𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘋𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 «Zaylena»

69 ; Revised

Stars Dance
Chapter 69
•••
Selena's Point of View

LEVI WOKE ME up too early but enough time to prepare myself, for a quick shower and some free pair of clothes. I was a nervous mess but Levi assured me that everything was going to be alright. I always though I would be meeting Zayn's mother with Zayn himself. Yet here I was going to make a trip to see Zayn, with his best friend.
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Breakfast at Levi's house was served like a feast, once we finished he and I headed out of the house door, in the midst of festive chaos for his mother's birthday party tonight. Levi drove off out of the gates out the home and into the Bradford town that I couldn't see more clearly now.
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My nerves were at an all time high and all I could do is keep my hands together and shake my leg. Levi noticed and he assured me immediately. "Zayn's mum is so cool, you have nothing to worry about." He explained.
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"Yeah, I just-...do you think we should just show up? At his house?" I questioned.
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"We don't have any other choice." He admitted, driving as soon as the light turned green. "He doesn't know you're here and without me, I doubt you would be doing what we're doing right now." He chuckled.
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"You're right." I admitted truthfully. I don't think I would have done this without the push of someone encouraging me. "You're totally right." Is all I could say.
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It wasn't a long ride from Levi's house to where Zayn lived, but the red lining of two different tales told a very different story. The houses compared to where Levi lived were becoming smaller, the streets became narrower and things were far more dull.
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Levi was from a whole different world, the tale of his friendship with Zayn's was one for the books, because usually kids like Levi looked down on people without status and class, but Levi wasn't most people.
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Levi had told me that for most of Zayn's life he was his escape. Bringing Zayn away from the toxic world in which he lived with his mother and father. As millions of thoughts ran through my head at once, I noticed Levi has turned the corner on a street neighborhood. The car was slowing down and before we knew it were were parked outside of a average home. The silence was nerve wrecking for me. I glanced past Levi and towards Zayn's childhood home.
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One big window followed by small ones, potted plants it looked like no one was home and I sat there for a minute thinking about all the pain Zayn went through growing up along side his father. I was outside the home of the man I loved and I was about to go in.
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"Come on." Levi said stepping out.
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I hesitated but eventually I pulled on the car door handle and stepped out myself. Levi walked in front of me and I walked a bit behind him. Up the sidewalk when Levi put his hand to the door and have a knock. There was only less then a minute of silence when the door clicked open.
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"Levi!" I heard an older woman's voice. "Oh how good it is to see you!" She exclaimed in a thick British accent.
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"I was in town for the weekend and couldn't bare the thought of leaving until I at least stopped by to greet you." Levi said. "I heard about Zayn...and that Jackie was here too so yeah-..."
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"Oh and you've brought along a girlfriend!" She directed her attention to me.
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I smiled shyly and eyed the older woman who about my height, she dressed in some jeans and a blouse with her thick black hair pushed back behind her ears. "Oh no, no Tricia not my girlfriend." Levi was quick to deny. "This is Selena." He introduced me.
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Her eyes became bigger than normal and she eyed me up and down. "Zayn's girlfriend." She said.
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I didn't know what to make of her expression towards me, was it a good one? Was it a bad one? Did she see me as the worst person in the world right now because Zayn and I weren't together? Did she think I hurt her son and I was the reason he's home? Was I being compared to Lucy right now? Had zayn brought her here before? When they were together? Millions of questions ran through my mind.
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"Hello, it's nice to meet you ma'am." I spoke up.
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She smiled and I was relieved. "We'll come in you two, I'll make up some tea on the kettle and we'll have a chit chat." She said allowing us into her home. Levi and I stepped inside and my eyes began to wonder around the home, as Levi followed Zayn's mother. "Zayn's not home right now, he and Jackie have been gone since yesterday night, but he'll come back around." She said.
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Zayn's home was neatly put out, his mother had photographs, of her children on the wall, his sisters and him. Plants surrounding the windowsills and curtains pushed open to let the sunlight in. We passed the living room and went straight into the dining room that was practically in the kitchen.
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The living space was small and homey? Even though I knew Zayn would not agree, if he were here. "Take a seat there while I'll put the tea on the hob here." She says.
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Levi sits down first and I sat in the chair across from him leaving the fore chair at the end of the table for Zayn's mother. "So tell me how is uni treating you two?" She says making her way towards Levi and I and sitting in the fore chair.
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"We'll for me it's going smoothly, mum doesn't know I'm not a political science major anymore but she'll learn to love it." Levi said making conversation.
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"Levi I really do think you should tell your mother." Zayn's mother suggested.
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"I will, rest assured." Levi nodded his head in agreement.
