Revealing Lennon ✔

24 || Rowan

"But I haven't eaten." He whined.

I just poured him a bowl of cereal. "Here, eat it in the car."

"Fine..." He took the bowl. "Maybe it was you who woke up on the wrong side of the bed."

--

Lennon and I were finally alone in my car, sitting in the school parking lot.

"How have you been?" I asked her, turning down the radio so we could talk.

"I'm good..." She muttered, looking down at her hands.

"You sure?" I hesitated but questioned anyway. She didn't sound sure. Her eyes flickered up and met mine briefly. For a minute her mouth hung open, like there was something she wanted to say but didn't. "Lennon?" I urged her to tell me. Instead she changed the subject.

"How's the stomach?" She asked and her hand reached out. I waited for it to brush across my shirt, along my healing stitches, but it never did. She pulled her hand away right before it could touch.

"Almost all healed. I'm going to have one heck of a scar though." I laughed.

"Good." She smiled. "Lachlan seems like a character."

"Oh trust me he is. There's never a dull moment in the Taylors household with him around. It can get annoying though. I'm very short tempered." I told her and she gave me a funny look. "What?"

"You don't seem short tempered." She pointed out.

"Only with him."

"Oh yeah I get that, you should see me and my sister." She joked but I could sense the seriousness in her voice. This was bothering her.

"Do you guys fight a lot?" I asked.

"Lately we do..." She muttered. Did she want to tell me more? I wasn't sure.

"What about?"

"Um... Well... Boys I guess." She gulped and I nodded. "I just, she's only fourteen and she's into wearing all these scandalous clothes and lots of makeup." She paused, looking forward. "I just... Don't want her to be taken advantage of... Like I was." Oh... I sighed and reached forward slowly, making sure it was okay for me to hold her hand.

"I can understand that, and since she doesn't know where you're coming from it just ends in a fight, even though you're trying to protect her." I rubbed circles on her palm with my thumb.

"Yeah... Exactly."

"Why- Why didn't you tell your family?" I asked carefully. "You don't have to answer." I added, making sure I wasn't forcing her into anything.

"It's okay... Um- I guess I didn't want to change how they saw me. I didn't want anyone to look at me differently or pitty me, or think of me any differently. Maybe I was just trying to tell myself, it didn't change me... I was wrong..."

"Do I?" I asked her, but she just furrowed her eyebrows at me.

"Hmm?"

"Do I look at you differently, treat you differently?" I hadn't thought about it but I knew I didn't want to treat her differently. When I found out had I pitied her? Maybe. Did I think of her differently? Probably.

"No..." She shook her head. "I don't think so."

"Okay, good." I smiled at her.

"Rowan..."

"Yeah?" I searched her eyes, wondering what she was about to ask me.

"Why are you so nice to me? Why don't you look at me differently? I look at me differently..." She looked down at our hands.