Tears flowed heavily from her eyes as Landon told his parents, “Until Ashley can be respective of my woman, a woman whom I plan to spend my life loving, we will never be in the same room as her again. I’m sorry, Mom. Dad, you’d do the same and you know it.”
Pulling back from him, tears steadily falling down her face, she looked into his eyes amazed he would try and do this for her but she wouldn’t allow it. “No, Landon. I’ll leave. I won’t do this to your family.”
Fighting her way from his arms, she went to leave when Rosa shouted, “Wait just a damn minute, young lady!” She stopped in her tracks— that mother voice would freeze the devil himself.
“Ashley Rose Powers, what the hell has gotten into you?” Rosa demanded. “What do you have against this sweet girl?” Cecilia still couldn’t turn around.
“I’ve gone to school with her my entire life, Mother. She’s like a dog you can’t put down out of pity.”
She did turn then, slowly. “What?” Cecilia could barely breathe.
Do people really think that about me?
“Oh please, don’t act so shocked.”
“Why?”
Ashley seemed taken aback by her question. She’d never spoken more than a dozen words to the other woman in her life. Refusing to acknowledge the insults she’d always spewed.
“You honestly don’t know, do you?” Landon asked Ashley with disgust.
Shooting Cecilia a nasty look, Ashley whipped around so fast that no one had time to stop her as she slammed out the door followed by a frustrated scream.
A hand on her shoulder startled her into jumping away from the unwanted contact. Glancing behind her, she saw Matthew with a sad look in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Cecilia,” he murmured quietly. His gaze moving to the door that his daughter had just stormed out of. “We had no idea.”
Years of frustration and anger welled inside her. How did they not know? She’d been dealing with Ashley’s crap since she was ten-years-old. Her own parents had made numerous phone calls over the years before they passed away. Most of them had been because of how cruel Ashley’s words had always been.
“How? How did you not know? She has been bullying me since we were ten years old. Do you know the name she calls me? Mark me crazy… You know why? The scars. This one,” she pointed to the one on her cheek, “was so much worse ten years ago. It used to pull my eye down and my lip up at a crazy angle. At first, she only called me crazy marks, but then when we were fourteen a boy liked me, I refused to sleep with him and cried when he tried to force me. The two of them came up with the new name ‘Mark me crazy’.”
Out of breath, she looked to Landon to see anger so intense cross his features that she took a step back. His parent’s faces were pale with shock, and she was ready to get sick.
Hearing Cecilia let go of her anger infuriated him. Not because she was finally getting it out, even if it was at his parents, but because he’d never known either. He knew Ashley and her had history, but he had no idea just how much.
He could remember the phone calls about Ashley bullying some kid, but he hadn't known it was his goddess. She’d suffered so much in her short life. First, the accident that forever marked her, then the relentless bullying, her parents’ death, and now she was faced with her tormentor for the rest of her life because he’d become infatuated with her and had no plans on ever letting her go.
When she finally stopped to take a breath, she looked at him and must have misunderstood his anger because she took a step back. He was angry for her, not at her. But she wouldn’t know that and at the moment, he was at a loss as to how to explain how pissed he was at the whole system for their laws on bullying. How much he hated that his parents didn’t do more to get Ashley to stop her torment. Pissed that he hadn’t looked into more himself.
“Sweets,” he whispered as softly as he could manage.
Walking up to her, he wrapped her in his arms again. A place where she had said she felt safest. A place where he knew she was safe. In his arms, she never had to fear anything.
Turning her in his direction, he grabbed her face in both hands tilting her head up to meet his gaze and told her roughly, “I am so fucking sorry, Cec. I’m sorry we didn’t know it was you. I’m sorry that it was you. But mostly, I’m fucking sorry as hell I didn’t find you sooner.”
Lowering his head, he placed his lips on hers in a light kiss meant to soothe her. Pouring everything he felt into the light touch, he hoped she understood just how much she’d come to mean to him in the short time they’d known each other.
Fuck anyone who thought love at first sight was bullshit; he was living it with an intensity that often left him light-headed.
“I don’t blame you, Landon. I’m just shocked that she thinks that about me. That my life can mean so little to someone who has no idea about the things I’ve gone through. In all the years she’s been tormenting me, not once did I wish her to be ‘put down like a dog’.” His breath caught in misery upon her repetition of his sister’s words, and hand to God, he had tears in his eyes for her pain. He felt it as though it were his own.
Kissing her lightly on the head, he felt movement on either side of him as his parents joined their small moment.
“Cecilia, please. I am so sorry. A parent only ever wants to protect their child and in protecting ours, we’ve let you down. Please don’t leave dear; we want you here. Things with our daughter will figure themselves out,” his mother told her.
As Cecilia nodded her head and gave a watery smile, his father told her, “You will always be welcome in our home, sweetheart, never doubt that. You make this hard-headed fool boy of mine smile and that’s the only thing we could ever want.”
“Thank you both. That means a lot to me. One day, I hope Ashley and I can find some sort of peace.”
Hugging Cecilia, his mother joked, “Let’s eat! All this emotion has me craving cupcakes!”