RIDE OR DIE ➸ OSCAR DIAZ [1]

ELIJAH AND CAMILLA

Hi guys! I just want to start off by saying, thank you so much for reading, voting and commenting on this story. The amount of views that it has is crazy, I never expected this story to blow up this much! I know I haven't updated the sequel in a while and I'm sorry for that, I've just had a rough time with writing lately.

Now getting into what I'm really here for. I try my best to read every single comment on this story. I know that sounds strange because there are quite a few comments, but I'm pretty sure I've read almost every single one at this point. And I've seen a lot of people hating on Camilla. I've wanted to address this a few times in the past, but I was never sure of what to say. After a lot of thinking, I have a few things that I would like to mention.

So let's start off with a concrete timeline of Elijah and Camilla's relationship because I don't think it was clear enough. Just as a reference before we start, both Elijah and Oscar are 2 years older than Camilla and they all went to the same high school. And I will be discussing some sensitive topics during this timeline so this is your trigger warning.
Read with caution.

➨ Elijah and Camilla started dating during Camilla's freshman year. It's mentioned at some point during the story that they started dating halfway through the school year, but for the sake of accuracy let's say they started dating around January-February. At this point, Camilla would be 14 and she would be turning 15 in a couple of months. Elijah would be 16, about to turn 17 and would be in his junior year. At this point, Elijah is very sweet to her and treats her like a princess.

➨ Going into Camilla's junior year is when things start to shift between them. At this point, Camilla is 16 and Elijah is 18. Elijah has already graduated from high school and is fully involved with the prophets gang. Becoming more involved with the gang was what caused Elijah's behaviour to change. And there are many things that he went through in his childhood/lifetime that caused him to snap. So far, some of these things have been mentioned in the sequel. There's only so much a person can handle mentally before they break down. And in no way am I trying to excuse his behaviour, I am simply providing information that will give you more insight into why he acted the way he did.

➥ Elijah is becoming more frustrated with his role in the gang and he has a lot of pent up anger. He ends up lashing out at Camilla on several occasions. At first, he didn't mean to do it on purpose. He was just angry and she was just there. But as time went on, he began to do it intentionally because he thought he had no other way of getting his anger out. What this doesn't mean is that he was angry and aggressive with her 24/7. He would get upset with her, they would fight and then he would ignore her the next day. The day after that, he would apologize, promise to never do it again and buy her a gift. That was his way of convincing her that it was just a bad day and that they were just going through a rough patch. He was very inconsistent in the way that he acted with her. One day he was happy and flirty and the next day he would be angry and aggressive.

➥ First physical abuse situation: until now, he's never hit her or anything. He would just throw/break things while they were fighting. As I'm sure you're all aware, the first situation occurred while she was staying overnight at his house. He was looking for his lighter and he thought that she hid it, even though she didn't. He lashed out and slapped her across the face. After this happened, he apologized a million times and held her while she cried. The next morning both of them pretended like nothing happened.

➥ Abuse becomes regular: as Camilla explained to Oscar in chapter 26, the situation escalated very quickly. The abuse became a regular thing between them. He would get mad over the smallest things and lash out at her and hit her. And at one point he even put her in the hospital. At this point, she began to realize that he wasn't good for her but she stayed anyway. I'll get into why exactly she stayed after the timeline. As I mentioned before, Elijah's developed a "post-fight" routine. They fight, he ignores her and then he buys her a gift and promises to change his ways. He basically did this every single day and was essentially manipulating her. Somewhere around this time, he cheated on her with another girl. He never admitted it to Camilla and she never had any hard evidence that he did cheat. But some of their mutual friends told her that he did cheat, and she believes them.