Page 117 of Reaching Avery
I didn’t know what he meant by that, and once Mom left for work, I was going to finally ask him. He had other ideas, however, and distracted me. Right after Mom left, Declan gave me a smartass look.
“What happened to your face?” he asked without an ounce of sympathy.
“I fell,” I answered, not wanting to get into it. I rinsed out the bowls from dinner before grabbing the pot I’d cooked the noodles in.
“I’m surprised your meathead boyfriend didn’t catch you like the damsel you are.”
“Don’t talk about Mav like that,” I snapped, tossing the pan into the sink. “You don’t know him. And quite frankly, you don’t know me either. It seems he’s the only one who does.”
Declan’s expression turned mocking. “Ah, my name’s Avery and no one understands me. I’m so alone in the world. Boo hoo. Go cry me a damn river and then go drown in it.”
I flinched at the amount of venom in his voice.
I felt like crying, but I didn’t want to give him that power. Having someone I basically helped raise—someone I took care of, helped with his homework, put him to bed, held him when he cried and was scared—treat me like I was the dirt under his shoe, hurt way more than I could even process in that moment.
A tear fell anyway.
And that feeling deep inside awoke. An itch I hadn’t scratched in almost two weeks begged for attention.
There was no fighting it. The urge was not only strong, but unavoidable. Kind of like an addict who’d gone way too long without a fix, and even though theyknewthey shouldn’t give in to the craving, a part of them preferred the guilt of giving in to the pain of a sober mind.
Once I’d made the decision, that weird numb feeling went through me, almost like I was having an out-of-body experience. A void lingered in the pit of my stomach and I felt like I was on auto-pilot—there but not really there.
I brushed past Declan and left the kitchen. He said something from behind me, but I didn’t catch it.
Everything seemed muffled. Or maybe the fog in my brain just drowned everything out. After walking through the living room, I started heading down the narrow hall and toward the bathroom.
That’s when he grabbed me.
“Stop!” he exclaimed. His tight hold on my arm was painful, and I spun around to him. The harsh expression he’d had earlier was gone. His face was crumpled in pain; the internal kind that ate you up from the inside out. “Don’t, Avery.”
“Don’t what?” I asked, not following him. My voice sounded odd to my ears, like I was under water.
I tried pulling away from him, but he held on tighter.
“I know about the cutting,” he said with such agony in his tone that I finally started breaking through the haze in my head. “I found you that night, Avery! I woke up needing to take a piss, and when I went to the bathroom, the door was locked. So, I waited for a while, but when you never came out, I got a knife and popped the lock.”
The blood drained from my face, and my skin got a cold, prickly sensation.
“When I saw you in that tub, my heart stopped,” Declan continued. He was crying now. “I thought you were dead. I tried shaking you to wake you up, but you were like a freaking corpse, Avery. Cold and pale. I was about to scream for Mom when you groaned and moved your head a little. I didn’t want her to see you like that, so I cleaned you up as best I could and put you to bed. Then, I went and cleaned the tub.”
“D, I’m—”
“No,” he growled, squaring his jaw. “You don’t get to talk right now. I was so pissed at you. Angrier than I’ve ever been.” More tears streamed down his face, and he roughly wiped them away. “You’re the one person who’salwaysbeen there for me, Avery. Mom tries and I know she loves us, but it’s always been me and you. When I had a problem, I came to you. The nights Dad went on his violent rampages,you’rethe one who held me and told me it was gonna be okay.You’rethe one who jumped in the way when he tried to hurt me.”
Tears stung my eyes as he talked.
“And when I discovered your sick secret, it put all these damn thoughts in my head that I couldn’t shake.” Declan’s eyes were red around the edges, but he’d stopped crying for the most part. “I thought you were goin’ to leave me, and it pissed me off. Instead of trying to talk to you about it, I got mad. As dumb as it is, I wanted to punish you for it.”
I was speechless. Not that I didn’t have anything to say; I had too much. Most of them were excuses—likeit’s not something I can stop,it makes me feel better—but maybe this was what I needed. The confrontation. A wake-up call.
“Promise me you won’t do it again,” he begged. “I don’t know if you’re doing it with the intention to kill yourself, or if you’ll accidentally go too far one time, but I can’t lose you, Avery.”
“I’m not trying to kill myself,” I said, giving him the most honest answer I could. “There are just times when I get too overwhelmed, and it helps me release it all. Like there’s all these voices in my head and the only way to get them to quiet is by doing that.”
It was hard to grasp that I was actually talking to someone about my cutting. No one had ever known before Declan, and something about finally getting it all off my chest made me feel… invigorated. The itch to cut was also lessened.
“Can you do me a favor?” Declan asked. “When the voices get too loud and you think you’re gonna hurt yourself… will you talk to me instead?”
