Loving a Bully

Remember You 2

The documents Alec had handed to Christopher were all read, understood and approved.

There were problems with some of his tenants but that could be easily managed. Christopher was certain that Alec had already started taking care of them, he only needed Christopher’s approval and signature to make everything official.

Having completed his duties, Christopher swiveled his chair to the side and stood up to leave the study. He glanced at his watch as he made his way down the hall. Half past nine. No wonder he was starving. Her bedroom was just at the end of the hall. He hesitated for a brief moment before turning the knob and slipping inside.

For a moment, he couldn’t see anything. It was too dark. As his eyes adjusted, he looked at the bed. At the woman lying on it. Tiny. Fragile. His heart clenched.

April.

She was resting on her right side, facing him, just like the way she had always napped in the forest. During that short time that they were together. He moved to the bed, turning the lamp on. Her food on the table was untouched. He frowned then turned to look at her.

Her skin was still splotched with angry, purple contusions that made him release an angry sigh. Sitting on the edge of the bed, careful not to shake her, and he lifted a hand, trailing his thumb along her bruised cheek.

“April,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not finding you sooner.”

She didn’t respond. He leaned forward to press a kiss on the side of her head. She was quiet, so quiet that he had to check twice if she was still breathing.

Damn it.

Her father was f*****g dead when he sees him.

April started to shiver and Christopher pulled the sheets up to cover her shoulders. A tear rolled off her eye. He wanted to touch her again, comfort her but stopped himself. He might wake her. And scare her. And he didn’t want to scare her.

Christopher remembered a time she wasn’t scared of him.

A time she didn’t seem to be scared of anything.

April turned in her sleep and Christopher saw it then. The small scar just a few centimeters from her hairline.

His chest tightened.

He hadn’t seen it in years. She had grown a fringe when she entered middle school and it covered the scar but he had thought she would have done some procedure to remove it. She didn’t.

Why didn’t she? he thought in confusion. When he was the one who gave it to her 14 years ago?

**********

After he met the strange unbelievably chatty girl with strawberry blonde hair and curious gray eyes, it took a week before he could go back to the woods. He wasn’t keen on meeting that April girl again so he stayed away. Pushy, annoying, noisy and tall, he didn’t like her. And didn’t like how she invaded his part of the woods and broke his peace.

But he couldn’t no longer stay away. The forest was his reprieve from the world. His grandparents were planning to take him to another psychiatrist in the afternoon and he was done being poke and prodded and asked stupid questions.

Of course his parents were dead. He knew that.

Yes, he’d seen them die. And seen them die over and over again almost every night in his dreams.

And no, he wasn’t going to be normal again. How could he when he couldn’t even get a word out of his mouth?

He hiccupped and he realized that he was crying. Shuddering sobs that reverberated throughout his body. In a burst of anger and frustration, he picked up a rock from the ground and hurled it through the bushes with all his might.

“Ouch!”

Startled at the sound, he blinked. The bushes shook and someone stumbled out, holding their head. Not just any person. April.

“Did you just throw a rock at me?” she asked in total bewilderment.

He didn’t answer and just stared at her.

Why was she here again?

“Are you crying?” she asked him after a long minute. Her eyes narrowed on him. “You are.”

Quickly, he wiped the tears from his face. Boys don’t cry, his grandfather had always told him.

“Why are you crying?” She let her hand fall from her head and stepped towards him. “Are you hurt?”

A thin trickle of blood suddenly ran down the side of her cheek. Upon seeing that, Christopher’s stomach lurched and he bent over with a groan, vomit rolling up his throat as he tried to swallow it down.

His pulse boiled and his face drained cleaned away as memories surfaced in his brain.

Engine roaring. Rubber skidding over gravel. Bright deafening lights. Headlights too close to them.

Swerving. Spinning. Tumbling.

His father’s alarm. His mother’s scream. His fear.

A sickening crunch of metal. Pain. Lights that faded. A car speeding away. Silence. Then blood.

