CHAPTER 77

Ding Dong!

The next morning, Emily's dad opened the door to see Miguel. But this didn't look like the same dishevelled mess he was getting accustomed to. He looked a million times better, and Emily's dad couldn't help but smile at him.

"Miguel! You came." He said. Miguel nodded.

"I'm a man of my word, Mr. Cahill. Or at least I try to be." Miguel murmured.

"Well, despite for the hundredth time you calling me Mr. Cahill rather than my first name…" Henry grumbled. "It's good to see you."

Emily's dad then led Miguel into the house. As Miguel stepped inside the extremely familiar house, he realised that there was something fundamentally different about it. It was quiet. Too quiet. A house that was always full of life, laughter and light was deathly dark and quiet. It was weird, but understandable given that the brightest bulb in the house had had its light dimmed.

After a short conversation with Emily's dad, Miguel then began to make his way up the stairs, to the room he had been too scared to go to in the past month. To see the person he cared about most in the world, at the lowest she had ever been. As Miguel made it to the familiar door at the end of the hallway, he heard the shower going from the ensuite bathroom inside, so he stopped for a moment and took a deep, shaky breath. He could feel his hands trembling in his pockets. He had no clue how bad of a state Emily was in, but from what everyone had told him, it wasn't good. He was extremely anxious to gauge how deep her scars, both physical and mental, but he forced himself to push those nerves deep down.

Miguel's hand reached for the door handle but he soon found out that the door was locked. Just as well too, given that Emily was still in the bathroom and it probably wouldn't be the best idea to scare her as she stepped out. So Miguel merely stood there, shaking his foot nervously, waiting for the sound of the water switching off, or the bathroom door opening. However, the sound he heard was the exact opposite of what he wanted to hear. It was a scream of pain, quiet yet unmistakable. Immediately, Miguel snapped into action. He fiddled with the doorknob, trying desperately to open it, but when that failed, Miguel resorted to force. He took a few steps back, and then threw his whole body at the door, his brute force breaking the door lock and causing him to burst into Emily's bedroom. He immediately rushed over to the bathroom, opening the door and running inside.

He had no clue what to expect once inside, but whatever he thought, this wasn't it. Emily was curled up, naked, in the corner of the bathtub. For a couple of seconds, Miguel couldn't see what was hurting her, or what had hurt her. But then the blood came into view and as soon as it did, Miguel's instincts set in. He forgot about who was opposite him. He forgot everything about the situation but the matter at hand. And that was to stop the blood, wherever it was coming from. But how should he do that?

Two months ago…

"I honestly don't understand why you put your body through this." Emily murmured worriedly as she led Miguel into her house, his arm over her shoulder as she supported most of his weight. He had just been at George's house, and the two had practised sparring in the backyard. Needless to say, by the end of it, both were in bad shape but Miguel had ended up slightly worse for wear. As well as his knee throbbing like hell, he had received a rather large gash on the side of his head that he didn't wipe up before he left George's. He only noticed it after he had left George's house as it had begun to drip down his face onto his car seat. He groaned as he felt the warm, metallic liquid roll down his cheek. He quickly made his way over to the house of the first person he thought of, and as soon as she opened the door, her eyes widened in alarm at the sight of him.

"It's fun." Miguel replied, smiling faintly as he was led into Emily's house and up to her bedroom. They had started dating a week ago, so it wasn't strange for Miguel to have just shown up on her doorstep.

"Fun? You're literally dripping blood onto my arm and you say you consider this retard fighting fun?!" Emily exclaimed.

"Come on, it's called having an active lifestyle! Beats sitting around all day, playing video games anyway." Miguel remarked.

"Hey, if you played video games all day, I wouldn't have to be carrying my injured boyfriend into my house to get patched up right now." Emily commented. Miguel laughed.

"Em, I'll tell you, if I played video games all day, you wouldn't be ABLE to carry me into your house I'd be so fat." Miguel joked. Emily rolled her eyes and at that moment, they made it to her bedroom. She helped him limp into the bathroom and as he stood leaning against the sink, she rummaged through the cabinet above the sink, eventually pulling out a first aid kit.

Emily took out an antiseptic wipe before walking back to Miguel, raising the wipe to his face and beginning to wipe up the wound. Immediately, Miguel felt a stinging pain, and he hissed in pain.

"Ow." He muttered.

"You having second thoughts about that 'active lifestyle' of yours?" Emily asked. Miguel, wincing in pain, shook his head.

"Nope." He smirked at her. She rolled her eyes, holding his face to steady it.

"Hold still." She instructed him. For someone so laid back at times, when it came to health, she was surprisingly stern. Miguel knew how nervous she got whenever he got hurt, so he thought better than to argue some more and did exactly what he said as she patched him up.

