Pain.
That's all that Isabella has experienced for the past 16 years. The pain of the abuse she faces from her boyfriend and step father. The pain of her loneliness at home. The pain of 'not being good enough'.
But she's learnt to tune it out. She's...
"I think there are times where you miss the version of yourself who never knew what it meant to be betrayed"
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We've been sitting outside of Nikolai's room in the hospital wing of the house.
For an hour now.
After about 2 minutes, everyone had come into the room to wait with me. I really appreciate the gesture, the way they gave up their time to wait with me.
We've all been sitting in silence, I have no words. I've been overthinking and spiralling for the entire hour. My head has never left Bruno's shoulder, and Vince has been holding my hand and running his thumb along the back of it, his engulfing mine with the giant size.
Elijah has only been in the room once to update us. He told us that he took Niko into the operating room, due to internal bleeding. In that moment, I was entirely fuming at them for doing this to him, and I cried a stream of tears down my cheeks.
My tears have dried now, no more left to cry. I have no clue if I'll see Niko soon, or again.
"Are you still mad at us?" Ricardo breaks the silence and his voice fills the empty room.
"Can we talk about this later? I've got enough on my mind at the moment." I request tiredly while fiddling with the ring on my finger.
"Do you wanna talk about him?" Bruno suggests from above me, so I raise my eyes to meet his.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"Tell us about him, what's your favourite memory of him." He asks and I sniffle a bit before I smile.
"One time, at a ball, Levi tried to take a snickers bar off him. Levi ended up with a broken shoulder and had to have us cut up his food for weeks." I say softly and I reminisce in the memory while my smile grows wider. I hear a few light chuckles around the room, which prompts me to say more.
"Another time, when I was having a bad day at school, he snuck me out and took me for ice cream. I got strawberry, he got mint chocolate chip and we spent the whole time arguing about which flavour was better." I recall.
"Mint chocolate chip is the best flavour." Marco argues, which causes me lift my head off Bruno's shoulder for the first time in an hour and look at him in disbelief.
"You're wrong. Ignorant and wrong." I point out and get a chorus of agreements from half the room.
"Mint chocolate sucks, man." Lorenzo points out and I nod my head in agreement.
"It tastes like toothpa-" I cut myself off due to a searing pain in my broken ribs. My eyes widen slightly and I snake the hand that isn't in Vince's hold to my ribs to apply pressure. My breath becomes ragged and I shut my eyes in pain.
It feels like being stabbed. By a porcupine.
"Shit, what's happening to her?" Lorenzo says and they I hear them rush around me.
