A/N: Hey guys, sorry for the long wait. I hope I can make it up to you in the next few days. I made a few changes in the previous chapter (right after they went home from the party - during their heart-to-heart talk - so if you guys would like to take a recap from there, this chapter would make so much more sense)
Anyways, I hope you enjoy this one.
~.~.~
"You remember Wayne, don't you?" Alex asked.
I nodded, "Your brother, right? He picked us up from the police station the other time."
"Yeah." Alex confirmed.
"Do you remember the crazy stories I told you about my brother?" He asked me.
"About how he punched his locker open just for the heck of it?" I asked, a bit rhetorically as I held in a snort. "Yeah, how am I supposed to forget that. It left quite the impression on me. A much different one to what I actually got from our first meet, though."
Alex nodded as if that's completely normal.
"You can say that the person who punched his locker open and the guy you met at the police station were two completely different people." Alex said, making me look at him in confusion.
"What do you mean?" I asked, trying to wrap my head around his statement.
"Wayne's an ex-junkie, he started during his high school days," Alex explained. "In other words, he was probably on something when he tried punching that locker open for the heck of it."
"Oh," was all I could manage.
Alex ran a hand through his hair as he continued. "We only found out about it after things got bad." Alex said, finally letting a part of the cat out of the bag.
"Bad?" I asked, hoping that it wasn't as bad as I thought it to be.
It was worse.
"At first, things started disappearing from the house. Little things. The souvenirs we bought from our holidays, then it was my mom's jewelries, cash from the safe, our asset ownership certificates." Alex listed, and as his list went on, the harder it was for me to suppress my disbelief.
"We thought it was one of the maintenance people who came to fix the TV in my parents' room. So we checked the CCTV and we caught my brother taking everything that was gone." Alex shook his head.
"My parents, I don't know what they were thinking - they turned a blind eye on what my brother was doing." He scoffed, his eyes rolling and ending up looking at the sky above our heads.
"Looking back now, it was probably to save their faces, their reputation. They didn't want anyone to know that their son had stolen something or maybe they just didn't want to acknowledge that something was going on with one of their perfect sons."
"Because of that, they deluded themselves into thinking that he was probably trying to start a business. That he needed the money but wanted to keep it a secret from them to prevent them from worrying." He turned to me with an indescribable look. A look that a wronged person wears. A look that was torn between crying out of despair and laughing out of the ridiculousness of the situation. "Ridiculous isn't it?"
I wasn't not going to lie. A part of me wanted to argue with him on the assumptions he made about his parents. Not to defend them, but to save him from the hate he was choking on. I can't imagine how awful it must feel to look at the people who are supposed to love you more than anything in this world and believe that they didn't.
But as I stayed quiet and kept my thoughts to myself, I soon found out why he referred to them with so much spite.
"It wasn't until things escalated that they were finally forced to do something." Alex spat the word 'forced' as if it was poison.
"There's more?" I thought to myself, already dreading what was coming next.
"One day, we received a call from someone asking us for money. He said that Wayne had borrowed a million dollars from him."
My eyes bulged out at the number and my head whipped to the side to look at Alex to see if he was kidding.
No, he was dead serious.
"That was how we found out that Wayne had been gambling with the money he stole from my parents in hopes of getting more money to buy more drugs." Alex gave me a look that said he understood my reaction.
"Like I said, it gets pretty bad. But that's not the worst part." He warned me. I gulped, not liking where the story was going.
"My parents, again, paid no heed to the call because they simply refused to believe that their perfect son would do anything of the sort." Alex said with a posh accent, a tone that was clearly intended to mock his parents. "They refused to pay the money."
Alex shook his head for the nth time since he begun the story, "I didn't understand how they were so oblivious at the time. At that point, it was clear to anyone that Wayne was not alright. The symptoms of his drug abuse were starting to show physically and even I could see that he wasn't alright. I don't see how two adults who thought they were capable of having kids would have missed that."
"A few days later, another call came in from another debt collector and this time, the amount that he brought up was way more than the last." Alex let out a slightly shaky breath, and I knew that we were getting close to the worst part. "Again, their threats and blackmails went into deaf ears."
"What could small petty loan sharks do to our family, right?" Alex sighed.
"A week after the last call we received, I was hanging out with the boys in a bar. I stepped away to go to the restroom outside of the bar and before I knew it, I felt a dull pain in the back of my head and my lights were out. When I opened my eyes, I was already in a dark warehouse."
I bit my lower lip as I looked at him, concerned. A part of me tried to reassure my conscience that he was alright. I mean, it's been years, he had probably moved on from what happened right?
But then I remembered the panic attack he had after he had gotten hit by Ty and I immediately knew that he was nowhere near alright.
"Once I woke up, I was hanging from the ceiling, bound by chains that were wrapped around my wrists and my feet tied together. The perfect punching bag. A second after I came to my senses, a few guys came in and beat me up a few times. They had to prepare me to give my parents the perfect show. You know, the usual kidnapping scheme; they beat you up, send a video of you getting beaten up and pictures of the final look to your parents and ask for a ransom in return for their dear son." Alex let out a humourless chuckle. "Now that I think about it, they really weren't that creative, were they?"
I stared at Alex. My heart ached and my arms were twitching to reach out and hold him. You could see the fear in his eyes as he talked about what happened despite the mask of hate he wore.
