Broken Together

19- Everything you are

Song of the chapter:
Hold my girl - George Ezra

It stays with me, not the promises to stay away, the kind eyes. Those few words that no one said to me when it really mattered.
I believe you.
That's why 4 days later Gareth is opposite us on a bench in the park and Parker is looking ready to be locked away for a long time the second Gareth makes a wrong move.

"Explain" Parker snaps from the side of me.

"Parker" I sigh "please"

"No!" he glares at Gareth again "if he decides to now say he believes you he can explain why he sat there doing fuck all when you had no one. He can explain why he didn't help you at all or even let you know you were alone. Start fucking explaining officer"

"It's complicated son" Gareth starts eating a scoff from Parker "it's not as simple as you'd think, and part of me always wanted to ignore it and pretend to myself that Andrew wasn't capable of anything that cruel"

"You had suspicions but stood by and did nothing?" I ask quietly and he sighs

"I am so sorry, I should've looked and seen how bad it was. I have no excuses for that" I clutch Parker's hand under the table and he squeezes back. We're here, even if it all goes wrong we're here for each other.

"When I came into the station?" I ask not really wanting to know, that was one of the lowest points of my life. I walked in and out with nothing, no one believes me.

"The first time" he cringes "I didn't believe you, Andrew wasn't an idiot. He'd been saying small things about you and the way you'd been after Gracie's death..." I almost cry at the mention of my mothers name, it was never mentioned at home. She was just my mother, it seemed like all the rest of her life was wiped away apart from that last moment.
"So when you came in, it was easy to look at things through the lense he'd made for us and believe him over you"

"What sort of things would be say?" I managed to ask, I want to know. I want to know how he convinced people he was a good person and I was a liar.

"It was all small things that just stayed in the back of our heads, stuff like how you'd do anything to make him mad or lash out at him, how you were constantly trying to blame him for her death, you hated that Bella was his real daughter" he pauses "none of it is any excuse for us to fail doing our job Juliette, we didn't do the one thing we're meant to do, protect you"

"What changed?" Parker finally asks with a glare strong enough to make Gareth fidget under his gaze.

"I met her" he looks back to me "I met you a couple times and as much as Andrew made excuses of you changing when people where here, the more I saw you the more I realised it wasn't an act. You were hurting so much and he was doing nothing to help"

I wipe my eyes and Parker leans in "the second you want this to end I've got you" he whispers and I just nod

"Then?"

"He started to realise that I wasn't buying it as much so we stopped coming round and the stories just increased. Then you came back" his voice in sincere and I don't know who or what to believe.

"You were almost begging anyone to help you, you were so fucking desperate that anyone in their right mind should see something was wrong" his voice catches for a moment as he almost looks upset "yet you still got turned away, Andrew wasn't there but they called him and then you just seemed to give up"

Every word in a knife in my chest, I remember the day so well. It felt like any chance we had of escaping was crushed, no one would help and they even would yell at me that I was ungrateful for everything Andrew was doing to keep our family together.