A couple of minutes later, Emily was done, having wiped his face with an antiseptic wipe and also bandaged it up.

"There you go." She murmured, kissing him before standing back. "Good as new…"

Back to the present…

First aid kit, right, Miguel thought to himself as the memory flashed through him. He quickly scrambled over to the cabinet where Emily had grabbed the first aid kit all those months ago. He grabbed it out of the cupboard and put it down, before walking back over to Emily and lifting her out of the shower.

"Miguel! What the hell?" Emily was taken completely by surprise by seeing Miguel there. Miguel was also in shock though at how easy he could lift Emily. She had gotten scarily skinny, so thin that he could practically easily see every rib on her body.

Miguel didn't say anything to her. He was too concentrated about the task at hand. Miguel placed Emily on the sink counter, and then began rummaging through the first aid kit.

"What are you doing here, Miguel?" Emily murmured weakly. "Answer me."

"This is going to sting a little." That's all Miguel said as he pulled out an antiseptic wipe and began to wipe the large cut on Emily's upper right thigh. Emily cried out softly in pain and instinctively grabbed Miguel's other hand for support. But as soon as she did, she remembered everything that had gone down between them and quickly let go. So all she did was continue to let out quiet moans of pain as Miguel wiped up the wound on her leg, before patching it up with a bandage. Miguel stood back moments later once he was done.

"I'll let you get dressed." He said, before walking out of the bathroom and back into Emily's room. There, he paced around the room nervously, reflecting on the Emily he had just seen. Not only was she scarily thin, but there were other worrying things too about her that Miguel had noticed.

A couple of minutes later, Emily walked back out of the bathroom, into her room, now wearing sweatpants and an old hoodie. Miguel's head whipped around to face her as she walked into the room, ready to talk to her, but Emily had other ideas. She didn't even look up at him, and instead immediately made a beeline for her bed, crawling in and turning her back to Miguel, not saying a word. Miguel sighed, accepting the situation, and took a deep, nervous breath.

"Look, I'm really sorry I didn't come to see you earlier. I should've come."

There was a long silence as Miguel nervously waited a response. Emily, however, stayed silent so he didn't get one for a long while.

"What are you doing here?" Emily asked, alarmingly fraily.

"I wanted to come talk to you. See how you're doing." Miguel replied gently.

"Well I don't want you here, so just… just stay away from me. You've become pretty good at that anyway." Emily snapped quietly. A pang of remorse slammed Miguel right in the chest as he heard the verbal jab. He wasn't at all angry with her for it. Truth be told, he deserved it, and a whole lot more. And at this rate, he knew that there was no way Emily would let him anywhere near her to be able to help her.

"Tell you what, let's make a deal. If I ask you one question and you answer it, I'll leave right now and you'll never have to see me again." Miguel offered. Emily sighed, assuming that she already knew what he was going to ask.

"If you're planning to ask me what they did to me, don't. You would have known if you bothered to come to the trial." She muttered. Miguel shook his head.

"No, I won't. What I was going to ask was what happened to your leg?" Miguel asked. Emily slowly turned over to face him, looking him in the eye and raising an eyebrow, confused.

"My leg?" She asked, confused. Miguel nodded. "It was nothing. I, um… I cut it shaving. That's all."

Miguel sighed, anticipating the lie almost as soon as it left her lips.

"Right… shaving." He murmured. "Shaving do all those other scars too?"

Emily's heart stopped. Miguel knew.

As tears sprang to her eyes, she slowly rolled over again to face away from Miguel, not willing to face him in shame.

"Get out." She snapped in a tearful, watery tone.

"Look, I am not judging you." Miguel murmured softly. "I know how you're feeling."

Emily rolled her eyes but still didn't face him.

"How could you possibly know how I feel?" Emily muttered. Miguel took a deep breath, rolling up his shirt sleeve and running his hands down his left upper arm, the former scars on which had been now disguised by tattoos.

"Because I know how it feels to be at rock bottom. To feel helpless beyond control. TO listen to people all around you saying that "it'll get better" when they have no fucking clue how you are feeling right now, let alone if you are going to get better. To try and numb the insane emotional pain inside by making small cuts to try and dull it with a lesser physical pain. I get it all. Look, you know, far be it for me to tell anyone what the right way to live life is, but you know I've tried doing what you're doing. It doesn't work."

Another lengthy silence filled the air as Emily took in what Miguel was saying. She stayed quiet too for a while, before speaking again.

"Please leave." She whispered faintly. At this point, Miguel obliged, heading slowly towards the door.

Just before Miguel left the room, he turned back at Emily and as he saw her, curled up in the corner of her bed, looking more frail than she had ever looked before, his heart wrenched in pain.

"I'll be back tomorrow." He told her, before walking out the room…