Then Came You (18 page)

“I don’t like peaches. If I was peachy, then I wouldn’t be happy,” I huff. He laughs at me.

“And that is why we’re friend,” he mumbles, flopping on the bed next to Remy, who is stretching her arms at the ceiling for no reason but because she’s crazy.

“Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever had this many people in my bed before: it’s getting a bit crowded for a double, don’t you think?” Tyler points out from his seat next to me as he wraps his arms around my shoulders and brings me closer to me so we can cuddle.

Dana shrugs and sits down on the other side of me and smirks at Tyler. “There: now it’s crowded.”

After half an hour of light banter, Joey finally brings up the reason for my ‘unscheduled camping trip’ as it was now being called. I gulped, looked down, and waited whilst Dana whispered to both him and Remy about my mum and dad. Remy gasps, runs over, and squeezes me in a tight hug. She looks at me with tears in her eyes.

“Oh, you poor baby!
Don’t worry
, Remy here will take care of you,” she says in that exuberant way of hers. Joey smiles at me over her pink hair and nods in his way of showing condolences.

Dana sighs, “at least you know she loved you.” She tells me at last, hugging me warmly. I stiffen –
she hated us –
and she feels it, pulling away to look at me as my eyes are wide and watery. “Darcy?”

“S-she didn’t love me,” I choke out painfully, my heart lodged in my through and squeezing in pain with each word. Dana frowns in confusion.

“Of course she did, Darcy. You-“

“She
didn’t
,” I insist, looking up at her brokenly. “She
killed herself,
Dana. She didn’t want me.” My knees buckle underneath me and I fall to the carpet in a teary mess. Tyler picks me up into his arms and sits on the bed with me in his lap, bawling into his shirt-clad chest. He murmurs sweet nothings into my hair and stroked my back comfortingly.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” he whispers hoarsely when I raise my head to look at him. His golden eyes meet mine and my twisted stomach begins to melt.

I shrug, and turn to all of them. “It’s okay, really: you didn’t know. I’m fine now.”

“Yeah, but
are
you?” Joey asks me pointedly. I blush.

“I’m getting there.”

Remy huffs and stands up tall, putting her hands on her hips and spreading her legs in a superhero stance. “Well, you don’t have to go through it on your own – we’ll help you every step of the way.
Right, guys.”

They nod and agree. “After all,” Dana smiles sadly. “
you’ve
helped me so much since my gran died, and I know you’ll always be there for me.”

“I love you guys,” I sigh, hugging each one of them in turn.

Joey smiles and pats my head lovingly. “And we love you. Now cheer up, we have ice cream, movies and I’m sure Mr Loverboy and your sidekicks will agree when I say that if you cry even once more today, I
will
tickle the sadness out of you.”

“And I won’t try to stop you,” I tease him.

We skip downstairs for said movies and snacks, when Tyler pulls me back to press a kiss to my head. “You will tell me if there’s anything else bothering you, right?” He asks me. “I don’t want you suffering alone ever again, understand?”

I nod and smile up at him. “Of course: if there’s ever anything else wrong, I’ll make sure to tell someone.” He grins, kisses my lips this time, and takes my hand to lead me down the stairs. I’m just relieved he didn’t notice my lie.

Because I
can’t
tell them the other thing, right?

Chapter 26

That night, I dreamt about the past, a place I’d promised myself I would never return to again. I just couldn’t bear the pain anymore; it was too much. But tonight, it was back again, and my mind was more determined than ever to return me to those days, and more specifically, the night that changed everything.

Memories…

It started, as per usual, at high school, only this time mum was still alive, our family was a happy one and I wasn’t the broken girl I became; I was popular, people would beg to be
my
friend, and I had an almost-boyfriend.

Jason was new at our school that year, and he’d already become one of the most feared at the school. He was already known for his reputation as a bad boy, with rumours spreading that he’d been expelled from his last school for crimes such as drugs, hitting a teacher and even murdering a student.

I didn’t believe any of it – sure, he was rude and arrogant, and maybe he did get expelled, but he wouldn’t be allowed at a new school for something like that, right? Despite the fact that all of my friends and the rest of the school feared him, I was still curious to know more – I was still eager to talk to him and find out the truth.

Callie, one of my so-called ‘friends’ at the time had told me it was dangerous when she’d caught me staring at him. She, like everybody else, believed that he was bad news. And he was: I was just too stubborn to believe it at the time.

“He’ll only hurt you,” she’d warned me as she applied another coat of lip gloss in the mirror she’d hung on her locker. “You should just stay away from him.”

I was watching her smother her lips with the sticky stuff with a grimace on my face, before I shrugged and leant against the locker next to hers. “Maybe he won’t, nobody knows for sure what he’s done.”

“Trust me,” she said firmly, slamming her locker shut with a bang. “He’ll hurt you.” And she’d just walked off without a backwards glance, latching onto one of the jocks arms and flirting as they walked to Maths.

I never did listen to her, and the first thought I had when I looked back was,
what if..?
What if I had listened to what Callie had said about Jason? Would I still be broken? What if I could rewind the clocks and fix it so that I
did
listen to her when she said he’d hurt me. Maybe then, things would be different.

When I first spoke to Jason, it was raw and it was real. Ironically, it was straight after my talk with Callie. I was walking randomly around the school, as a result of a free period, when I heard somebody playing the piano in the auditorium. Like any curious person would, I followed the sound, only to find the schools biggest bad boy perched on the chair and running his fingers along the keys.

