No Matter What // Ryan Stevenson

Joel

When Nila gets home, she immediately retreats to her room to pack for tomorrow. Courtney stows the pizza away for once we leave and she and Moriah set about making what they call "real supper". Luke and I entertain the kids and talk softly, both of our minds on nothing but Nila.

After what's probably forty-five minutes, Moriah pokes her head back into the main room. "Dinner's ready. Phoenix, Jude, come wash up."

They scamper off obediently, while Luke and I rise more slowly. He turns to lift Leo from the bouncy chair he's currently in, and I jump on the opportunity.

"You get Leo, I'll run and get Nila, yeah?"

He nods, smiling slightly at me. "Thanks, Mate."

I just incline my head and head upstairs and down the hallway. It's silent and dark upstairs, with the light from Nila's room casting a shade of yellow across the shadowed carpet. I tap lightly on the door, and after a few seconds' hesitation, my niece's voice answers from inside.

"Come in."

I obediently slip through, shutting the door behind me once more. I see her bags, easily packed from years of practice, sitting near the door, while she's on her bed, staring at the comforter. Her laptop is in front of her, but her eyes aren't on the screen. And I know that's because she's trying to keep them as far away from mine as humanly possible. The knowledge shatters something inside of me all over again.

"Hey," I say softly, crossing the room and sitting down on the edge of her bed.

"Hey." The word is so lifeless, so cold because she's so ashamed, that I can hardly believe it just came out of my spunky, passionate niece's mouth.

"How'd it go with Luna?" I try. I know there's no question to whether or not she put up her perfect little front with her best friend, but hopefully she could at least relax a little and get her mind off of everything.

"It was good," she replies in that same lifeless tone. But I can see in her eyes that something is really, truly bothering her about the subject I just brought up.

"Uh-huh, sounds like it," I tease gently. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Talk about what?" she asks innocently, obviously trying—and failing—to put her usual playful sass behind the sentence. "Joel are you deaf, cuz I just told you it was good."

"Your words told me that, Love," I reply simply. "But everything else told me the exact opposite."

"You read between the lines too much," she sighs. "I mean it, it was fun."

I don't answer directly, turning my gaze upwards to her ceiling, on which she's painted lyrics from every single one of our songs, all the way from our Joel & Luke stage to the new album.

"You mind if I guess?" I ask after a long moment of silence.

"Yeah, here's a hint... I just told you the right answer."

The words are so right, but the delivery is so wrong. And it kills me to hear her trying so hard to act like everything is normal and okay when it's so obvious that she's dying on the inside.

"I'm guessing," I continue, still keeping my eyes on the ceiling, allowing them to travel over the different fonts and styles that she's used to depict our lyrics. "That Katherine left that office today and made good on every single one of her threats to you, spreading anything she thinks you should be ashamed of all over the school. And you warned Luna that she was going to be spreading rumors about you, so she could shut them down. So, when you got around Luna and she started talking about it, because you're way too terrified to do anything but continue to lie to her, she said some things that made you that much more sure that you are way too broken for any of us to ever love or look at the same way again."

Finally, I allow my eyes to drop from the ceiling and fix on her once more, silently begging hers to come up and meet them.

"How'd I do?"

She opens her mouth, obviously preparing to reassert her lie, but as she does, tears fill her downcast eyes, and she chokes, closing her mouth again. It's all the evidence I need to know that I—or rather, Jesus' voice inside of me—hit it dead-on.

"I get it," I state as I nod slowly. "Shame is so powerful, Love... it screams so loud, and sometimes it seems like you have no choice but to listen. But listen to me for a minute instead, alright?"

I feel tears jumping to my own eyes as I speak, matching the ones she's desperately trying to fight back.

I reach out, taking her hand and squeezing softly. "Nila, you are not broken. You are not scarred. This is not who you are. Jesus paid for all of this on the cross, and that means you have nothing to be ashamed of. I know that what Luna said must have really, really hurt. But I also know that she is like your sister and she is gonna be right by your side, no matter what. You're just too good at playing this game, Darling. You're too good at putting on that mask and pretending like you're alright when you're the furthest thing from it."

She exhales slowly, those eyes still wet and fixed on her comforter. "Obviously I'm not," she whispers. "Cuz I didn't say a thing and you just told me exactly what happened this afternoon. You and Dad always know the minute something's up, no matter how hard I try to hide it from you."

I offer her a sad, teary smile. "Nila, you're forgetting about something. I've got this still small voice inside of me, and He'll help me out when it comes to things like this if I'll just shut up and listen to Him."

She tries to smile, but it fails before it even starts.

I continue, squeezing her hand again. "And anyway, Darling. Your dad and I know you better than anyone else in the world. And we love you like you can never even start to understand, like we can never even try to explain. You can hide every tear from our eyes, but there's something inside of us that starts to ache the minute you're in pain. You can't hide from this kind of love, Darling."

That's it for her, and those tears start to truly come, filling up her eyes as she squeezes them shut again the flow. She doesn't move, doesn't speak, obviously too scared that she'll release something even worse than she already has.

Like always, the mere thought of her crying makes it feel like my heart just shattered into a million pieces, so I do all I know how to do, all I feel capable of, and reach out, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her against me, leaning down to softly kiss the top of her head.

We sit like this for a few lo ng moments before I finally tilt my head as I look down in an attempt to catch her gaze. As usual, she cleverly avoids it.

I sigh sadly, but just give her an extra little squeeze as I look at her. "Let's go to dinner, yeah?"

Her eyes snap shut in what looks like instinctual fear and she swallows hard, but nods, slowly straightening and pulling back from me.

I manage another sad smile and kiss her head once more before straightening and standing with her, keeping one arm wrapped securely around her shoulders as we walk downstairs.

Yeah,I still suck. So, school just hit me really hard here at the beginning, and lastweek... well, last week was really just SOMETHING alright, okay guys? Somethingthat made me want to die. It's fine. I'm fine. I just love my life so muchright now. ANYWAY, yeah, I'm sorry it's been forever, and I'm sorry this wasshort. However, I think I'm probably gonna make chapters about this length thenew normalish, because I'd rather stick to my schedule as it is and just haveshorter chapters than only update like once a month with chapters my regularlength.