Page 4 of Ronny

You never know how much pain you have pushed down until you have to sit down and actually deal with it.

I have been homeschooled all of this time. I’ve had made great friends with some of the MC kids from the Grim Sinners, mainly Ronny.

Ronny has been a permanent fixture in my healing process, he has been a friend that I can count on all hours of the night if I get scared and need someone to talk to.

I would be absolutely lying if I didn’t have the world’s greatest crush on him, and I have since the moment he saved me.

My dad is going to drop me off at school. He is gripping the steering wheel like it’s his lifeline, and I know he is worried about me finding this hard.

I’m sure it’s going to be, but there has to come a time where I start to live a little and be a teenager with what little time I have left to be one.

I want to be a social worker, to help kids who are in horrible situations and give them a way out any way I can.

I had an amazing childhood because of my dad, and I want all kids to have that. I want to intervene and protect them when I can. I want to make a difference in their lives—hell, to anyone’s lives that I can.

My dad looks over at me. “You can stay home, you know?” he tells me.

“I know, Dad, but I need to try this, to see if I can try to be brave and be a teenager.”

He lets out a deep breath, his eyes filled with pain in a way that hurts a whole lot more than what they did to me in the cult.

Yes, they hurt me by hurting others in the cult. If I did something wrong, they would punish other people and I would have to watch. I had to learn to get over the fact that everything was not my fault or that there would be major consequences for the most minor things.

The school comes into view and it takes everything in me to not throw up all over the car.

“Don’t let these boys flirt with you, baby girl,” Dad tells me and I laugh, happy to see him joking with me.

“Trust me, Dad, I will be the last one they will flirt with,” I joke back, but pain slices through me.

Dad stops the car in one of the parking spots. I can’t look at him because my heart is hurting. “Why do you think that?” he asks me, his voice rough.

I swallow hard, gripping the strap of my backpack. “Dad, people don’t want used goods.”

I shouldn’t have said it, I should have kept my mouth shut, but deep down in my heart, that’s how I feel. “What boy would look at me? I’m scarred to my core. No one would want to touch me,” I voice my fear, and it’s one that I have kept inside for so long.

My dad looks like his heart is broken, pissed off. “That is the stupidest shit I have ever heard.” He takes my hand gently. “You are beautiful, a survivor, and you are worth so much.”

He looks behind me at the window. I turn and see that my window is cracked open, and through it Ronny is standing there. He is a senior now.

He opens the car door and I’m utterly humiliated because he just heard about the worst part of me. I look down at my lap, ashamed.

But he ducks down so I have no choice but to look at him, and I do. He is so handsome. In the two years since I have met him, he has gained a ton of muscle and height, hitting six-foot-five, and when he is in his hockey skates, he is huge. And his eyes are such a bright blue-green that it takes your breath away at times.

“You’re wrong,” he tells me, and I let out a pitiful laugh, my eyes filling with tears.

“Yeah, I don’t see how,” I reply.

He chuckles. “God, I thought it was obvious.”

That confuses me, so I look over at my dad, wondering if he knows what Ronny is talking about. He is grinning ear to ear, his arms crossed while watching the two of us.

I turn back to Ronny to find his expression is serious. I hold my breath, waiting for him to speak. “I have liked you since the moment I saw you. I have wanted you the moment you looked at me with those bright fucking blue eyes.” He cups my cheek, catching one of my stray tears.

I think I’m going to pass out from what he just told me. Is this real? Is what I have felt all this time returned by him?

“So don’t think for a second that no one will ever want you, because I do.”

I think I just died. I’m floored.

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