3. Chapter Three
I collapse onto the soft sand as a scream of pain rips from my throat. I clench my hair in my hands as I pull my knees up to my chest just as another scream is torn from me.
How could they?
How could they do this to me?
Rip apart everything I knew.
My entire life has been a lie.
Everything I thought I knew is just pretend. None of it was real.
It feels like my life has been snatched from me yet again.
The one person that I have put all my trust into since the moment I woke up from the coma lied to me.
My brother isn’t dead.
My father isn’t dead.
Rhodes is alive.
My father is alive.
But I feel like I’ m dead.
My heart clenches again as another wave of pain overcomes me.
It is all consuming in a way I have never felt before.
Nothing has ever compared to this.
Not when my life was explained to me ten years ago. Not when the five boys broke my heart and left the pieces to fall where they may.
How could they do this to me?
My parents lied to me. They allowed me to believe that two members of my family had been lost to me. Dead and gone like the remains of my soul.
They convinced me that I was just a normal girl that led a normal life.
What they didn’t seem to realise is that I am smarter than what they believe I obviously am.
The kinds of clothes my father and brother were wearing don’t point to a normal life.
I try to make sense of everything but it just seems to hurt more.
I allow myself to lift my head, wiping the tears and snot from my face.
Maybe later I will care about how disgusting it is but right now isn’t the time for that.
All I am able to feel is betrayal.
Betrayal at my mother for feeding me these lies all of these years.
Anger at my father for allowing any of this.
Bitter at both of them for deceiving me for so long. Allowing me to finally start breaking out from the soul-crushing months that followed that fateful summer, all for it to just come crashing down again.
And my brother. I can’t even begin to decipher just how I feel towards him .
While a part of me is angry and confused, another also feels relieved. Because amongst all of the hurt I felt in the moments of candour, I could see my feelings reflected in his.
Was he deceived like me?
Did he go all these years thinking I too was dead?
Is he angry at our parents?
God, my twin. The person I shared a womb with.
A person I never thought I would ever be able to know, left with only mentions of him. Memories told by second hand experiences.
How can I even believe them when they were told by the person who has spent so long lying to me?
Did she lie about them too?
Is truly everything I know a lie?
I curl even further on myself, allowing the pain to take over.
Maybe the waves will wash me away, taking my pain right along with them.