The Story of Thia

Surprise Surprise

Thia's POV
On Saturday morning I woke up early and saw Landon's door wide open and his bed empty. Maybe he's in the living room or the kitchen, I thought to myself. I ate breakfast and watched some TV, and still saw no sight of him. Where could he be? I decided to forget about it, and went to go surprise Joshua in the morning like I had done multiple times before the accident.
"I love you" I said very quietly as I laid beside him on his bed. His eyes shot open and then when he didn't see me he assumed it was a dream and closed his eyes to go back to sleep. I ran my hand along his arm lightly "over here..." He moved his head to the side to see me "hey baby" he muttered sleepily as a tired grin crept across his face "Josh.....---uh--do---you still love me....?" Concern flashed across his face "yeah..." I had been thinking about why he wasn't saying he loved me. Speech therapy seemed to be going well... "but--but--you don't---say it. Say it please, I want to hear from you; That you still feel the same way...." his mouth formed a frown "I can't." I looked him straight in the eye, my eyes raging with emotions "you and I know damn well you can, but you don't!!!" I started to cry "Josh I don't know why you can't tell me, but it's bothering the hell out of me. I can't stop thinking about it...." He put his arms around me and I shifted as I felt uneasy about what his explanation would be. "Baby I-I- can't" he finally sputtered out.
"So you don't love me anymore?!!" tears started pouring down my face.
"I do." I became furious.
"'Love you'..." I finished the statement.  "That's all you'd have to end it with and you'd prove to me that you feel the same, but you didn't!!"
He started to rub my arm "tell me about--the time-when I told you."
I started to laugh lightly as tears still fell down my face "...it wouldn't be in order."
"Tell me."
"Ok..."
'It was a late night at Philia's. We were laying in the hay loft cuddling and talking. Out of the blue, Josh looked at me as I had just finished rambling about something and said "I love you." I stared right back in his eyes and replied "I love you too." Josh pulled me closer to him, and said "you are the most amazing girl I have ever met, you're so special Thia." In reply I kissed him to show how I felt. Then we laid down in the hay loft giving each other frequent soft kisses. He held me tight and said, "I'm never letting you go without a fight."
"You don't have to worry, no one can take my heart, it has already been stolen by you..."
It felt like hours when I finished the story, waiting for him to say something, anything, that would prove he felt the same way he did that night. After more agonizing minutes passed, I buried my head in his side out of frustration. "Thia," he said as I kept my head buried in his side "I love you." Shocked by his words, I pulled my face from his side and looked into his eyes, tears streaming down my face now "then why...why didn't you say it for so long---I-I practically had to beg you.."
"I was---waiting until---you told me that---story," his eyes then filled with tears "I wanted to tell you----in the hospital----I couldn't---speak---I didn't----know how." 
"I shouldn't have forced you to tell me...I just--I couldn't bare thinking you didn't still feel the same as before. But I told you 'forever and always Josh, no matter how everything goes I will always love you the same,' and I thought that even if you wouldn't be able to speak, t-to tell me you loved me, that I would be able to handle it..."
"I love you--------I love you, I love you---I love you so much," Josh murmured through tears. 

Joshua's POV
Thia surprised me just like she had before all of this happened. Before it all became complicated. She interrogated me about why I wasn't telling her I loved her. She said she couldn't wait any longer, that she thought she could understand, but that she just couldn't. I loved her, I wanted to shout it to the world, but I wanted it to be special, to be a surprise for her, to make her extremely happy. After begging me to tell her why I wasn't telling her I loved her back, I asked her to tell me the story about how I told her I loved her. As she told me about that night her eyes glazed over with tears she was holding back. She put her face to my side and I could feel her body start to shake as a result of her crying. I couldn't take watching her like that, "Thia. I love you." She looked at me and asked me why I didn't tell her. I tried to explain as well as I could why I didn't say it earlier. She kept telling me how bad she felt for pushing me to say it. She thought that since she said she would still love me even if I couldn't talk, that somehow she had done something wrong by wanting to hear me tell her how I felt. I said that I loved her countless times. I wasn't screaming it to the world, but I just wanted to tell her over and over again, with tears streaming down my face as I told her.

