Create A Surreptitious Move

28 || Invisible string

"What did he do?" Blaine asks, still drawing comforting shapes on my arm.

"He'd come home late, he'd wake me up and put me in the car. He would dive around while he was drunk, in the middle of the night to punish me. With him being drunk, most of the time he'd end up crashing. He knew it terrified me that's why he kept doing it. The night I got out of the hospital he was livid. I'd never seen him so angry. He was screaming at me for causing such a scene and telling me how embarrassed he was to have me as a daughter. At full speed he crashed the car into a tree. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt and so he died. I feel guilty for feeling relieved that he's gone."

"He abused you for years. It sounds to me like he got what he deserved, Karma finally caught up to him."

I pull his arm from my shoulder and hug it against my chest. He pulls me closer towards him so my back is pressed against his chest. He nuzzels his head into my shoulder and my eyes flutter shut.

His touch makes me feel all kinds of things I've never felt before. Mostly, I feel safe.

I didn't like Blaine at first and I'm not quite sure when or how that changed.

I feel drawn to him like there's an invisible string tying the two of us together.

I'm not exactly sure what I feel when I'm around him but it's a sort of warmness.

Although he's not perfect, he really seems to understand me and in the aspects that he doesn't understand he's willing to learn. He stayed up for hours researching eating disorders so that he could help and understand me as best he could. He bought me a cat because he knew it would make me happy and he was going to take absolutely no credit for it. He didn't want me to see the soft side to him but I'm determined to see the real him too. Maybe Blaine can be a bad guy but I think underneath all of that is a kind soul.

"Would me talking about my shitty parents make you feel any better?" He asks.

"If you're comfortable telling me then I'd like to know, I'm good at listening too." I say, handing the choice over to him.

"You can probably tell from what you heard before that I don't like my parents and they don't like me either." He starts. "They always held me up to the highest standards, even as a kid. They were so much more than strict parents, they were constantly telling me what to do and scrutinizing every little thing I did."

"That sounds awful." I say, turning in his grasp to face him.

"It was and to add insult to injury when Vanessa got older they basically let her do whatever the fuck she wanted. I'm the oldest though and therefore their heir whether they liked it or not. I was trained and sculpted my whole life to be perfectly fit for this role. Think of my parents disappointment when I changed their mafia and everything they made at the first opportunity I got." Blaine averts his eyes from mine, looking off in thought.

My hand presses lightly against his cheek, turning his face back to me.

"What did they do?" I ask.

"You really want to know?"

"You can tell me."

"When I was a kid my father used to beat me for what he classed as bad behaviour. As I got older I started fighting back, he liked that. He claimed it was making me stronger so he'd do it more often. What he didn't like was me talking back because that he couldn't control but he still tried to. When I became the leader and changed everything, my mother tried to manipulate me into giving them back their titles and when I refused she basically disowned me. My father, well, he got physical. He tried to talk some sense into me with his insults and when I wouldn't listen he threw a glass bottle at my head. I luckily managed to dodge it but when it shattered against the wall some of the shards flew off and stuck in my arm." He says. "After that I wasn't going to just let him get away with it. I punched him, hard in the face. We got into a huge fist fight, I wasn't doing that great against him, since he had years of additional experience at being the don, but I was able to hold my own until he decided to play dirty and bring weapons into it."