Rebellious Aurora | ✓

thirty-three | almost an accessory to murder

"You remember that fire, don't you?" I asked through gritted teeth as Ruby flinched when I took a step closer to her, the wind whistling in my ears as if to exaggerate my anger and pure hatred for the girl standing before me.

Ruby shuffled her feet in the snow, her eyes switching to Ashton then back to me. "I regret it."

"If you regret it then you should've said something when you came back into town instead of taunting me and my friends," I retorted, taking a few steps back before eyeing her in a distasteful look. "If you regret it then you shouldn't have touched my sister."

"I was trying to get your attention," Ruby explained, her expression still blank.

On god, I was about to take a swing as I glanced at her in bewilderment. "If you wanted my attention so badly, attack me. Don't attack my sister who had nothing to do with this. With us."

Ruby stomped her foot like a child throwing a tantrum as a tear slid down her cheek. "I'm still in love with you and the only way to get your attention was through Ashton because I know you're in love with him."

In my peripheral vision, Ashton's jaw-dropped and I almost wanted to help him close his own mouth if it weren't for my own dropping as I found myself confused. Before Ruby had moved out of town, she had confessed to me once about her feelings towards me and I couldn't reciprocate her feelings because I didn't swing that way.

"If you loved and cared for me, you wouldn't have done anything that would've hurt me or my family," I whispered in a dangerously low voice, watching Ruby's eyes plead for forgiveness. "It was so fucking low of your sister to attack mine. You couldn't get your hands dirty for once, huh?"

Ruby shook her head, almost in desperation. "Aurora, please..."

I turned to Ashton, preparing myself to tell the story as he studied me with soft eyes and I didn't know whether he was in shock that Ruby was, in fact, bisexual or she had confessed my own feelings to him. "Before Ruby moved to New York a year ago, she had an older boyfriend in his early twenties that was a member of a gang."

"She didn't love this boyfriend of hers because he didn't treat her right and Hailee and I tried to get her to leave him, knowing that he was extremely dangerous but she didn't want to leave him," I continued, cutting Ruby a smirk until the memory settled in my mind and the door that has been knocked on repeatedly began to release my own nightmares. I began to shiver, remembering the night that had almost costed me and my best friends' lives. "Jiao, Hailee, Tori and I confronted him one night and he was already in a bad mood because he had fought with Ruby moments before. We threatened him but that was a mistake, wasn't it, Ruby?"

I turned to Ruby, turning my ice cold stare towards her as she gulped, her hands shaking in front of her as the demons of that night swam inside my mind.

"Ruby stood there, watching her ex-boyfriend throw us in the barn," I clenched my jaw and as dramatic as it sounded, I told the story exactly how it happened. "He held a knife to our necks while he poured the gas around the barn while Ruby screamed for him to stop instead of acting on her words."

My memories began to flicker when I so vividly remembered Ruby's ex's cold smirk that sent shivers down my spine. I fluttered my eyes shut and bit my lip, hesitating to finish the story.

"I had stabbed him with my own pocket knife," I confessed with ease. "That idiot didn't even tie us up. Authorities called it self-defence and my father had pulled some strings."