Thia's POV
A few hours later I went home and found heather and Walt making dinner. As I passed by Landon's room while walking to my own I found him lying on his bed, his eyes bloodshot, looking at me with a smirk. "Where have you been?" he questioned teasingly, smirking up at me.
"With my boyfriend. I was going to ask you the same, but I should've expected you'd be somewhere wasting your life away. I thought you changed, but you're the same trash Heather and Walt brought in the first day you came." His mouth formed a maniacal grin as he spotted my eyes were blood shot as well "I see I'm not the only one who had a little fun," he said, winking at me. "I was guessing drug dealer, but I didn't think your pretty little boyfriend was the type. I guess I was wrong."
I looked him dead in the eye "I'm not high you asshole!! I've just been crying..."
Landon shot up from his bed and gripped both of my arms with his hands. "Who made you cry?!?!" he said overly concerned.
"My boyfriend. Before you say you're going to kill him, let me explain. Initially he made cry in a bad way, but then they became tears of joy....so yeah." He looked at me confused. "What did he do to make you cry?"
"He--he told me he loved me....but at first he wasn't saying it. He pretended like he physically couldn't say the words, but he had been doing so well with speech therapy, so I was suspicious as to why he wasn't saying it..."
"Wait....did you say---speech therapy?"
"Uh...yeah?"
"Why does he need speech therapy?!"
"He--uh--I--ummm, uh he got injured..."
"How?"
"A car accident....he--he got brain damage..." My eyes started to prickle with tears as I felt the guilt once again for what I had done to him.
"Don't-don't cry. There's more to the story isn't there....what aren't you telling me?" he said as he pulled me into a hug.
"I-I-was driving..." I finally spit out.
"So you're dating him as a charity case?" he asked inconsiderately.
"NO!!!!" I screamed, enraged, "I love him!!!"
"It didn't seem like that yesterday," Landon interjected.
"I don't like you!!!!! I hate you!!!! Get that in your head!!!" I said unmercifully.
He drew his face near mine as he pulled me to him, then lowering his one hand to the small of my back, using the other to caress my face, "so if I tried to kiss you, you'd back away?" he inquired, "and if I did" he brushed his lips very close to mine "kiss you, it would mean nothing to you?"
My breath caught right before I muttered in a spiteful whispering tone, "absolutely nothing..."
"Leave" he said while backing away from me, with hurt flashed over his face.
"Whatever" I said rolling my eyes, and then I left.

Landon's POV
He has a brain injury?!! She's staying with this guy because of what she did to him?!! She doesn't love him 'she loves me...' I thought to myself. 'No she hates you...'  'No she likes you but is too scared to admit it!!' I went to find Walt and Heather to find out more about the car accident.
"Thia and Joshua were in the car together. Thia was driving through an intersection and a truck came from the right and hit on Joshua's side. It left him with minor brain damage compared to how bad it could have been. The driver in the other car claimed Thia had run the red light, but was later charged guilty after they reviewed the traffic video and found that he had run the red, and she was just driving through the intersection. Thia was brought to jail after she was taken care of at the hospital and stayed there for a few days as she waited until the court day. Even though she wasn't guilty for the accident, she was still charged for being under the influence of alcohol and drugs and driving without a license," Walt explained.
"Why did you and Heather not get her from jail?" I asked.
"We didn't know her then. It wasn't until a few days later that we had taken her in as a foster child."
That was what she was hiding. She wasn't their real child...."Wait, Thia isn't your real daughter?"
"No, we adopted her a few months after she stayed with us to help her straighten out things in her life," Heather said.
I walked out of the room to further think this through. What did this mean...
She didn't want me to know her past, so I wasn't going to mention it until she told me herself.