Chapter Thirty One: Truly Hurtful Words
River Jenkins

I wake up the next day by the sounds of footsteps coming up the wooden staircase. The footsteps were fast and loud as they ascended the staircase, telling me that the person was maybe angry, or they were in a hurry to get upstairs.

I open my eyes when I didn't feel Duke lying beside me on the bed.

I frown, looking at my surroundings.

This wasn't my room.

Beige coloured walls with the paint chipping around the edges, there was a wooden desk in the corner of the room alongside a wooden dresser, the butterfly cage Sophia worked on just last week resting on top of the wooden desk and there were photographs on the walls of Sophia and her grandmother, and a photograph of Daniel resting on the nightstand beside me.

This was Sophia's room.

My frown only deepens.

How the hell did I manage to end up here?

My room was messy compared to hers. There weren't any worn shirts laying around, or even pairs of shoes lying all over just waiting to be put together with the right pairs... Her room was clean and organised, and it smelled like roses, or was that the daisies I smelled coming from inside the butterfly's cage?

I don't even remember how I got here in the first place. The only thing I remember was Myles trying to get me out of drinking in his bar yesterday.

I didn't want Sophia to ask me what was wrong when she would see me at school, so I skipped and went to Myles' bar instead while at the same time trying to avoid my aunt and my uncle as they tried to talk to me. I didn't have contact with anyone but Myles at all yesterday, not even Sophia after I went home to the bad news that awaited, so how the hell did I end up in her room?

The door to Sophia's room finally opens and Sophia enters with a silver metal tray in her hands. On the tray there was a cup of steaming hot coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon and two brown pieces of toast resting on the plate.

"Morning." She smiles when she notices that I was awake, wondering how the hell I got here in the first place.

I wince when her voice sounds too loud echoing throughout the entire room, the sound pierces through my ears, causing the headache I woke up with to worsen.

"What happened?" I ask, groaning. I then swallow to get rid of my dry throat. "I don't remember ending up here yesterday."

"You drank a shitload of alcohol at Myles yesterday," she explains, walking over to the bed so she could place the plate of breakfast onto the nightstand, "you have a hangover right now. A bad one too by the looks of it." Sophia then sighs. "Myles sent me a message yesterday. He asked me to pick you up from his bar because you didn't want to leave. You eventually passed out in his truck and we brought you here so your aunt won't know where you were."

"I slept here?" I ask. "In your bed?"

She throws her hands up in surrender rather quickly. "Don't worry," she then points to a thick blanket and a few pillows lying on the floor beside the bed, "I slept on the floor."

"You slept on the floor?"

"Yes." She answers. "My grandmother doesn't know you're here, or that you slept here last night." She explains. "I also told her that I wasn't feeling too well today, so she let me stay home so that I... you know... can take care of you."

I take a sip of the coffee just to get rid of the dryness in my throat. "I'm sorry." I sigh, wiping my face with my hand. I set the cup of coffee down onto the tray resting on the nightstand. "I didn't realise what you had to do to keep me being here a secret..."

"It's fine. It's not the first time I let a boy sleep in my room-" She stops mid-sentence and clears her throat awkwardly. "You know what I mean..."

"Daniel, right?"

She nods.

"Well, thank you." I tell her, sitting up in the bed with my back against the headboard.

"No worries."

An uncomfortable silence washes over us.

She clears her throat again.

I clear my throat.

And then she sighs.

"What's up?" I ask her.

She bites the bottom of her lip, contemplating. "There were things said yesterday... Things I don't think you were supposed to say..." She says, walking over to the foot of the bed before she sits down onto it.

"Was I being an ass to you? Because if I was, I apologize. I clearly wasn't in my right mind because I couldn't even remember that you were at the bar."

"No," she shakes her head, "you weren't being rude."

I frown.

Sophia looked uncomfortable to say the least. She had her hands folded and resting in her lap. She then starts to chew on her fingernail, nervously. "You... you, uh... you mentioned your family and how they didn't deserve to die the way that they did... You also kind of wanted to die of alcohol poisoning too..."

"Did I tell you what happened to them?"

She shakes her head, her hair falling to her face when she did. She swallows hard and tucks her hair behind her ear. "No. You didn't mention anything else."

"Oh..."

"You were really upset yesterday, River." She says. "Myles told me that he has seen you at your worst before, but he has never seen you that bad before. And he called me because apparently we share the same something. Pain, and guilt."

"I don't know what else you heard about my family, but don't believe the things I say when I'm drunk, Sophia. I say stupid things when I'm drunk." I tell her, looking at her. "So whatever you might've heard about my family, it's not true."

