He Broke Me For The Girl Who Bullied Me Chapter 08
When I got back to my parents’ place, neither of them asked a thing.
They just let me lie in my old bedroom.
Meals appeared at the table. Fruit, already washed and cut, appeared on my nightstand.
Sometimes, at night, when I got up for water, I’d hear small sounds through their bedroom door.
Like they were crying, quietly.
They’d done the same thing when I was pulled out of school as a teenager. They’d waited until night to fall apart where I couldn’t see them.
They weren’t blaming me.
They were blaming themselves — for not noticing sooner. For letting me be hurt.
Or for not being wealthy enough, connected enough — for not being rich or connected enough to protect me from people who could hurt me and walk away untouched.
I lay on my back and stared up at the freshly painted white ceiling.
Even now, my mother still kept every knife in the house locked away. There wasn’t a mirror in my bedroom. The windows had safety locks that only opened a crack.
None of it could keep out the sun.
The light poured in, bright, insistent, until my eyes watered.
That was the last time I would cry for the past.
Once I was rested enough, I started job-hunting.
I got hired at a smaller firm not far from the house. The online frenzy had died down. My life edged back toward normal.
I’d finish work, come home, or go out for dinner with a new friend or two.
It felt gentle. Almost pleasant.
Then, for no apparent reason, difficult clients started agreeing to my proposals.
On a day I’d forgotten my umbrella, a stranger handed me one on the sidewalk and walked off, asking for nothing in return.
That was when I realized Ethan was back.
Somewhere just out of sight.
One afternoon I got off early. Halfway up the block to my parents’ bungalow, I heard my mother’s voice — sharp, raised.
“You go. Take your stuff and go!”
“We don’t need any of it. We were wrong about you. We thought you were a decent young man. That’s why we let our daughter be with you.”
“Mrs. Sinclair, I —”
“I don’t want to hear it!”
My mother’s voice broke into a sob.
“I’m begging you, okay? Don’t let her see you. Don’t stir any of this up again. Please.”
“You have no idea what those years were like for us.”
“Every knife in this house is still locked up. I’m the only one with the key.”
“And even that wasn’t enough. Her father and I couldn’t close our eyes at night. I’d sleep in her room to be beside her — and he’d drag a pillow and a blanket out into the hallway and sleep on the floor outside her door. For months.”
“We were terrified we’d wake up and she’d be gone.”
“She fought her way back. She got into a good college. But after everything — everything — why can’t you people just leave her alone?”
“Ethan. Money or no money, Audrey is the light of our lives. How could you treat her like this? Do you have any idea what it does to a parent to watch their child go through what she went through?”
Time seemed to stop.
I heard my own breathing. And my mother’s last, ragged sentence.
“If I could, I’d kill you. Every single one of you.”
“I’m sorry.”
Ethan was crying too.
He stumbled down the porch steps. Looked up. Our eyes met.