“I know you’re watching me,” he’d said without even turning around. Jumping, I’d looked around, hoping he was talking to somebody else, only to look back at him and meet his eyes as he stared right back at me.
“Darcy, right?”
He chuckled darkly when I nodded. “Little Miss Popular: golden girl of the school. Are you ditching too?”

I shook my head this time. “Free period,” I had stumbled over my words, a sudden spark of fear/adrenalin running through me. But like everything else, I shut it away and stepped forward, closer to the Big Bad Wolf. “What are you doing in here?”

He shrugged, “I’m avoiding school as much as possible whilst being in school –
it’s
law to
go
to school, but not to go to class.” The way he had said it made so much sense, which was freaky, because he was justifying breaking the rules. Not once did I thing that he could do this with any rule he wanted to break.

“That makes sense,” was all I had said. I’d walked over and sat next to him, my fingers stroking the few keys in front of me with feather-like strokes.

“Do you play?” He’d asked me.

“Horribly,” I’d replied. And with that, we’d started a strange banter about anything and everything. The topic changed every few seconds and not once did the conversation wear thin. Eventually, the bell had rung, and I knew that I’d have to leave for class.

“Well, bye,” I’d mumbled, grabbing my bag and leaving the room. He didn’t say anything back.

After that night, we bumped each other a lot, and we would stop and have another meaningless conversation before carrying on with our lives. It was never deep or personal, always casual and fun. We once had a five minute talk about the weather, I kid you not.

One day, he turned around and asked if I wanted to hang out for a bit and get something to eat. I’d nodded happily and we’d gone to the diner around the corner and sat in a booth in the corner. We’d been casual friends for a while, even though it sometimes bordered along something else. He’d held my hand absentmindedly, stroking it with his thumb as we’d ordered our food.

And as usual, we talk about meaningless nonsense – films, colours and even about our waitress’s, who kept glaring at us every time we burst out laughing. That was the night that he kissed me for real, and that was also the night that everything changed…

Jason dropped me off at the end of my road with a grin, kissing me once again before I hopped out and watched him drive away. My thoughts were clouded with images of the night and the feel of his lips on mine as I walked up to my house, but the fog was soon cleared the moment I saw the police car parked outside the house.

My heart stopped. I gulped, running up to the house and ripping open the front door, worry flooding over me as I ran into the livingroom. Sat on the couch was my dad; his face was pale and there were tears running down his face. The moment he saw me he winced and put his head in his hands, sobs wracking his whole body. I felt like I was going to be sick.

The police man was standing awkwardly in the corner, his radio speaking to him as he watched us. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says flatly, a hint of sorrow in his eyes as he walked out the room, seemingly unbothered that he’d just ruined a family.

“D-dad?”
I whisper hoarsely, my throat choking up as I step forward. I’m hesitant to go over and sit down.
Where’s mum?
I don’t ask it – I’m too scared if what his answer is going to be.

I stand there and watch as he falls apart, barely looking up from his hands. He doesn’t tell me a thing, and eventually I walk back and sit on the chair at the other corner of the room, waiting numbly until he’s calmed down. If mum were here, she’d know what to do.

“What’s happened, daddy?” The childish name slipped out as my fear took over me; I’d never before seen my dad cry. There’s something horribly wrong about seeing your parents, someone who looked after you, you’re role model, cry in front of you.

He looked up and shook his head slowly. “She’s dead, Darcy. She’d dead.”

My heart collapsed, my eyes widening with horror.
“No…”
I gasp, tears starting to pool out of the corners of my eyes. That was the first time my heart broke.

Three days later and I was still mourning her like crazy; I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep and my grades had plummeted. My friends had begun to drop off one by one, until it was only Callie left. She was my friend since we were little, and she told me she knew what I was going through because once, her mum went away on holiday and because of the weather, she couldn’t return for a whole month.

After the funeral, my heart was broken for
good,
with only the way that Jason held my hand and kissed my hair giving me hope that happiness could still exist.

And then even he got fed up. It was two days after the funeral, at a party I did not want to be at,
at all,
and yet Callie had managed to drag me to, in her way of ‘cheering me up.’ It was like any other party: sweaty, loud and filled with drunken and hormonal teens. Only this was the party that would change my life.

I hadn’t know that Jason would turn up, and yet there he was, knocking back shots and making me dance way too close to him as he sucked sloppily on my neck. Feeling uncomfortable, I pulled away.

“Don’t, I’m not in the mood,” I told him with a frown, turning to leave the room. A hand on my arm gripped tight, and I felt hot, toxic breathing down my neck as he spoke.

“Darcy… we’ve been together now long enough for me to get my reward. Don’t you think I’ve been patient enough for you?” He hissed darkly, pulling me out of the room and towards the stairs in the back hallway.

I gaped at him in surprise. “What the
hell
are you talking about? I’m not about to-“

“Don’t argue with me,” he scoffed, and without effort he picked me up, covered my mouth, and carried me up the stairs. He pushed me roughly into one of the rooms, and I feel on top of something soft – a bed. I whimpered.

“You won’t get away with this,” I tried warning him, gulping hard when he closes the door and locks it, leaving us in the dark. His low chuckle echoes in the room as he edges towards me threateningly.

“Oh, Darcy,” he sighs. “I already have.”

He pushes me down, and begins to kiss me roughly. I start to shriek and cry, begging him to stop, but by then, he’d already ripped my clothes away.
“No! Please don’t!”

That was the second time my heart broke… and my life was shattered along with it.

Chapter 27

After Jason raped me, I lost any trust I had in the world. I pushed everybody away and I built an unbreakable wall around me. I was a loner, I was haunted and I was a wreck. But I was numb, and that was all that I could hope for.