Lots of blood.

April’s hand went to the back of his neck, cupping it.

“Are you alright?”

Someone had hit the car that they were in. They were on their way home after having dinner to celebrate his mother’s birthday. The roads were dark and deserted. It was always the case since they lived on the edge of the city, near the forest that bordered the neighborhood.

Then a vehicle appeared out of nowhere, hitting them broadside.

The car tumbled a couple of times before it stopped, flipped over.

And Christopher, upside down and still strapped in place in his car seat by his seatbelt, wailed and cried as he watched his parents’ upside down and contorted bodies bleed out.

No one found them until hours later.

No one came until hours later when they were already dead.

“Breathe,” Christopher heard her speak to him.

He took in a breath not because she told him but because he needed it. But if felt shallow. His chest felt empty like he couldn’t ever fill it with enough air to breathe anymore.

“Just deep breathe, Christopher.”

He opened his eyes. Crouched in front of him, April stared at him with concern in her eyes, keeping her hand at his neck.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

He pushed her hand off and shoved his head between his knees. Trying to calm down. Hoping she’d go away.

“Is it... is it the blood?”

She didn’t wait for the answer that he couldn’t give. Her hand left him and the next thing he heard was the sound of fabric ripping

“I got it off,” he heard her say. “I got it all off, Christopher. There’s no more blood. Look.”

Lifting his head, he opened his eyes again and looked at her. The blood was gone from her face. And a part of the hem of her dress had been ripped off, making the skirt visibly shorter.

Did she wipe the blood off with it? he thought, blinking the rest of the tears away.

She grinned at him. “It’s just a small cut,” she told him. “Head wounds are like that. They bleed a lot but they’re really not serious.”

And how did she know that?

“I was really surprised when that stone came out of nowhere,” her grin disappeared and her face became thoughtful. “Why were you crying?”

Her hand immediately came down on his shoulder to stop him from running away again. She had easily read his intentions this time.

“Is it about your parents?”

Christopher felt the flash of anger at her for appearing in front of him again. He bit his lip, something he knew he did to control it. It could get ugly and violent and it came out twice.

The first was when his third psychiatrist made him tell him what happened in the car for the fourth time. Christopher had nearly blinded him with a pencil if his grandmother hadn’t caught his hand in time.

The second was when his grandfather was trying to force him to go to school. Christopher had pushed him off the stairs in blind rage. Luckily, his grandfather had great reflexes and managed to get a hold of the railings.

Oblivious to the warring emotions inside of Christopher, April told him in a matter-of-fact voice, “I don’t have a mother too, you know.”

He didn’t why but that information made some of the tension left his shoulders.

“She died. Two years ago. So I know how you feel.” She looked away and shrugged. “Well, some of it anyway.”

His anger dissolved.

“So,” she went on, placing an elbow on her knee and putting her chin on the palm of her hand, “since you hit me with that rock, you owe me. I know you didn’t mean it but please. Will you take me to the meadow with the yellow flowers?”

Christopher couldn’t believe how manipulative she was. He just broke down in front of her but she acted like it didn’t happen. She wasn’t giving him mercy.

Was the Lockes really as heartless as his grandparents always say?

He stood up.

She looked at him expectantly.

He began to walk north of them and she followed with a little squeal that almost made him bad except for the fact that she was worse than him. It took them five minutes to get there. And when they did, April looked quite confused.

“Isn’t this my house?” she gestured to the fence wall in bewilderment. “Again?”

He stared at her for a second.

Then he started running back to the woods.

“Hey!” she shouted, enraged. “Christopher! Come back here!”

He didn’t go back. He didn’t look back either.

Sprinting past the trees and ignoring her angry shouts, he made his way home.

But this time, he had a smile on his face.

*********

Christopher rose from the bed, leaving April’s side, but he didn’t leave her room. Rather, he placed himself on the chair near the curtained windows.

And he watched her sleep.

All night.

Vowing to protect her.