Wayward (Wayward #1) ✓ [bxb]

Chapter 7

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Loved the positive feedback from the last chapter. Y'all are awesome. Enjoy the product of my late nights. I update this story every Monday now that I've got my updating schedule up. For my other stories you should check my profile.

SONG - CODES - ELLIE GOULDING

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Vulnerability.

I absolutely hated that word. Leaving a part of yourself weak for others to get an easy pass the prey was as terrible as suicide to me. In a way it was the same thing, because once you leave even the smallest opening of weakness for anyone to take a peek, that's a gunshot to the head.

That's death.

And I had died my own death plenty of times before. With shoves and pushes and insults that burned down to the very core of myself. The words were much more painful than even the hits and bruises. At least with just beatings, it only reached the surface of my body and that pain would slowly fade away. But with words, they were made to reach the very nooks and crannies of your being. To tear you from the inside right out.

Like when I was younger, Nathan Coffey's words tore me down plenty. It was quite understandable, he was my bully. He made my life miserable because I was slightly overweight and ugly. His family was rich and that made him entitled to a lot of things I wasn't then so I was his favorite victim for being the opposite of him.
I got that loud and clear.

But the person whose words hurt the most was my brother Chris. His insults were the ones I didn't understand. His motive for causing me pain was never clear. But it was the one that made the most impact. He never touched me or shoved me around like the guys in school, but every day he didn't miss a beat when it came to making me miserable or hating myself.

Little things like "Watch where you're going lardo." Or "Where's the last ice cream? You probably ate it all you little fat faggot." Tore off little pieces of me every single time. His hatred didn't make sense to me. I was his brother. Weren't brother's supposed to care about each other? Why did mine hate me? The answer was actually pretty clear but to me it still didn't make sense to my then child-like mind.  My brother hated me because I was a little overweight and didn't lift weights like the guys on the football team. Because I was a geek with no friends at all. Because I embarrassed him in school when Nathan Coffey taunted me. Because he was always known as the little brother of the fat ass faggot.

In his right he was a pretty cool guy. He was just in the eighth grade when I was junior. It was even so much more painful because it was my little brother who sent crude insults my way each day. At first I didn't blame him; I ruined his reputation as soon as he entered high school. Instead of a nice clean slate he was labeled as the brother of a freak. But why hadn't he noticed that it hurt me a lot more than it hurt him? That I felt guilty for ruining someone else as well as myself? Why didn't he see that? Why was he so bent on hating me?

After the summer had passed and I was transformed, he was the one that was the shocked the most. My parents who had continually comforted me all those times I came home with tears in my eyes and bruises on my skin didn't know how to take it. All they knew was that I'd taken a trip and come back so much more different than the glasses-wearing, slightly pudgy son they knew and loved all the same. The one who had come in his place was more confident, smiled more and had a certain glint in his eyes they really couldn't put their finger on. It was happiness, finally. He was finally happy.

And as for Chris, well he must have hated me more because the only ammunition he ever had to blame me for anything was gone for good.
He'd felt so much better than me then.