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She smiled and turned her attention to me. "What about you dear?" She said.
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I cleared my throat. "Well I-..." I began.
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"An American girl." She said catching accent. "My sons fallen in love with an American girl. You don't plan on taking my son with you to the other side of the pond do you?" She teases and I chuckle. "Oh dear don't mind me I'm just curious, since Zayn's gone off to uni he really doesn't tell much about his love life." She says, I smile. "He's talked about you, but doesn't say much."
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Levi clears his throat. "I'll get the tea." He says hearing the cheering of the kettle and standing up to walk into the kitchen.
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"You love him don't you?" She says with a smile.
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"I do." I smile.
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"What ever he did to you, please know that he's very sorry about it." She says. "I'm not just saying that because I'm his mother but because I've never seen him this serious and reserved for someone." She explains.
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"It's none of my business, I know." I explain. "However in order to come to know Zayn he's had to become vulnerable around me in order for me to understand him." I admit.
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"Oh darling it's all right, hearing that coming from you means something to me and don't be embarrassed because everyone who's walked through his home knows it, Levi here knows it, Jackie knows it, now you know it. His father and I-...and our problems." She says as Levi appears with the kettle of tea, and three mugs to put the scorching liquid in. "Zayn's never been seriously open with someone" she explains. "He holds anger and resentment which makes it seem likes he's unapproachable and no one could ever love him." She admits. "He's my only son, I'd know." She says. "However he not an angel either, and I know that."
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"I always thought I would be meeting you along side your son, if I'm honest." I admitted.
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She smiles. "Hey do not beat yourself up about it." She says. "I always thought I would meet the love of his life with him too." She explains. "Yet here you are, because you came looking for him, and that has to mean something...you love him the same way he loves you possibly even more than you could ever imagine."
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"You're a strong woman first and foremost, as his mother for raising him and doing the best you could yielding him on the right path. I've wanted to meet you since he first talked about you." I smile.
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"Thank you very much" She smiles. "I want to thank you because you've loved my son unconditionally. Have stuck by him through it all, have heard him and have loved him regardless of what you two face." She compliments back. "Can I hug you Selena?" She says.
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"Of course." I smile and we each stand up to embrace each other.
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In this moment it felt like maybe everything was going to be alright with Zayn and I if his mother accepted me and supported me. His mother and I laughed at the suspense of it all being gone between us, while Levi stood there with a smile.
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"Selena." I heard directing my attention towards Zayn who was standing there wide eyed, not believing that encounter between his mother and I.
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"Zayn." I said.
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"Selena what are you doing here?" He questioned my presence.
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"First of all, not that kind of tone in my home." His mother shut him some, with her finger in the air towards him. "Secondly, you two need to talk, while Levi and I enjoy this tea out in the back patio then I'm sure Levi wouldn't mind taking me grocery shopping, would you? I need some things from the shops." She smiled.
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"Not at all Tricia, it would be my pleasure." Levi agreed. "Mate." He tipped his head towards Zayn.
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"Come on Levi." Zayn's mother smiled and pulled in Levi's arm, as hey disappeared out of the back door from the kitchen.
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"Zayn." I smiled.
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"You shouldn't be here." He was hostile. "Not meeting my mother especially." He says. "In this house, have you lost your mind?"
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"Can we talk?" I questioned.
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"Talk about what? There is nothing you and I need to talk about Selena. I hurt you and that's something I have to live with the rest of my life with." He points at himself. "I'm not holding you back, or telling you to stay with me either, you're free to like and love who you want." He says.
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"Please just please, let's talk." I pleaded.
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"Fine." He says. "Come with me."
***
We make it to the top of the stairs, and down a small corridor of three doors. He clicks open his bedroom door and allows me to walk in first as he follows behind me. I glance around, talking in Zayn's childhood bedroom. A singular bed, with a small back view window.
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With a small night stand and dresser for his clothes and a small closet that had the light on and looked like it had been looked into. I noticed his desk that sat against the window; and some of Jackie's stuff on it, along side her suitcase that laid halfway open on the floor by the window.
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"You shouldn't have come here Selena." He begins. "You came to my house and met my mother?"
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"What difference doesn't it make? Would you have had the courage to see me?" I question back. "I came to see you but your mother said you weren't home, but she insisted that I come in."
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"I tried many times and you didn't want to hear me." He adds. "I think it was best if I just left you alone and I did. You had no business here Selena."
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"So you are just quickly going to forget about us? Everything we have been through? The love you and I have for one another? You were quickly going to forget me?" I questioned.
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"Loving you doesn't work if I hurt you Selena, do you not get that? I hurt you and lied to you in the worst way possible and yet none of matters because you love me? Selena you can't love me, do you understand that? You can't." He says.
