A Storm Is Brewing

Protecting

There was just one more act of self-preservation that I needed to carry out, and it was sure to be the hardest. I'd told Rhys that it would be easy to cut my family off again, but the truth was, I kind of liked having my mum around.

Dad was indifferent to it all. He was used to the fallouts of the family and was just happy with the occasional phone call. I knew that no matter what happened or how long I went without contact, he would still be there whenever I felt ready. Mum was a different story. The idea that she could reject me for the second time felt like more than I was willing to risk, and so that left only one option.

I couldn't tell Leah about my decision; I knew she'd try to talk me out of it or at least tell me that I should wait to see what mum said first. Leah was like that; she always wanted to see the good in situations relating to family.

I waited for Leah to go to training before making the phone call that broke my heart even more than seeing Rhys with Hannah had. Part of me wasn't even sure if she'd pick up, and when she did, I thought Rhys had bottled it and hadn't told her.

"Sophie, oh darling."

Sympathy. Sympathy had been the last thing I'd expected to hear in her voice. I let my mind drift off to a world where she finally chose me, but then I remembered how sympathetic her voice had sounded right before she told me she couldn't ever accept who I was all those years ago.

"He's told you, then?"
"He has. I'm so angry at him. I cannot believe he has done this to you."

Anger. Perhaps I should've known then that she wasn't blaming this on me, but all I could think of was how angry she'd been at Hannah for leading me down a road like that when I had told her we were together. Mum's anger was likely aimed at the idea that Rhys had picked Hannah, of all people, rather than the betrayal aspect of what he had done.

"You don't need to choose. He needs you."
"And what about you? What do you need?"

That question. That question took me back to all those years ago, to the night that I finally plucked up the courage to tell her why I had been so secretive. What did you need that we didn't give you? Every time, it was something that I needed that was the problem.

"I have everything I need. I've had everything I needed since I moved here."
"Sophie, what're you saying? What does Leah make of all this?"

Leah. Of course, Leah would be the issue. Of course, it would come down to Leah in her head. Maybe I should've asked more questions and delved into what she meant by that, but I knew that I couldn't. To ask her those questions came with the potential for so much more hurt that I wasn't sure my heart could take.

"Leah agrees. I don't want any of you to contact me anymore. Bye mum."

My terms. All those years, I had wanted nothing more than to have been the one to cut her off, but I'd never been brave enough. I spent years imagining the feeling of freedom that I would feel, but the second I hung up the phone, I felt nothing more than emptiness. She didn't even try to call back.

In the days that followed, Leah began to ask that repetitive question: have you heard from your mum yet? In the end, I snapped at her, telling her that asking me over and over again wasn't going to change the fact that mum didn't care.

I wasn't misleading her for my sake, though. Leah had been so gracious with mum, given how she initially treated her, and I knew that when mum eventually decided that Rhys needed her more than I did, it wasn't just me that would experience that hurt again. Leah would too.

— — — —

Leah POV:

This wasn't ever a chapter I thought we'd face in our story, especially not with Rhys as the villain. In the hours that followed his departure from our house, Sophie had been inconsolable, but as expected, she eventually found the inner strength to tell the world she was absolutely fine.

Jacqueline had reached out to me the following day, letting me know that Sophie had told her that she didn't want her family to contact her again. I spent the next few days trying to coax her to tell me about the phone call she had made to her mum and when she didn't, I very nearly confronted her about lying to me.

I didn't understand it; how could I? I knew that my own mum would know the answers to the questions I had, though. She always did. When I arrived at mum's house that night, I'd immediately gone on a rant about how the one person who should tell me the truth in any situation had been lying directly to my face for days, telling my mum that I wasn't even sure I could trust anything she said anymore. But then she asked me that question.

"Why did you cut Sophie off that new year?"

She already knew the answer; she was the one who had to pick up the pieces when I'd broken my own heart. She watched as I desperately tried to remind myself that I'd made the right decision.

"Because I thought she would leave me."

She did that smile and nod thing that parents do, smugly knowing that she was right. And she was. When people asked me why Sophie and I weren't together anymore back then, I would tell them that we just weren't right for each other. It was a lie—a lie that I told to some of the closest people to me—but it was so much easier than telling the truth.

"I just want her to tell me. I want her to say, I need my mum. If she admits that, then I know Jacqueline will be there this time." I sighed.
"You will know." Mum smiled.
"I'll know what?"
"You'll know when she really needs her mum."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You'll know when Sophie needs you to just know that she needs her mum."

And so, I never did tell Sophie that I knew she'd lied to me. I trusted that she had done so because that's what she thought was best for all of us. In the back of my mind, though, I kept that one sentence from mum and patiently waited for the moment I had to know that she needed her mum.

Even if I was the reason for that.