WANT (Complete ✔️)

Chapter Thirty Four

WARNING: mention of rape and suicide

Lia

"Can I ask you something?" Quietly, I ask as I play with his hair.

We're at the abandoned observatory but we're laying on the hood of his car with Xavier laying against me in-between my legs as I soothingly play with his soft hair. The beautiful night sky is filled with stars and a gentle warm breeze.

Every time we're here, it feels like we're bubbled in our own little lost paradise.

"Anything." He whispers with his eyes closed.

"Why don't you like celebrating your birthday?" this has been on my mind since his birthday, "Zack said that you don't care for them, is that true?"

I didn't want to ask him on his birthday because I wanted that day to be filled with happiness but after he was with me at the observatory, it felt like to me that he wanted to celebrate it despite what Zack said. There was a look in his eyes that showed that he missed celebrating his birthday.

I don't want to step over boundaries but he's comfortable with me. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to take advantage of that. I just want to know everything about him whenever he wants to talk about it. He's addictive and I can't get over my obsession with him.

Xavier tenses in my arms, and I peek down to see fire blazing through his eyes.

"Yeah."

"Why?" I whisper, "Sorry, that's if you want to talk about it. I was only asking because you seemed so happy that night that Zack's words had me wondering."

Xavier moves away from me, and I pout from the loss of warmth that he gives me. He hops off the hood and stands with his eyes flaming with rage that can destroy souls.

"On my eighth birthday," Xavier's voice is cold and distant, "I saw my dad rape my mom."

The nauseating words shatter my heart in ways unimaginable.

I was not expecting that.

Now I feel awful for even asking.

"It was after she found out that he was having affairs with other women. She caught him with his whores multiple times but never said anything until she had enough. She got angry and went off at him but instead of feeling remorseful or ashamed or having actual fucking human feelings, my wonderful father abused her," Xavier clenches his jaw and curls his hands into fists, "I never found out about the abuse until that day of my eighth birthday. He was furious when he found out that mom filed for divorce. Any good human would do the right thing but not my dad. The sordid-fuck abused her. Right in front of me."

Tears pool in my eyes as I sit speechless next to him.

"I heard him call her the most disgusting names I've ever heard. Hit her as if she was a rag doll. And I saw him rape her. For an eight-year-old, that's a fuckton of trauma that not even therapy could heal. And being that young, I didn't know what was happening but I knew that her pleas for him to stop were not good. It was when high school started that I realized what happened to her and I all I wanted to do was kill him." Xavier's voice falters. The hurt, the anger, the frustration making my heartache.

"I guess, after seeing what happened on that day, on my birthday, I got disgusted by the thought of celebrating a day like that. I thought if I celebrated my birthday, I'd be celebrating that fucked up day where I saw my mom—the woman who gave me life—being abused as if she was a rag doll," Xavier closes his eyes for a moment before opening them and looking into my eyes with emotions that dig into my soul and wrap me around them, "I blamed myself for the longest time for what happened. I blamed myself for being young. For being weak. For being a stupid fucking kid. For not being able to protect my mom. But I realized that all of that didn't matter because it wasn't my fault or my mom's, it was his."