just worrying about why I was acting different. Now that I know that I have PTSD, I would use that as an excuse, but it's not. I may not have had full control of my anger, but I should've at least tried to hold myself back from lashing out on you guys." I rubbed my head.

"Why didn't you tell us how you felt, then?" Benji asked me and I scoffed, looking up at him.

"What do you mean? I literally told you guys many times that I was getting fucking annoyed that you guys wouldn't give me my personal space. I told all of you guys about it, but you would still ask me where I was." I squeezed my hands and breathed, calming myself down. It was silent for a few minutes and I groaned. "So are we gonna keep talking, or not? You guys are just wasting my time-"

"We're wasting your time?" Enzo laughed dryly and glared at me, "We wasted our own time looking for you and trying to track you down to bring you back home after weeks of you not coming back, but it seems that you were too busy having fun with your friends getting high and wasted. You have no idea how the first few fucking days were like, how the first few weeks were like. It was hell.

"We kept asking ourselves if you just gave up and decided to move on from us without saying a goodbye, at least. I thought that you didn't love us anymore because we kept questioning you, so you moved away to find better people who would worry less about you and would not ask you where you were at all. You know how many times all of us broke down, thinking that maybe you didn't even run away, but you were dead or someone took you away? So fucking many, Xavier, that I stopped counting."

Enzo sighed and rubbed his face. "I don't even know what else to say. I'm not even sure if you love us anymore, or if you even want to be with us. I don't even know if those are your friends out there or if they're your new lovers that you replaced us with."

"They're just friends..." I looked down, "Cameron, Hunter, and Evan are just friends. I had sex with them a handful of times, but there was no love in it. It was just a friends with benefits thing, I promise I don't love them. Maybe just as friends, but not as lovers."

I fidgeted with my hands and breathed in. "You know, when I was gone for the first days, I instantly regretted running away. I wanted to come back, but I was too afraid to see your reactions after I was gone for a few days. I knew that you guys were upset, but I didn't want to come back because I was scared that you guys would break up with me and leave me and that would mentally and physically break me, so I stayed away so that I wouldn't have to hear you guys saying that you were leaving me."

"Now that I think about it, it would've been better if I had come home because I wouldn't have been hurting you after months of being gone. I should've just come home and told you guys why I did what I did. Um, after I ran away, I drove to Las Vegas. I snuck into a bar and stole a few drinks, and that's where I met Cameron. I took him to my hotel, but we didn't do anything and instead fell asleep. The next day, we had sex and he left after giving me his number. I called him the next day and we just talked for a long time. I got closer to him and he ended up asking me if I wanted to smoke weed, so I tried it, and it made me feel a lot better. After not being able to get you guys out of my head, I was finally able to make all my worries and thoughts go away with that.