"But I didn't." She says. "I didn't hear anything else."

Her gaze quickly darts from me and to her hands now in her lap.

"You're lying, aren't you?" I ask her, seeing her picking at a cuticle instead of looking at me.

She releases a deep breath before exhaling it again. "In the truck..." She inhales deeply and licks her lip. "When Myles drove us home... you mentioned something about your dad being a murderer and that he... that he killed them."

The pounding in my ears got louder and adrenaline started to rush through my body. Anger. I chuckle humourlessly. "They weren't murdered." I talk loudly, hoping that the words would be processed by her. "Those are just rumours." I clench my hands tightly together, seeing my knuckles turning white. "And you know better than to listen to rumours."

I get up from the bed and started to pace around her room, something I always did when I was angry, or in this case, frustrated that she knew what happened. I stop in my tracks, seeing fresh tears running down Sophia's cheeks when I turn to look at her. "I was drunk." I tell her. "What I said in the truck wasn't true."

She gets up from the bed, sniffles, and then grabs a hold of my hand. "River, you can't lie to me." She slowly shakes her head. "I saw the burns on your stomach. I saw the scars there. You were abu-"

I rip my hands out from hers, seeing hurt flash across her face. She sits down onto the bed again and wipes the tears with the palms of her hands. "Please don't be like this, River... I want to be here for you like you were there for me." She says her voice wobbly and so soft I barely heard her.

I snap. "I was only there for you because I pitied you!" I yell, loudly. "Not because we were friends. I pitied you, Sophia! That's the only reason!" She flinches at my tone and looks down at her hands resting in her lap.

She opens her mouth to say something but she decides against it because her mouth just closes again.

I run my fingers through my hair, releasing a sharp breath. "Thank you for the breakfast but I think I need to leave." I shut my eyes tightly after I left her room.

I was being an asshole to her again, only because I wanted to keep them out of anyone's mouths. If she tells anyone about what happened to my family... I'd be pitied, and I don't need anyone's pity.

I don't need anyone to look at me with sad eyes when I walk past them in the hallways.

It was a secret I vowed to keep, but now she knows.

She sees right through me, just like how I see right through her.

I proceed down the stairs, wanting to leave this house as fast as I can but Sophia has me stopping dead in my tracks when her soft voice comes up from behind me. "You can't hide from the truth, River. It doesn't matter how hard you try... you just can't run or hide from the truth..." She says.

I turn around to look at her.

She rested her hand on the railing of the stairs, looking down at me with tear-stained cheeks. "What happened to your family... it wasn't your fault. I know you blame yourself, too. You admitted it two days ago. You feel guilty."

"You don't know anything, Sophia." I tell her. "So I suggest you keep quiet about what you know before there's going to be another rumour going around school and I don't want that to happen."

"I know how it feels to blame yourself, River..." She continues. "You feel as if though you cannot walk this road alone because everyone would judge you if you tell anyone what happened... but you need someone to carry the weight with you or this is going to drag you down." She steps down the last of the stairs and walks over to me without touching me. "It will lessen the pain if you let this go. Talk to someone."

"I don't need to talk to anyone." I say, releasing a deep breath, feeling tears pricking my eyes, but I refuse to cry in front of her. "This is my secret to bear, not anyone else's. So please just stop bringing it up and talking about it."

"I can't just let it go. You're hurting deep inside and I need to help you before this is going to bring you down-"

"I said no, Sophia!"

This time she doesn't flinch at my tone, but she does start crying again. The fresh tears run down her cheeks before it fell to the floor, the little teardrops were splattering against the hardwood floors as they fell.

Seeing her cry again made me feel like an asshole, but she's prying and I cannot let her pry. She knows too much. One slip and everyone knows about what happened and I can't have that, so I said something I deeply regret even before it left my mouth.

"I don't want to talk about my family with a murderer."

Fuck.

Why the hell did you have to say that, River?

She looks at me, my words clearly having an effect on her because she looked taken aback, but mostly shocked. She shakes her head repeatedly, as if she couldn't quite comprehend that something so harsh could come from my mouth. "I-" She swallows hard, trying to contain her tears. "I know you don't mean that. You're hurt and you didn't mean that..."

I didn't mean it, but yet I still nod. I lift my shoulders in a shrug. "Maybe I did mean it." I tell her, seeing her walls closing in again around her.

She trusted me with her secret and I used it against her-it's something you should never do, it doesn't matter how angry you are with the other person.

I'm worse than her damn mother.

