After a long walk, we finally arrived at the shopping centre. It was a good hour afterwards but the fresh air had done me good, especially the conversations with Gray. He had a way of making me forget all of my reservations and fear, pulling me in with his kind brown eyes. God, this was getting ridiculous, my defences had all been pulled down by a teenage boy. Albeit, a cute teenage boy but I was really trying not to think about that.

"So what do you want to do first, socks or clothes for you?" Startling out of my thought process, I glanced over at Gray. He was looking at me with a question in his eyes, but I hadn't a clue what to answer. I'd never gotten given a choice in my life, although, then again, in my old life I wouldn't have been taken shopping either. Lately, there'd been too many 'first's.

"I don't mind." Not ready to make a decision that encompassed others – regardless of how small – I opted for the easiest option. After all, the monster had told me that sometimes people asked things just to be polite, when really there was only one clear choice. I'd never been particularly good at reading signals so I couldn't really tell which one Gray wanted to go to first. Because he surely couldn't actually be asking for my opinion, right? No one ever did that.

"I'm the one who doesn't mind. I mean my options are: shopping for my roommate or shopping for my brother. Both are kind of the same." But they weren't. One was for his family and the other was for a girl that had been holed up in a room near him for the past week. I wasn't important.

Before I even had time to react, I was plunged into a nightmare. In a quick second, years of beatings flashed before my eyes, and my father's words: 'you're never ever important enough. Stop fooling yourself and treat people with the respect they deserve from a low life like you'. That was his favourite set of words to use against me, because he could see how much it hurt. At once, what I needed to answer became clear.

What I wanted didn't matter. I didn't matter.

"Let's go shopping for your brother, I love little kid socks. They're just so cute." Trying to hide my impending mental break down from Gray, I smiled at him. The corners of my mouth felt strained, and I couldn't make the happiness reach my eyes, but it would do for now. Gray, looking unconvinced, nodded and pointed in the direction of the shop we needed to go to.

"Fair enough." On our short walk there, he kept trying to glance at me. I kept my head down though, only seeing his curious gaze through my peripherals. Why did he have to be so good at reading the expressions on my face? I just needed one minute of peace to remember that despite being unimportant, I did deserve to live, and I couldn't let the monster take that away from me. In five minutes the memories would be pushed down and his horrible words would be forgotten until another day. They never fully left but… At least I stopped thinking about them.

I knew he wouldn't give me those couple of minutes to recollect myself though. The urge to curl up into a ball to protect myself overwhelmed me and I almost ran away like the coward I am. It had always been like this, even back at the monster's. If he hit me my only defence was to hide. And now that I was safe from him, I still just wanted to run and never look back. Because doing anything else would hurt me. I was just a coward.

"Are you ok?" His question caught me off guard, although a part of me knew it was coming.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Do you ever get that feeling, where you feel like you're so vulnerable that you just know you're going to shatter?" I was confused about the sudden change but, without letting me answer, he kept talking. I think he was trying to understand what I was feeling but… It was too close to being on target for comfort. "And you just think, maybe if I hide this from everyone at least they won't know. So you'll fall apart but no one will be able to judge you for your weakness."

"Why-"

"Because I need you to understand that it's ok to show that you're falling apart. Vulnerability is what makes us human. We're all vulnerable, and trying to hide it just ends up destroying us even more inside." Finally lifting my gaze, our eyes met, and I realised we'd stopped walking. We were off to the side, in our own little world. But that wasn't good. It just meant that the only place for him to look was me, and the more he looked the more he'd be able to see how broken I was. No matter what he said, I knew how people worked, and all the crap he was spewing about it being ok… It was just what he thought now, before he actually saw how destroyed I was.

"Don't. Just… Don't."

"Why not? I'm just trying to help." The honest sincerity in his eyes was the last straw it took for me to completely snap. He actually believed he could help, just like the psychologist and the doctor and the rest of his family. But none of them understood. I couldn't be helped.

"Well you can't! And you know why? Because I'm broken, shattered into dozens of little pieces. I won't ever get better. I won't ever be able to look a man in the eyes without seeing him, and I won't ever be able to be in a relationship because he destroyed that for me too. I'm not capable of trust and I've been convinced that I'm useless. I'm broken Gray, and… And I can't be fixed."

"You're not. You're bent that's all-"

"Bent? Oh you've got to be kidding me!" I was bawling by this point, tears streaming down my cheeks. I was too over emotional to care though. I was angry and my whole world felt like it was falling apart. All of those memories that I'd been repressing all this time to keep my head, they were rising to the surface, plaguing me with insults and words meant to kill me inside. Over and over again. "You're not bent if you've been abused your whole life. You're not bent if you saw your mum choose happiness over you. You're not bent if you've never been loved. You're not bent if you're a monster like me.

"You've been snapped." The tears continued to fall, with nothing I could do to stop them. Gray obviously didn't share this opinion as he began wiping them carefully.

"I'm… I'm so sorry." For a second, I thought he'd cry too, but what he did instead surprised me even more than if he'd done that. He was saying sorry. "For everything he's done to you. I'm sorry." Why was he apologising?

"It's not your fault… It's just me."

"Don't you dare-" I didn't want to hear him try to explain how I wasn't worthless or horrible or a monster. I didn't want to hear any of it, because I'd been told the opposite too many times to believe anything else.

"C-can I get a hug?" We both stood stock still at my outburst, and I thought he was going to refuse. I didn't even know what had come over me. I didn't want anyone close – people hurt others. But Gray wasn't just anyone. And that scared me.

"You don't even need to ask." Without me realising that he'd actually said ok, I'd been enveloped in his arms. It felt like when I hid under the covers to protect myself from the monsters.

Nothing could hurt me here, even if it was a naïve idea to think that a single human or a blanket would be able to protect me from all the evil in the world. For a minute I went back to being a scared little girl who was desperate enough to believe that.

Hi :)

I hope you liked this chapter, it had a little bit more of revealing how Petal sees herself, so it was quite fun to write :)

Thank all of you who dropped me a review, love you lots and lots =^.^=

Bye bye :)