Butterfly Effect

14: Insecurities

Hailee's Pov

That Saturday I woke up when I heard the front door of the apartament open and close; a sign that Maya was back from her twenty four hours shift.
After getting dressed with a comfortable pair of sweatpants and an oversize t-shirt, I grabbed the book that I was reading, The Cruel Prince, and I walked to the kitchen, but I stopped immediately as I heard them talk about something that drained the color from my face.
"We have to tell Lia that you are pregnant, Carina. We can't hide that from her any longer" Maya said and my breath got stuck in my throat.
Carina was pregnant? That meant... That meant that they... Were they sending me back to the system?
That was it. The beautiful dream was over. The bubble that comforted me for weeks had popped, and I couldn't do anything to stop my new world from falling apart under my feet.
"You are pregnant!?" I said terrified, entering the room with their eyes on me. Maya seemed relieved and Carina looked like a deer in the middle of the highway.
"Hailee" she started, but I stopped her with a gesture of my hand.
"I knew it! I fucking knew it!" I raised my voice "I knew that the dream was going to end like this... With you two throwing me away like trash because now you have what you've always wanted".
I wasn't thinking straight at that moment, I was just feeling all of my past traumas and my fears. I was just a terrified little girl...
"No one wants me around... Neither my own fucking mother wanted me around, so maybe you'll be better off without me... I'm just a screwed up kid..." I said, starting to cry.
I looked at them one last time, noticing the tears running down Maya's face and Carina's heartbroken expression. I was heartbroken too... They were the only two people that I wanted to call my family. I wanted to call them my moms...
Without saying anything more, I just turned around and ran to my room, taking one of the pillows from the bed and my headphones from my nightstand.
I sat down on the floor with my shoulders against the wall, putting my headphones on and making the music flow into my ears, trying to keep the rest of the world out of my head.
I cried and yelled, burying my sobs in the pillow pressed against my face with force.
After a while, I started to scratch my wrists, leaving burning red marks all over the skin of my upper arms. It hurt like hell, but I didn't care... Everything was better than feeling that sense of abandonment. Everything was better than that terrible psychological pain that wasn't going away...

Maya's Pov

I was still stuck when Lia ran into her room, slamming the door behind her back, and that sound made my wife fall on her knees, sobbing.
I was torn in two different pieces: my wife and my daughter needed me, but I wasn't sure to whom I needed to go first. Carina or Lia?
Maybe getting it wrong, I decided to let Hailee calm down a bit, so I kneeled in front of my wife and I brought my hands to her cheeks, making her eyes look directly into mine. I knew that she loved my blue eyes, she'd always said that they remind her of the sea...
"I should never have left her... My-my daughter hates me because I made the wrong choice..." she said and her beautiful hazel eyes were glossy because of the tears.
"No... My love, listen to me... You did what you needed to do for yourself back then. You could have never prevented something like this..." I said softly but with a firm voice.
Carina remained silent for a minute, with everything that had just happened stuck in her head, and all of her memories from that period of time making every emotion even stronger.
"We need to talk to her. We need to tell Hailee that we don't want to send her away. I need to... I need to..." she blurted out, but the words died in her throat as she let out another heart shattering sob. I hated seeing her like that...
"You need to breathe my love. That's all you need to do right now. I will talk to her and, when you two are both calm, we will talk all together as a family" I said and she nodded, taking a deep breath in. I helped her to get up and I walked her to the couch, letting her get settled before running to Hailee's room.
I quietly opened the door, seeing her in the corner of the room with a pillow on her face and the headphones on. She looked so small and fragile sitting there on the floor with tears on her face and that pillow in her arms.
I walked toward her and I sat by her side in silence, not wanting to scare her in this delicate moment. I knew that she was aware of my presence, and that she knew that I knew, but she was trying to pretend that I wasn't there. Trying to keep her dream alive for as long as possible...
She stopped the music that was playing in her headphones and I gently removed them from her head, still sitting in silence next to her. Then I waited for her to start talking, because I was conscious that she still needed time to collect her thoughts.
"Go away. You don't have to pretend that you care for me now" she said without emotion.
"I'm not going anywhere and I'm not pretending. I do care so much about you, we both do" I responded and she shook her head.
"No. You are just like everyone else. Now that you have your own family I will be sent back into the system. People always do that... They take me in and when they get tired of me, they throw me away like trash".
Her emotionless voice sent shivers down my spine, making me realize how used she was to all of this crap.
"Look Lia, I know you won't believe anything that I'm about to say, but I need you to understand that you are not going anywhere. We love you like a parent is supposed to love their child, and yes... Carina is pregnant, but that doesn't mean that you are being sent away. We love you, you are part of this family" I said calmly and, without saying anything, she lowered her head on my shoulder.
At that moment I realized how much I loved her. She was Carina's kid, but I loved her like she was a part of my heart that had been ripped out of my chest and that was now walking around the world.
I put my head on hers, and my eyes looked at her arms wrapped around her pillow, seeing the red scratch marks. Suddenly I felt my skin burning, remembering a feeling that I wanted to forget...
"What did you do to your arms Lia?" I asked and she tensed up next to me.
"I needed to feel something else. Anything else. I'm sorry" she whispered, playing nervously with her fingers.
"You have no reasons to be sorry" I started "But next time I want you to call me if you're feeling like this. I can help you".
"How? No one ever understands why I feel the urge to do something like this to myself... They all say that I'm crazy or something..." she responded.
"Because I can actually understand that urge. And even if I'm still working on that, I can help you out" I said, showing my left arm, where there were a lot of tiny little scars.
She looked at them with a weird expression, and then she brought a shaky hand to my skin, touching them lightly.
"When did you start?" she asked with a sense of pain in her voice.
"The first time I was thirteen...". She looked at me with confusion. "I had a rough childhood and that seemed the only escape that I had" I explained.
"When was the last time?" her voice was so low that I almost didn't hear her.
"Last February. I had a bad moment and pushed everyone away, including Carina, so I went back for a while to my old coping mechanisms... Now I'm working with the same therapist that made my diagnosis, Diane Lewis, so I can stay away from those damaging methods" I said, focusing on Hailee's fingers on my forearm.
"I promise you... I promise that I'll call you" she said and I gave her a kiss on the top of the head, noticing that her wavy brown hair smelled like Carina's. She was using the same conditioner as her mother... I didn't know exactly why, but that little detail made me smile.
She was so similar to her mom...
"You can talk with Carina too... She'd helped me out a lot, and I know that she would be there for you in a heartbeat if you called her" I added and she moved her head to look at me in the eyes.
"Is she mad at me for yelling?" Lia asked worriedly and I shook my head with a small smile.
"She's sad for you and full of hormones... So no, she's not mad at you Lia. She wanted to come here too and talk to you, but she needed a second too. Do you want to go and see her in the living room?" I said and she nodded.
I knew that she still had a lot of insecurities, but I hoped that she could start to see that she was a part of our family, and that she would be a part of it for a really long time.

A.N. Hi guys, thank you so much for 2k readers, this is a dream becoming true for me. So thank you so so much.