Dark Secrets and An Even Darker Past.

Chapter 9 Part 1: Iris

Wow two uploads in one day! This is to make up for how long I made you guys wait! Hope you all enjoy and don't forget to answer the questions from the previous chapter!

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Recap: 

Aimee's POV:

Sam couldn't undersand why I was so willing to let go of life, after everything Toni did to keep me alive. I didn't expect him to understand either. I had no grandparents now, no comfort to go to. No one to tell me stories of my parents from when they were younger. The people I was closest to in my everyday life were gone. But if there was one thing I also learned from James was that life has to go one even when you are in the darkest room ever. You aren't put through the hell of life to just give up, you are put through the hell of life to make you stronger and throw life back at itself. 

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Chapter 9 Part 1: Iris

Antonio's POV:

As I stood Aimee's room and took in the navy blue walls with gold designs, I couldn't help but smile.  She always used to talk about painting her room this way if she got a place of her own. I know the hell I put her through when I faked my own death, I know the guilt she felt when she heard Kat asking for me, and I know how hard it was for her after she lost James and her grandmother all before reaching her freshman year of highschool. I was there when she fought with James and I was there when Sam first came into her life to try to heal the wounds I created. I watched her from afar believing that this was the best way to keep her safe and the best way to keep her alive. I watched as she lost weight and shut herself off from everyone. It killed me to know that the happy fun loving girl I had help her discover within herself went back to her old ways before I met her. 

Aimee and her mom began to fight a lot after the death of her grandmother. Due to Aimee's complete attitude change back into depression her mother believed she was rebelling. Guilt began to eat me alive, especially when I knew Aimee was facing the threats of the gangs basically alone. I threw her to the wolves while I banged my next door neighbor. At least that was how Derek put it when I came back from the land of the "dead." I guess you could say that was basically the truth since I was dating Julia for the whole almost two years I was away. 

I met Julia when I moved to Brazil in order to start over, she was the daughter of my next door neighbor and well we just clicked. Her father was weary of me, after all I was twenty at the time and I wasn't in college, living on my own and working my own farm. Not to mention I didn't talk about my personal life or my past very much. However, some how her father still allowed me to date Julia and from there we fell in love. Julia knew though that Aimee was the one who owned my heart, it was true that I was in love with Julia, but I didn't feel the way I did for Aimee that I did for Julia. Aimee was the one I was truely in love with, the girl who saw me for me. Not the gang leader, or murderer, or the drug dealer. She saw me as Antonio, her best friend, lover, protecter, and secret keeper. 

Aimee didn't care about my past, and she didn't care about my present. She would just smile and say, "Toni, the only thing that matters is the future because we have the power to change it. The power to make the ending turn out right." 

She was such a kind hearted person....who I continued to hurt. Eventually the guilt started to eat at me so bad that I knew I had to see her without her knowing. I had to she her smile even if it was fake, I had to know if the light I created was really gone from her eyes like I was told by my brother. So I told Julia I was going to visit some family in America and she knew I was lying, but let me go anyway. Once I got to Aimee's small town I began looking for her and found her of course at home with her nose in a book attempting to shut out the world. When that didn't work she began listening to music and talking to Sam. The first night I was there I sat outside her window listening to her screaming from her nightmares. It took everything I had not to break in, wake her up, and hold her in my arms.