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Song suggestion: Animals, Maroon 5.
Chapter Twenty Nine: Broken Denial.
Sam blinked at me, staring as if I hadn't spoken. His lack of response worried me, as I fidgeted with my nails and bite my lip. The clock ticked each second loudly into the silence, hovering as reminders that time was passing as I waited for his reply, the reply he seemed so blank about. It was as if I had cleared his mind and trapped him there. His mind empty of an answer to satisfy my question, unable to comprehend that he had to speak next, as a part of the human social invention of a conversation. But he appeared oblivious to the social convention of replying to a question.
So I waited for him to remember, as he presumably relived the last few weeks. I could only imagine the terrible days he'd been through; the bitterly cold nights and sodden days, stumbling around the forest desperately trying to find home. The imagined thoughts were awful to consider and I didn't even know what predators he may have had to fight off. I yearned to comfort him, but I wanted my answers first.
"I don't want to talk about it Bella." He finally mumbled, not looking up from his empty plate, and my fists clenched in frustration.
"That's not good enough Sam. You ran away from home, from me. You lost yourself in the forest and we couldn't find you! Do you know what that was like?" Angrily, I swiped at the tears threatening to bead my lashes, "I've searched every day for you! Leah and I have been going crazy with worry about you! You're my only family Sam! And you left me, alone with nothing to say about it. And now you won't even answer my questions?"
"I don't want to talk about it Bella." At his repetitive reply, I slammed my fists on the table to shut him up.
"I don't care!" My arms shook with the sheer force of my anger. All of the emotions I had felt through the last few weeks; desperation, anger, loneliness, frustration, loss, all of these toxic feelings piled into my heart and set my emotional control on fire. I never lost my temper, yet Sam had finally been the one to make me lose my tight governing on my emotions, that a lifetime of losing people, being beaten down, and fighting my way back up had taught me to do to protect myself, "You've left me alone for weeks and I want an answer why Sam? Why would you leave me? You're all I have left and you ran away!"
"I'm not talking about it Bella, leave it alone." Sam warned me in a low voice and I could see him becoming tenser and tenser, his fists clenching and flexing, and his breathing becoming agitated. But I didn't care; I want the answers I had waited for every night as I hoped to sleep. I wanted the truth and nothing less.
"No, Sam. You don't get to do that. You've never shut me out before, so don't start now when I need your honesty. I need an explanation as to why. Why you left me?" Sniffling back my tears, my stupid angry tears, I stood up and looked down at his hunched, almost defeated form, "I want answers Sam! I need them!"
"I can't give you answers!" He yelled back. His black glare stunned me and his body seemed to tremble like a tuning fork. But I didn't understand how he could be angry. Why would he be angry? He wasn't the one abandoned at the roadside. He wasn't the one who spent day after day searching for their brother, who had disappeared without a trace. He wasn't the one who cried himself to sleep because everyone always abandoned them in the end and he'd just lost the last person on earth who he thought would leave him too.
"Why not?" I cried back, "Why can't you give me answers? What happened to you? What terrible thing has happened to you that you can't even tell me about it?" My mind flicked through old, haunting memories of hiding in Sam's room. Listening to those awful sounds across the hall, as Sam kept a comforting arm around my shoulders, as I wished for my dad to rescue us from this repetitive night. Nursing Sam's bruises and cuts, while Riley slammed about downstairs, cursing us. Sitting in a cold living room while Sam cried into my shoulder, after his mother had left us all alone. All these memories had one thing in common and that was us. Us being there for one another. We were each other's rock, each other's confidante. And now he was locking me out and I couldn't bare it, or understand it. My chest pained at the thought of losing Sam, not physically this time but emotionally, it was unbearable, "Sam, please?"
"I can't!" Sam suddenly roared. He shot out of his seat, leaving his chair to clatter to the ground, the wood splintering from the force Sam had used to shove it from under him. His fists were clenched so tightly, I could see his white knuckle bones through his naturally tanned skin. I watched his whole body vibrate in anger and his chest rise and fall in quick succession. Seeing him so angry, so unhinged frightened me down to my very bones, as his face contorted in expressions I'd never seen before.
I stood horrified as he stumbled backwards, retreating, both shocked and angry as he hastily put distance between us. A strange growl seemed to be emanated from between his twisted lips and I stumbled forward as he reached the front door. Ripping it out of his way, almost off its hinges, he ran out into the night, too quick to catch, almost too quick to see. Letting the dark and forest reclaim him once again, leaving me dumbstruck as the storm that had been raging outside seeped in through the broken front door.