He was terrified.
"Alex.." I called out.
When he turned to meet my eyes, I finally caught the tears that were threatening to spill over and that was the last straw. My hand reached out and caught his arm, pulling him towards me and wrapping my arms around his body.
Alex finally let himself go, his body shaking as sobs came out of him. I felt the shift of his weight as his legs turned weak. He clung onto the front of my shirt as he buried his face in the crook of my neck.
All I could do was hold him, support his weight and stroke his back while whispering reassuring things into his ear.
Alexander West completely broke down in front of me.
My heart broke with every sob he let out.
"You're alright. You're safe now." I whispered into his ear as I held him.
Alex eventually calmed down. His sobs ceased to small sniffles and he pulled away from me, wiping his tears and apologizing.
"It's alright." I assured him.
After a moment of silence as I gave Alex space to collect himself, I finally gathered the courage to ask him the question that's been burning in the back of my mind.
"Are you aware of.." I trailed off, not knowing how to put it into words without triggering him.
Alex tilted his head in confusion as he waited for me to finish my sentence.
"Do you know what happened to you that day after Ty had punched you?" I finally asked.
"I.. I'm not sure. I'm sure it's something like PTSD from what happened but I've never gotten clinically checked." He answered, confirming my suspicions.
"Does it happen often to you?" I asked.
Alex remained silent for a long time before finally answering, "Honestly? Whenever I'm alone in a room that's dimly lit, I would feel uneasy, my palms would start sweating and I'd feel a bit lightheaded. I guess it would remind me of the few seconds I was in the warehouse alone before they came and started beating me."
My hands clenched itself, keeping myself in check. I wanted to throw hands at the people that thought it was alright to use a living human being as a ransom tool.
"Can I ask you something?" I asked him.
"Yeah, of course." He answered, shrugging, gaining his nonchalant aura back.
"Why didn't you get clinically checked?" I was hoping that I wasn't opening old wounds but it was most likely that the wounds were already opened and raw the second that he decided to remember and share what happened with me.
Alex shrugged, "They wouldn't let me."
I turned to him, shocked.
"After that incident, my parents couldn't ignore my brother's issue any longer. They had to accept that my brother was not perfect to get him fixed. I guess having to admit that one of their sons wasn't so perfect was it for them. They wouldn't have two imperfect sons. So they refused to have another imperfect son." Alex elaborated.
"What do you mean by 'refused'?" I asked him incredulously.
"As in they would not - or could not - acknowledge that their other son, their only other son, to be imperfect." Alex explained for me.
I could only stare at him with a gaping mouth.
Alex spared me a side look, giving me a knowing smirk. "Like I said, their reputation matters most. To have none of their sons grow up normal is a stain to their reputation as parents and it ruins the perfect family image they've built."
I looked at him, appalled. The feeling wasn't directed at him, of course, but at what his parents had prioritised over their sons' health.
"So that's it? Just to maintain their so-called 'image', they would sacrifice their children's wellbeing?" Was what I wanted to say. But there was no point in saying it. I was worried that it would only rub salt into the wound to repeat something so.. cruel.
So I remained silent. Instead, I shook my head and turned away to hide the pained expression I was wearing. I didn't want him to be reminded of that incident anymore.
"I think we've been out long enough. It's getting pretty late. Your parents must be worried." Alex said, checking the time on his phone.
I nodded, agreeing with him, and we walked back to the car.
The ride home was silent as we both tried to digest everything that just happened between us.
A part of me liked this sense of familiarity. A sense of nostalgia. This was what it had been like, having Alex as a best friend. I could share anything that was bothering me with him and I could trust him to do the same. No secrets between us.
Another part of me felt a pang of pain when flashes of Alex's story pass through my mind, remembering what he had shared.
Another part was brimming with anger towards the people that did that to Alex.
And another part was filled with sadness that I wasn't there for him these past few years as he struggled with this alone.
His anxiety whenever he was alone in a room must be why he likes being in parties so much. The flashing lights and the crowd must be a form of comfort to him.
I stared at his side profile as thoughts ran through my head.
"Alright, that's enough staring for the night. We're here." Alex finally said after 15 minutes of driving with me boring a hole into the side of my head.
I looked around, startled at his statement and found that he was right.
The car was parked right in front of the gates to my house. The whole street was dark, not a soul to be seen, with only the light from the roadside lamp, lighting a spot 10 meters apart.
"Thanks," I murmured, unbuckling my seatbelt.
"No problem." He replied, out of reflex.
My hand hovered over the car door handle as I contemplated my next words.
Do I say it? Is it okay for me to say it?
Ah, fuck it.
"Alex?" I started to say before getting out of the car.
"Hm?" Alex raised his eyebrows questioningly.
"Thank you." I said, "for sharing about what happened with me."
Alex gave me a soft smile, sending a warm feeling through me. "Thanks too, for being there for me."
I returned his smile before opening the car door and getting off. I waved at him as he drove away and I slipped past the gate and front door, into my room, as quiet and stealthy as a mouse.
~.~.~
A/N: I wonder what kind of ending you guys are hoping for for this story hehe. Leave a comment.. maybe I'll take it into consideration :))
Thanks for reading guys
-J