Getting Wilder ✔️

Bonus: my heart loves yours

Dedicated to one of the kindest and sweetest person I've come to know here. Thanks birb. For everything.

Wilder pov: The aftermath of the leaked images and the disastrous football match which saw Nico confessing to Wilder and his subsequent bitchy reaction. 

'I...I love you.'

The words caused a clashing inferno in my chest, blazing flames of hope and insurmountable sadness that they would perhaps never amount to anything. 

Out of habit, I reached for my phone and gazed despondently at the dark screen. My heart was burning to know how Nico was handling the scandal. But somewhere I knew he had always been braver than me. I just wished he didn't have to be so courageous all the time. That sometimes I could be what he needed. But lately, it always seemed to be the other way round. 

"Honey," my mom's voice spoke for the hundredth time as I curled into a ball on my bed. "You need to eat."

"I'm not hungry," I answered, hating the way my voice sounded. I didn't know how much of the scandal she was aware of. Had she seen the pictures as well? If she had, would she approach me? Would my dad know?

The thought sent a chill up my back. 

I felt the mattress dip slightly under her weight as she sat on the bed. I hid my face in the pillow, ashamed of the hot tears prickling my eyeballs again. She gently stroked my head and spoke in dulcet tones. "It's okay, honey. It's just one miss. You can salvage it."

She didn't say anything about the pictures and I wondered if it was a topic she was deliberately avoiding. I hated the way just a few pictures had torn my world apart. Had shattered the facade I had struggled so hard to maintain. I had never liked Matt, but this felt too low even for him. I didn't know if I would have preferred for him to blackmail me instead. At the very least, it would have given me time, to be honest with Kendra and come out myself before he forced me to in such a nightmarish fashion. 

"Wils," she spoke softly, leaning down and planting a kiss on the top of my head. "It can be fixed."

"How?" I sniffled, my voice muffled against the pillow before I finally managed to look at her, my cheeks burning with humiliation. I took a shuddering breath and decided to ask her straight away. "Did you see the pictures mom?"

She was quiet for a while and I assumed the worst. I was half afraid I was going to burn into ashes the longer that the silence stretched. 

"Whoever took them did a deplorable thing, Wilder."

I wanted to bawl like a baby in that instant. I moved closer to her and rested my head on her lap. "That was shitty of me mom. I ch-cheated on Kendra. I...I was unfair to Nico. I d-don't-I got so scared mom. And I- I was afraid and I'm such a coward."

"You're not a coward honey," she stroked my head gently as I let the tears fall pitifully. "No one should have their sexuality ousted in the way that you had. It's unfair and really inhuman."

"I cheated on Kendra," I muttered.

"You did," she admitted.

"I hurt Nico so bad." My heart ached and my lungs refused to breathe for a split second when the image of his anguished face flashed in the eye of my mind. His glistening tears, his quivering lip and his abnormally dark irises.

"You didn't mean to," she replied softly.

"I'm a piece of shit."

"Language, Wilder."