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"I know everything." I exclaim. "Chris told me everything, he told me Lucy's true intentions and his true intentions and you never meant to hurt me." I blurt.
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"What?" He questions.
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"I forgive you." I skip over everything. "If that's what you want to hear, and if you will stop tormenting yourself over it I forgive you, because I love you." I walk over to him and cup his face on my hands.
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"You can't." He whispers. "As much you want to, you can't forgive me, you can't love me." He repeats. "You're too good for me and you know that. You don't deserve to be with someone like me, but better." He says. "God, now I wish I didn't give Adam so much shit, because a man like him is someone for you, not me."
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"But I don't want anyone like him, I want you." I press my forehead against his. "It's always been you."
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"Don't hurt yourself anymore like this Selena." He says, "You need to find someone that's going to love and value you not the way I took you and everything you ever put forth into us for granted." Zayn explains. "I need you to understand that."
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My voice begins to grow small and I'm nearly at the verge of tears. "All I ever known is you, you were the first for many things, do you think I would be able to forget everything you and I have been through?" I question. "You think I can just love someone else?...Since you and I have not been together all I have done is cry and talked about much I fucking missed you?" I wipe my tears from my eyes. "Tell me, would you be able to do the same?"
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"No Selena." He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs.
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"Then why do you just expect me to do the same?" I question.
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"Because I'm a mess Selena! I'm ruined! I have a personal battle that I've been fighting by myself since day one! For as long as I can remember! I'm broken and I can't be fixed, it isn't your responsibility to watch over me like some helpless animal who desperately needs it. This isn't your job Selena, it is mine." He exclaims. "I can't love myself and that means I can't even begin to love you that way you want me too, I carry baggage that isn't yours to fix. I need you to understand that."
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"If you don't want help, at least let me be there beside you every step of the way. Stop trying to push everyone who is trying to help you, out." I explain.
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"This isn't some sappy love story where the good girl tries to help the broken boy and in the process breaks herself trying to fix him, it doesn't work that way Selena." He explains.
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"You know the whole damn world judges you Zayn, but the one person who is willing to give you a second chance because realized to late that none of it was your fault, you turn away." I explain my thoughts out loud.
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"Because it is my fault. I should've told you from the very beginning that Lucy and I had a very long and complicated relationship, even if I did you didn't believe me." He explained. "Not telling you and keeping everything from you was the worst thing I could've done." He admits.
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"And I forgive you so why can't you accept that?"  I question his hostility.
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"Do you hear yourself?" He questions my sanity. "Selena this isn't going to work understand that."
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"Lucy is the root of our problems, okay? I know that now. I also know that morning when I found you two...that you didn't go to bed with her willingly, I understand all of that now. I should've been attentive. "
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"She hates me because she doesn't have me eating out of the palm of her hand like she used to. The Zayn you see now isn't the Zayn I was when she and I were together. Her mind games and gaslighting fucked with my head." He explains. "She can't wrap her head around the idea that I am not in love with her any more because I love you-..." He stops mid sentence.
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"You love me?" I whisper stepping closer to him.
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He sighs. "Selena I just want you to be happy."
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"I only want to be with you." I whisper pressing my lips against his. "Stop pushing me away." I say wrapping my arms around his neck but he is quick to take my arms in his hands pulling them off of him. "Please." I cry with tears down my cheeks.
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"I don't deserve it, you're the only one I've treated so horribly." He says. "The person I've said to love the most." He whispers. "Because I know no matter what I do, you'll always come back, you're justifying all of it right now Selena." He explains. "I can keep pushing you further and further away but you'll always be back, and that's not right." He says holding my face in his hands, wiping my tears from my cheeks. "It's not fair, you don't deserve that." He admits. "You deserve to be loved by someone else that's not me."
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"I don't care how fucking far you push me away, I'm a fucking boomerang." I defend. "And yes" I sniffle wiping my tears. "This maybe all fucked up, you and I may be very fucked up, but I love you and I have loved you from the very first day." I say pressing my lips against his and wrap my arms around him to pull him closer. "There is no one else for me, do you understand that? No one." I whisper.
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He stands there facing away from me and walking towards the window and glancing outside, not saying anything; the silence is defending because I don't know what else to say to convince him that I am as sorry as he is.
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"Do you still love her?" I raise the question.
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I can't help but have tears roll my cheeks as the silence consumes me and I shut my eyes for a slight second afraid of his answer.
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"No." He breaks the silence and I am relieved.
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"When did you know you didn't love her?" I question.
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He turns around to look at me, confused on why I was asking such darling questions. "Why are you asking me this?"
