Counting Stars and Scars {Kellic}

4. Give Me One More Chance

{Song- 1709 by Whisperer}

My heart stops beating.

"What?" I ask, my voice sounding muffled and underwater in my own ears.

Kellin sits up further on the bed, moving closer to me. His eyes are swimming with tears. "Please, Vic. Just let me see your wrists. You know I wouldn't be asking this if I didn't care about you."

I feel myself on the verge of having a panic attack. There's black spots in my vision, and I'm fighting to breathe normally. Kellin can't know about this, he just can't. He's the one that has a reason to be sad, with his parents and everything. I don't. I'm just weak. And I really don't want him to know that.

"No," I say, my voice quiet and cracking. I say it again, louder. "No, you can't. There's nothing there."

Kellin has actually started crying now; I can feel the sadness in his voice. "If there's nothing there then we can just forget about this. Please Vic, I need to see."

I close my eyes as tears threaten to spill over. I know I need to show him, he'll never let it go otherwise. But there's still a little rebellious voice inside of me screaming no no no he can't know it'll ruin everything.

In spite of it, I sit up a little straighter and wipe the tears from my cheeks. Taking a shaky breath, I face Kellin and roll the left sleeve of my hoodie up, exposing the forearm.

Kellin gasps and a tiny sob escapes his mouth. He grabs my wrist and inspects the five red lines adorning the skin there.

"Vic." I can barely hear Kellin as he looks up at me. "Why?"

I shrug, staring at the bedspread. "I was just stressed. I won't happen again, I swear. It was just a one time thing, it didn't help."

Lies lies lies.

There's a silence as I stare at anything that isn't Kellin's face. He's looking at me intently, still holding my wrist in his hand. I hate expression on his face, it's like he's looking straight through all the walls around my soul and laying everything out in the open.

"Look at me," he says suddenly, very softly.

I don't look at him.

He lets go of my wrist and uses that hand to grab my chin, turning my face towards his. I try to ignore the rush of electricity at the touch of his hand.

Kellin's face is very close to mine. "Look at me," he says, almost harshly, "and promise me that that's all this is."

When my eyes meet his, I know I can't do it. I can't look my best friend and the person I'm in love with right in the eyes and lie to him. Even if I wanted to, he would know right away if I was telling the truth or not.

"I can't," I whisper, and I can almost see Kellin's heart break.

Very slowly, he picks up my other arm and rolls the sleeve up. When he sees that there's nothing there, he sniffs and moves a little closer to me.

We're both still silently crying when he says, "Can you take off your shirt?"

It's almost funny, the irony of this situation. I'd been dreaming he'd say something like that as long as I could remember, and here he was asking me to take my clothes off for an entirely different reason.

I don't even fight it this time, I just nod a little and pull my hoodie off. Then, I grab the hem of my shirt before tugging it over my head. I watch Kellin's face carefully as he assesses the damage I've done to my body.

He claps a hand over his mouth, eyes brimming with even more tears. I can't blame him. The whole of my lower torso looks pretty ghastly, with deep cuts slashed across in random directions, some of them bandaged and steri stripped. 

Kellin doesn't even say anything at first.

He just lunges at me and wraps his arms around my neck, burying his face in my neck.

I'm not sure what to do at first, a little surprised by Kellin's sudden embrace. I thought he was going to yell at me or something. But in the end I slowly wrap my arms around his body, resting my chin on his head. He's crying into my chest, and I feel terrible. He doesn't ask to see my thighs, and I think it's because he doesn't think about it, or because he really doesn't want to know.

"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I didn't mean for it to come to this."

Kellin lifts his head and looks at me, tears glistening on his cheeks. "Come to this? What exactly is this, Vic? Why are you hurting yourself?" His voice is full of fervor.

I shake my head, not meeting his eyes. "I- I don't know. I just- I just didn't know how else to deal with it. I've just been feeling all these things for a while now, and this works. It distracts me."

I don't tell him the rest of it. I don't tell him how I enjoy it, how I just can't stop. I love it, in a twisted, sick way. I don't tell him how deep my depression really goes.

"But-" Kellin pauses to take a deep breath. He still hasn't let go of me. "You could have told me, you could have talked to me. Why didn't you? Do you not trust me?"

"No!" I'm quick to reply. "I do trust you. I just didn't want you to know how weak I really am. You have enough on your plate without worrying about me."

"Vic," Kellin says insistently. He touches my cheek with his hand, and I freeze. Why is he touching me like this? "I'm always worrying about you. I always want to know what's going on with you, and I want to listen to all of your problems. I don't care if you're weak sometimes, because everyone is. And most of all, I just want you to let me care about you. I can't do that if you don't tell me anything."

My heart is beating faster, because Kellin's face is very close to mine and he's talking to me with such intensity.

"I'm sorry," I whisper again.

Kellin rests his forehead against mine, and I feel my heart in my throat. "Don't apologize. Just promise-"

"No," I interrupt him. "Please don't make me promise to not cut again. I don't want to make a promise I can't keep."

"I wasn't going to ask you that. I was going to say, can you promise that you'll come to me if it happens again? I won't judge, I swear. I just want to be there for you."

And with those words, I feel myself falling even more in love with this boy. He knows, this is an addiction I won't easily get over. He's not making me promise something that will eventually make me feel guilty and torn up inside, he's just telling me that he'll be there no matter what.

I nod, my nose brushing his a little. "Yeah," I say. "I promise."

Kellin bites his lip and smiles at me a little, and then hands me my shirt. I slip it back on, and then he wraps me back up in his arms. We lay down on the bed, and I sigh into Kellin's chest. These are the kind of moments I live for, curled up against him, not saying anything at all. We just lay there, looking at each other, until we both fall asleep.