The Pain Of The Past || A TMF FanFic

Chapter 5: The Beginning of Finding Closure

An hour had now passed. After letting out all of my bottled up emotions from over the years, I was finally able to find myself in a calm state of mind.

Luke and I sat together on the grass as he cuddled me gently in his warm embrace, his right arm slung over both my shoulders as I rested my head on top of his right shoulder.

My face was stained with damp tear marks as I sniffled every now again due to my heavy sobs from earlier. But despite that, I felt still relaxed, as I silently enjoyed the moment of peace my boyfriend and I were sharing.

"It's been a while since you've said anything.." Luke suddenly spoke as he turned his head to look at me with a soft smile. "How are you feeling?"

I hummed to myself as I kept my eyes fixed on the grass below our feet. "A lot better than before.." I replied in a soft tone. Luke's smile grew wider. "It was nice to talk about all this with someone after all this time.."

Luke's smile immediately dropped as he gave me a concerned look. "Zander, why have you been doing this to yourself..?" He asked. "Suffering in silence like this. You know you can come to me and the others about anything no matter what.. We would have been there for you.."

"It's not that I really wanted to.." I said in a low tone. "I was just scared to tell you or anyone else.. I just couldn't bring myself to say anything since..I thought it would have been best to just handle it on my own.. I didn't want to have you guys or my mom worrying about me because of this.. Especially since..I've always just felt like I shouldn't feel the way that I do about it.. Like it's selfish for me to still feel this way despite how many people there are in my life that still love and care about me.." My head slowly lowered as I could feel myself beginning to tear up all over again. "I just really hate the fact that I'm like this.. That I'm just..too weak to.."

I couldn't even finish my sentence as fresh tears began to stream down my face. "I'm sorry.." I choked shutting both my eyes tightly. "I'm so sorry for not telling you and the others anything about this until now.. I promised myself that I wasn't going to push you away anymore after we got together, but I still ended up making the same mistake..."

"Sweetie, Sweetie.." Luke comforted me as he gently placed a hand on my left cheek, slowly wiping away some of my fallen tears with his thumb. "Please, don't cry. It's ok.." He slowly turned my head towards him to face him as he continued, "You have nothing to be sorry for.."

"But I never meant to hurt you and the others.." I sniffled titling my head into his palm as more tears began to roll down my cheeks.

"You haven't hurt me or the others at all.." He said. "We just wanted to know what was wrong so we could help you. You've been going through so much on your own for so long and you're honestly so strong for pushing through all these overwhelming emotions by yourself after all this time."

Luke then slowly removed his right arm from around my shoulders as he gently placed his right hand on top of my left, that remained balled up on my lap along with the other. "I completely understand why you felt like you had to keep all this to yourself," He continued. "But if you really want to start moving forward with your life from it all, then you can't just keep everything bottled up forever."

I turned my head away from him as another tear rolled down my cheek, his hand slowly lowering from my face as I did so. Luke's comforting words helped me a lot in that moment in order to regain my composure, but the guilt I felt still continued to grow with every second that went by..

"But, how do I even go about moving forward..?" I questioned in a soft tone as my gaze fell down onto the grass.

A small smile crept up on Luke's face as he gently grabbed my cheek again and turned my head towards him to face him. "Like I said," He replied in a caring tone. "You're not alone in this.. You can talk to us, and we'll make sure we do everything we can to help you through this..!"