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"Please answer me." I push further.
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"Why does it matter-..it doesn't matter-..." He began.
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"Zayn." I stop him from rambling on. "When?"
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He sighs. "When I met you." He admits. "That day of the New Years party at the frat house, I saw her walk in with you but when I saw you-...I knew from then she wasn't what I wanted anymore, I wanted you." He admits.
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"Then why would you go and see her behind my back?" I question.
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"Because I wanted closure." He admitted. "I need to make sure everything between she and I was done once and for all before I ever tried anything with you. I couldn't bring myself to tell you anything because you were already her friend and why would you believe someone like me?" He admitted. "You wouldn't have believed me and she would've have twisted everything. I tried to fix it on my own, tried to say my peace, and exit her life for good, but the more I tried the more she kept trying to insist that there was still something between us." He explained.
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"What about that necklace I found in your pockets?" I questioned.
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"That necklace that you found I had confront her about leaving you alone because I knew she was feeding you things about me that weren't true and I wanted her to stop and leave me alone once and for all. I took that necklace back and told her that she never deserved it. You found it because I forgot to toss it out, stupidly I did." He confesses. "Lucy and I's encounters were more like confrontations and nothing more came out of them. When I told you Lucy had kissed me when we were in LA, that was true. I believed you deserved to know."
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I grabbed the strands of my loose hair in front of my face and pushed them behind my ears. "It's like I never even knew her and she was my friend." I whisper to myself.
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"As teenagers Lucy and I were inseparable, we thought we could take on the world and nothing and no one could get in our way." He admits. "It's probably so sick and twisted now, and you may not want to hear this but at one point in my life, Lucy was everything to me." He confesses. "I don't know if she was like this when she went home to sleep for the night but with me she was my whole damn world." He confesses. "I never understood how a girl like her could fall in love with a guy like me. I came from some fucked up underworld and she was the fucking light at the end of the tunnel." He says.
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I believed ay this point the only way I was going to be able to understand it all once and for all is if I just sat here and listened to him tell the many stories of what he and Lucy once were. It was the only way. "Then what happened? How did it get this bad between you two?"
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"Her fucking father happened." He chuckles. "Talk about some cliché where the girl can't be with the fucked up boy." He says. "He despised me from the moment I walked into his home, couldn't bear the thought that I was the one who had set his eyes on his princess of a daughter." He said. "Yeah my reputation wasn't the fucking best but I was just a boy" he begins to grow sensitive, "I just wanted to be loved-...find some sort of normalcy in my damn life, with a deadbeat father who walked out of me at ten years old, I wanted to be a normal." He cried.
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I quickly walked over to him and embraced him into my arms and he hugged me back. Crying into the crook of my neck. "Then he took that from me." He begins to grow angry, I can hear it in his tone. "Lucy got pregnant young, and we didn't know what the fuck we were going to do but we were going to do it together." He admitted. "Her father found out and it was downhill from here, I went from seeing her everyday to one day never seeing her at all."
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"What happened?" I question in a whisper as we sit on the edge of his bed.
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"I'm not sure." He admitted. "All I knew was the mother of my child and my child were gone and I was going fucking mad." He wipes his tears from his face. "She disappeared and by then I was already at the university, that's when I saw her and she was different." He lifts his shoulders carelessly. "Her whole attitude changed from being this nice girl whom I loved to a whole different Lucy."
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"The baby?" I dare to question,
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"I don't know." He covers his face with his hands. "And I will never fucking know." He admits. "I'm all for the cause, but that was something she and I were suppose to discuss together not her and her father, us." He admitted. "When I finally got the chance to talk to her, she said I was the worst thing that ever happened in her life, that she never wanted to have anything to do with me and that I had ruined her life."
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I don't say much and just listen to him vent at the frustration he's held inside for a long time. "I spent a very long time looking and chasing after her, to beg her and beg her that she and I could start over." He chuckles and nods his head side to side. "But she no longer wanted me the way I wanted her." He admits. "It broke me so bad that I swear I thought my life was over." He laughs trying to find light in the darkness. "It was for Jackie or Levi who stuck through thick and thin, I don't know where I would fucking be right now." He admits.
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"What are best friends for right?" I agree.
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"Then I saw you and I swear everything I ever felt for her was gone in one instant." He turns to look at me, his eyes fall to my lips then back to my eyes. "You walked in and I swear to fucking god I loved you since." He admits. "And that was something she couldn't bare." He says. "I never meant to hurt you." He repeats. "Never, never, never." He takes my hand in his and kisses my fingertips.
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"No more secrets, none." I nod my head side to side wiping my face from the silent tears that fell from my cheeks.
***