Who's Fault?

Chapter Thirteen

"I don't want this to come across the wrong way, please just know it comes from a good place. I'm worried about you." His gaze shifted to my arms. "I can't imagine the kind of things you must have gone through, and I know I don't know everything, but this—it scares me. I don't want to lose you before I really get to know the real you. So I want you to call me any time, day or night, when you feel the urge to do this again. I don't care how late or early it is, I'll try my hardest to get your mind off of it."

I sat there for a few minutes, trying to digest his words. It was then I decided I was going to tell him the one thing I'd kept from everyone... even from Max. "You wanna know why it bothers me so much when someone calls me Wrennie?"

"If you're willing to tell me, then I will listen."

"When I was in fifth grade, Chloe and I met this kid named Jordan. He was a few years older than us, but he seemed really sweet and funny. He came up with the nickname. Immediately the three of us became very close, almost inseparable outside of school. We practically did everything together. Well, after a while, I realized I had a crush on him and when I was in eighth grade we started dating. He was a junior and all my friends thought it was really cool that I was dating a high schooler. I mean, I guess it was, but I didn't see it that way; I just saw it as we liked each other so we started dating."

I took a moment to gauge his reaction, outside of confusion I couldn't tell. It was like he was hiding it so I had no idea what he was thinking or feeling, but I continued on anyway, "Chloe, Jordan, and I had been friends so long beforehand, we would say that we loved each other all the time. So it was so easy to just fall into the habit of saying it throughout the relationship. It was going really well for a while, but when he graduated high school, he started to change."

"Wren, you don't have to tell me anymore."

"No Eli. I started the story and I'm going to finish it. I messed things up a lot; I did things wrong. I would do his homework to prepare me for college and if I got an answer wrong he would pull me from the desk, toss me across the room and kick me. When I dropped something or if I said something wrong, he would hit me. I always made the wrong decisions.

"Do you remember the first time we went roller skating together and we went to The Box afterward?" He nodded in response, "when I started to freak out, it was because I didn't know what was safe to order. I remembered a time when Jordan and I had gone out to get food to bring home, and I ordered my favorite. He got mad at me because he didn't like what I had gotten and didn't want to spend money on something he didn't like. I mean it makes sense, right? It was so stupid of me. I should have checked to make sure it was okay.

"He would always call me Wrennie, the only times he would ever call me Wren was when I really screwed things up. And it used to terrify me when he did. This was one of those times. When we got home he shoved me into the wall so hard my vision went blurry for a while, demanded to know why I would do that, and he punched me in the face. I had a black eye for at least a week. I deserved it though; I should have known better. I never learned my lesson though, I was always messing something up."

Eli was about to interrupt me, but I wasn't finished yet, "I would cover up the bruises and scratches because I was embarrassed and thought that everyone would know how badly I always messed things up. That went on throughout my years in high school. Until one day in my junior year, he just disappeared. He didn't return any texts or phone calls. I think I messed up so bad that I made him go away. That's left me really fucked up."

"You know none of that was your fault, right? He abused you for years, that's on him."

"I know, I try to tell myself that all the time; it doesn't always compute. Um, anyway after that I dated Xavier for maybe a month. It was weird, I kind of jumped into it thinking that it would help me forget. But it didn't, it just felt wrong. I didn't like him that much, he was just a person that was there. I couldn't do it though, so I broke it off."