"Maybe that's what everyone thinks about you when they find out what happened... You're a murderer... looked away from the road to kiss him." Her chest hitches and her shoulders droop. "It's your fault he died, Sophia."

A choked sob escapes her lips and I could kick myself for mentioning it in the first place when Daniel has absolutely nothing to do with this conversation. "Yes." She managed to say through her choked sobs. "It was my fault that I looked away from the road but at least I don't run from the truth like you do." She turns on her heels and I look at her retreating back feeling like the biggest asshole in the history of assholes.

She smacks her bedroom door closed, so hard that the floors vibrated underneath my feet.

My feet had a mind of its own and the next thing I know, I'm in front of her bedroom door, sinking down to the floor against the door.

I listened to her cries echoing through the door.

I did that.

I hurt her like that when she just wanted to help me.

I'm a fucking asshole. What the fuck was I thinking?

I clutch my stomach. It felt like I wanted to throw up. I lift my knees up to my chest and throw my arms around my legs. "I wasn't there that day when my father killed them." I say, looking at the wall across from me. I hope she can hear me so she can try to understand why my situation is bringing me down.

It hurts, like hell, when someone mentions it.

It brings me down. It makes me angry.

Sophia was right: not talking about it was bringing me down, but talking about it isn't going to bring them back because they're gone, forever. They're dead.

"He said that he was going to hurt them too but I was young and stupid... I didn't think that he would actually hurt them because they had no clue that I was being abused by him for all my childhood." My eyes started to water. "I kept it from them. My own father abused me for years and years without ending. He pushed me, he grabbed me and threw me against the wall. He would hit me if I did my homework instead of the shitload of chores he'd given me..."

I pause, taking in a deep breath as those years' memories fill my mind.

"Are you talking back, boy?"

"Wash my car."

"You're an abomination. You don't even respect your own father."

I bawl my hands into fists, focusing on how white my knuckles were turning instead of the memories; the same memories that haunt me every single damn day of my life. "I only found out about it when Beck showed the signs... like the notebook I always draw in. He wrote a poem about the abuse... how it started with my mom and then with him." I swallow hard when I felt the tightness in my throat. "At first I thought Beck was being bullied at school because my dad wouldn't hurt them when I was his personal punching bag, you know? But I was so very wrong. My dad was the bully the entire time... and Beck wanted to protect my mom by telling my father to hit him instead of her."

I notice that her sniffling has stopped and I took that as a cue to continue. "He did stop, but my dad continued to hurt my mom without Beck knowing." My lungs were constricting, it felt as if though I couldn't breathe. "It's a line of endless secrecy. I didn't know he hurt them, they didn't know he hurt me, Beck didn't know that my dad still hit my mom after he pleaded for him to stop."

I wipe a tear that escaped my eye and looked at the ground. "It was getting worse... the abuse turned into something much more sinister than just abusing them. My father got so angry that he just snapped one day... He killed them. I don't even know where I was that day but I just thought 'Fuck it, I'm going to leave the house for a day' but when I went back home... He killed them. There were ambulances and police cars all over my house, and two body bags being lifted into the ambulance. My dad was arrested and I knew that he killed them."

The door opens behind me and Sophia steps over me before she plops herself down in front of me. She takes my hand in hers and gives it a squeeze.

"And," my limbs were trembling by now, I couldn't sit still, "I wasn't even there." I let out a whimper. "My entire life crumbled to the ground in a matter of seconds." I was talking as if Sophia wasn't sitting in front of me. I was looking right through her as the scene from that day replay itself in my head. "I remember falling to the ground after seeing the two body bags; my knees hurt from falling to the floor into some sort of kneeling position, and I cried. No, I sobbed. I sobbed and I sobbed, but when I was done sobbing... The anger took over. I didn't have anyone to comfort me that day, but I was glad they didn't. I don't know if I could have contained my anger enough to be comforted."

I shake my head, clenching my jaw. "My mom and Beck were murdered and my dad's still rotting in jail somewhere... and now..." I inhale deeply, finally looking at her for the first time since she sat down in front of me, "and now he wants to see me. He wants to make amends. He's a changed man, apparently."

They say when someone holds your hand, it helps to keep the walls up and helps you to stay strong, but my wall crumbled all around me; around us. Her hand didn't feel comforting in mine because I didn't feel anything but the pain of reliving that day again by telling her what happened.

My walls were completely shattered. My heart was ripped out of my chest.

All the pieces of my walls I tried to keep up around her were now lying in front of the two of us and I don't think that it can ever be picked up ever again.