Page 111 of Poetry of Flowers

Did I do something wrong?

Was he breaking up with me?

“Kayden-.”

“I deserve your hate and the pain, but you don’t, you deserve everything good coming to you, the light, the love. I love you, Fleur, I love you so much it physically hurts. Every song, every melody I ever wrote or sung, was for you. In the back of my mind, you were the muse my heart longed for. You are my favorite melody.” He swallowed and held me tighter.

“And because you mean the world to me, I have to let you go if you need to leave me.”

His chin trembled, and my eyes filled to the brim with tears. My hands brushed through his tangled hair, trying to catch hold of the love between us.

“I won’t ever hate you, please don’t let me go, Kayden.” My voice broke, why should I hate him?

He made me want to live again.

Please don’t leave me alone.

I begged silently.

“Tell me what happened to make you think like that, please just tell me, so I can fix your heart.” Crying, I let my head fall against his chest.

I didn’t understand what was happening. It was my birthday, why was all of this happening today.

Why was it happening at all?

“Tell me Kayden!” I demanded crying harder; I was sick of hearing only riddles I couldn’t solve, and felt something closing up around my throat, making it harder and harder to breathe.

I felt Kayden swallow while he held me even tighter against his body, it was my time to comfort him, but I couldn’t when my heart was bleeding out on his chest.

“I never had a good relationship with my father, you know that because you saw me breaking that one night on Halloween, but I never let you see the dark parts. Letting you believe my father and I just had little fights was one of the hardest things of my whole situation.” His voice broke, and he closed his eyes, tilting his head back before he continued.

“The bruises didn’t come from being clumsy or falling off my bike.” Just when I thought the pain couldn’t get worse, my heart ached even more. I gazed right up at him and stroked the scar on his cheek, now that I knew the truth behind it. The bruises on his cheek, the scraped knees or the broken finger when we were eleven.

“This only happened when I crossed lines in his eyes, but what hurt me the most were his words and how he destroyed the things that really meant something to me. My father always made sure that whatever I did wrong, the punishment would be twice as bad.” A small sob broke through his words. “There was this one time when I ruined one of his shows. He brought me home and made me watch while he cut up all the letters you had written to me when we were little. I screamed and cried, but he didn’t care. My father knew this would hurt me more than anything because he knew how much you meant to me.”

I let my forehead fall against his and softly brushed his lips with mine. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have been there for you; we could have gotten help. God, I’m so sorry, Kayden.”

It’s so hard to imagine that Patrick, my father’s best friend, the nice man who always bought me Twizzlers, was not a nice man at all. How could he do these things to his own son, and why had I never noticed it?

“You love me, Tillie, that’s why I didn’t tell you. You were fighting your own fight, and I couldn’t bring you more fear, more reasons to be sad.”

“But you were always there for me, and I wasn’t for you, that isn’t fair, you needed someone to understand you too!” I cried, Kayden laid my head back against his chest, brushing his thumb slowly over my cheek. Knowing Kayden went through all this alone hurts more than anything at this moment.

“Nash was there for me, our father didn’t hate him or Faith, but he hated me for something that wasn’t my fault. He hated me because I’m not his son. He told me he saw something in me, and had hoped that I would follow in his footsteps someday. That made the fact that I wasn’t his blood even more disappointing.” He explained, his voice suddenly colder than a few moments ago, like he was trying to not show too many emotions.

“Patrick is not your father?”

That means Olivia had an affair with someone else. Patrick had made him suffer for something that was never Kayden’s fault.

My poor love.

He shook his head slowly; silent tears fell on his soaked shirt. The shower head was still spraying water all around and on top of us.

“When I found one of my mother’s diary letters, it didn’t seem real, the only thing I wanted was to find my biological father. Each day it started to hurt even more and when the full knowledge kicked in, I started to feel lost, knowing my whole life was built on a lie. Somehow, I always fought for Patrick’s love because I told myself that every father loved their child at least a little bit. Suddenly, there was no reason, no chance of that anymore.” Kayden lay his head on mine again and his entire body shook in a giant sob. “I feel so unloved, Tillie.”

Instead of saying these words, he could have slapped me, and it would have hurt the same.

I hugged him so tight we could have melted into one.

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