Breaking the Ice | ✍🏼

09. Lied Too

As a child, if I couldn't sleep, I never dared to set foot into my parents bedroom, as it would cause another argument, and if I wasn't already in trouble, I would be in trouble with my mother. My father just usually ignored us children, so I never really had a problem with that. But, he did spend a fair bit of whatever spare time he had with River and Aiden, and then my mother would be with Riley. 

They were there own teams in reality. I had no one on my side; not a single person cared enough about me, growing up. Well, I mean, River did, but whenever father had the time to see him, he would completely forget the little sister he had. 

Aiden and I had never been close. As much as he was compared to River, it was never as open as what Riley and I's were. People thought that the deaths of our brother and sister would have brought us closer, but it just made the distance even father. Aiden had never liked me for some reason, and I never knew why. I didn't want to know why now. 

There was no use in figuring out why he had always had a high dislike towards me, cause now, I hated him for every word that he had ever said to me. Nothing he ever did would be able to fix him calling me a whore and a slut. He was just like the rest of them anyways. 

There was no fixing what you had lost. And I had lost Aiden years ago, before our brother and sister died. He was long gone, and nothing I did or he did would be able to fix what we never had in the first place. Cause that was just the reality of it all. We had never had much to do with one another, so why should the deaths of the people we were constantly compared to, change that? 

"It's too late for little girls to be sitting out here" I shivered at the voice, feeling a sense of disgust at this person. "Fuck off" I muttered, wrapping my arms around my self as I tried my best to wipe the tears from my cheeks before he could get a good look at me from my sitting position. 

"You know I can't do that. I can't leave you out here all on your own" he just had to sit down beside me, making me move away from him. This was where River and I came, not where he could just come and prance around with his expensive clothing. He should probably be at another party, with Aiden and Ashley. 

"Yes you really can. Stop bothering me and go party with the whores and sluts that you love" I muttered, tucking my knees up to my chest. It was so hard not to cry and ask for comfort from the only person that had found me, but at the same time, I hated him for what had happened. He was nothing to me, and it should have stayed that way. It should have stayed at the ice rink, where we bickered and argued back and forth. 

"You know that's not true" the way his voice had changed, signaling defeat. He never backed down to me so quickly. This was odd. "Well it is. Everyone is talking about how I basically fell to my knees for you, which I didn't, or were you too drunk to know what was going on and was just swayed by what everyone else had to say" I spat back at him. I didn't like the way his attention was on me. It shouldn't be on me. 

"I wasn't drunk. I had one drink. This has nothing to do with the party and what is going on at school. This is about what is happening right here, right now. This is about you and why you are sitting on a pier, in the middle of winter, at 2am in the morning, when you should be at home, in bed. You should not be here right now, but you are, and I want to know why" I hated the way he sounded like he was showing care and concern to me.

I sat in silence. How could I possibly tell someone that I have hated for months, that in all reality, my life had never been perfect. It had always been falling through the cracks since the day I was born. I was the unloved child in a family where no one cared about the small child. That everyone had someone to turn to, but me. I was on my own. 

"Angus-, just go away. It doesn't matter." I hesitated on telling him, just a sliver of information, but I didn't. I didn't say anything because he didn't need to know; he had no right to know after everything else that he adds onto my plate. "It does matter" he murmured, as I heard the anger slipping into his tone. 

That was just what I did to people. I made people angry whenever they tried to help me. Whenever Angus and I bickered, it brought happiness to me that someone wasn't so easily pestered by me, but in comparison, Aiden hated it about me. My own mother just hated whenever I opened my mouth around her. Like I would ever be seeing her any time soon. 

"It does matter because you are out here, sitting in the cold. I am worried about you" he admitted it. He was the only person that had ever told me, to my face, that they were worried about me. Sure, River would say it on the off chance, but I never knew whether or not he was joking or if he would leave me on the side of the road just so that he could get unlimited time with our father. 

"Just go home Angus" I murmured the stupidest comeback ever. I can't take it when someone openly shows me their emotions because I can't show how I am feeling. I don't usually feel like this, and I don't know how to cope with it. "Can you stop calling me Angus, Annalise. I hate my full name" he murmured, anger and defeat mixed into his tone, making it hard to decipher how he was really feeling. 

"Stop calling me Annalise. Maybe then you might piss off, back to where everything you know is perfect" I almost added something that I knew would not go down well. Something that Angus should never know about it, because everyone would know, and no one needs to know about my problems. I have to be the one to fix theirs, not mine. Not everything is about me, and that is the way I like it. 

"Fine. But for once, stop caring about everyone else and what is going on them. I want to know what is going on with you and your life. You never talk about yourself. Even if it isn't about what happened tonight, but just something that no one knows about you. I want to know who you really are, Anna. I want to know you" those words were enough to cut the dam loose. 

I let more tears slip through and down my already wet and cold cheeks. No one had ever asked about me, even my closest friends. "Well-," I went to start, before I realized that there was nothing that he didn't know about me. There was nothing special about me that he needed to know. I didn't even really know who I was most of the time. 

"There has to be something" it felt like he could read right through me, see what really was going on. But, he couldn't. There was no way that the Angus Armani could see me for who I really was, because what would be the point of that? To just be humiliated by not only your own brother, but everyone else, including some of the people you had once called friends. 

"There isn't anything special about me. Tell me about you" I had grown up knowing how to change the subject quickly. It was a technique I had picked up, knowing how to divert anyone that asked about you, to ask about them. I preferred it that anyways, cause I never had anything, like they ever asked me. 

"Well, I am not going to talk about myself. You know everything about me, but I don't know about you" we fell into silence, as I kept my attention on the crashing waves, not noticing the way that Angus had moved closer to me. I hated that he was caring so much about who I was, because at the end of the day, I didn't know who I was, outside the girl who argued with her mother, had lost two siblings because of a competition, and her only living brother hates her. 

Suddenly, two arms wrapped around me, pulling me into their embrace, as I let the sobs take over my entire body. I didn't realize just how much I had needed a hug, from anyone. The last time I could recall someone hugging me was  a few days before I lost River and Riley, those two being the only ones that kept the love going in the household. 

I didn't know just how much I needed Angus Armani. 

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