ONE
It's hard for her to admit what went wrong with them.
Mainly because she has no idea.
She has no fucking clue what happened to them and she thinks about it all the time.
She wonders when they really stopped caring.
She wonders when they really stopped talking.
She wonders what happened to her.
She used to be fine. After her mother's death and having to live with the father she'd never met, she'd been fine. She cried sometimes, as it was only natural, but then it was normal.
Now silent tears run down her cheeks in the classroom and sobs break her lips for no understood reason.
Because she's broken. She's lost. She cares and couldn't care less at the same time.
She feels so fucking crushed.
She sits in the Bunker, the boys spread out around her, Cooper snoring in his bed. She watches them, sees and studies Hiram's classic dirty comments and his jokes. When he looks to her for her reaction, she allows her lips to quirk upwards.
He accepts it.
He has no idea.
Shelton's still quiet and stays on the computer, practicing his skills on Codecademy, hacking the security system of Claybourne Manor when he feels like it. It's normal to him, normal to everyone and he's never been overly close to her.
He's the easiest one to deceive. She doesn't like it, not really.
But it's better for everyone.
Better for her.
Ben.
The one she liked,
the one she maybe even loved.
Who even knows anymore?
He looks at her across the room and she stares back.
Nothing.
Not for months.
Not anymore.
So they pretend.
It's hard,
yet it's easy.
What went wrong?
Everything.