I felt as though I'd taken two steps forward and fell three steps back.

The progress I'd achieved was long gone and I had retreated back into my nonverbal shell, crying myself into a sleep plagued with nightmares and terrors and had me waking up in cold sweats. Because the school had been made aware of the danger my stepbrother was, I was able to safely walk the halls with Gage without Louis attacking from where he'd stand in a corner and watch me with such a burning hatred that it nearly paralyzed me where I stood. But staff members watched from every corner-from school security to teachers who'd been alerted of what had happened.

What was most surprising to me was that some of the guys that had been nothing but loyal to my stepbrother since Freshman year pulled away from his little entourage and would try there best to help me in the hallway whenever Gage decided to not show, and would even offer their notes in the classes we shared. Some of the girls, too, would offer me weak smiles and a couple even asked that I join them for lunch.

It was almost as if nothing had happened. As if all of my peers hadn't seen me naked and Louis destroying little by little before leaving me for dead. I could get through the rest of this year, I had people, however small that group was, that would finally stand up against Louis.

The few times I'd gone home for my stuff, Gage had come with me and kept at my tail, ensuring that Louis didn't poke his ugly head out from his room and try and do anything. But it was on the morning of one of my support group meetings a couple weeks after Louis' second attempt at stripping me of my own skin and feeling comfortable within it, that I paused in the hallway and listened to the fight escalating between him and his father. My own mother stood outside the door, clutching her cardigan around her as she stared into the room with tears silently rolling down her cheeks.

"What did you do to her?" Rodger's voice was dangerously close to a yell and I even recoiled a little from where I stood pressed against my bedroom door. "What did you do to your sister, Louis?"

"That little bitch isn't my sister." Louis snapped, reaching for his duffel bag at the foot of his bed, as soon as he reached to pick it up, Rodger swatted it out of his hand and grabbed Louis' face roughly between his calloused fingers.

"I'm going to ask you one more fucking time, boy. What did you do to Marlene?"

Though I had known Louis wasn't mentally all there, I'd always thought there was fear in regards to his father somewhere under that asshole façade. But he straightened and stood face to face with his father, and spat, "I didn't touch that slut. Why don't you talk to her boyfriend?"

I waited for Rodger to hit Louis; maybe, even if it wasn't a valid one, it was the reason that Louis was so aggressive and unstable. But Rodger instead tore Louis' cell phone from his nightstand and grabbed his football duffel from the floor where he'd batted it down.

"You don't want to talk, then you don't play." Rodger said through his teeth. "Why should you be able to do the things you enjoy where your sister doesn't even feel comfortable in her own fucking room? In her own house?"

Louis snickered. "You care more about them then you ever did me or Mom. They were a replacement right? For your fucked up son and your dead wife. You even had another son because I'm such a monster, right?"

"Louis, it's not—"

"You didn't even give it two years, Dad. You literally met this bitch a year after Mom died and you started dating. Didn't care about how I'd feel. Didn't give me a chance to adjust. You just thrusted me into this house with her fucking slut of a daughter and some bitch pretending to give a shit about me!" Louis' eyes were glassy with tears. "You act like she never existed! Like she was nothing but a fucking memory that only I can conjure up! You took all the pictures. You sold all her stuff."

Though Louis had ruined me in ways beyond comprehension, my heart still clenched a little as he fell apart before his father. Because I understood where he was coming from; I lived it too. My mother had rid the existence of my own father, and nobody ever spoke of him. It was as if he never existed at all.

"This will never be my house, Dad. That bitch will never be my sister. And that fake housewife will never be my mother." Louis shoved his father away from him. "So take all my shit. Take away the one thing I enjoy if it makes you feel like such a great parent."

I could see by the darkening of Rodger's face he was about to explode on his son, and I took that as my cue to leave. I slung my own bag over my shoulder and ran down the stairs. When I turned around again, my mother was at the top of the stairs, fresh tears rolling. It took everything in me not to join in her crying, to not race back up the stairs and hug her, assure her that I would be okay.

Because in reality I wasn't-and I probably never would be. Louis may be hurting, but he'd literally taken every piece of me and burned it, making sure to stomp out the ashes so I couldn't rise back out of them. I had learned the hard way that this shit didn't get better, that no matter how much my mother and Rodger hounded Louis he'd never fess up to what he'd done, because monsters and narcissists don't see the wrong in their actions.

Blinking my own tears from my eyes, I opened the door, and just as I reached behind me to close it on the porch, I caught sight of my mother sinking to the ground at the top of the stairs and bring her hand up to her mouth to contain a sob.

**

April, who'd been absent from the last six meetings, was sitting in her usual spot when I walked into our support group. Gage was a few steps ahead, stuffing his face with a bag of chips. He flashed April a weary smile before sitting down and leaving a seat between himself and the broken blonde a few feet away.

She looked even worse than usual. If at all possible, her cheeks had sunken in her further, her eyes bloodshot, and rimmed in red and puffiness. There was a fresh bruise along her right cheek bone and scratches across her jaw. She was wearing a hoodie, so it was impossible to see if the marks marred the lower parts of her body.

"April—" I started, my voice hoarse from only speaking a few times a day. "Are you okay?"

She didn't respond, and for a minute I thought maybe she hadn't heard me-or that she was purposely ignoring- but after a bout of silence, she looked toward me and shrugged. "I'm alright."

"You've been ignoring me." I whispered.

The same dead tone escaped her as she responded. "I've been ignoring everybody. But I'm fine."

"I meant to ask you, Mar, are you busy this weekend." Gage interrupted. I didn't realize he was trying to divert the subject until April sent him a thankful look.

"Why?" I eyed him. "I don't have much of a life outside of catching up on school."

He sighed, eyes hyper-fixating on something straight ahead. "My parents are forcing me to go to some reunion bullshit before attending my cousin's wedding Sunday."

I didn't have to hear the rest to know why he was asking for company. Though he hardly talked about what happened to him, if this was his cousin's wedding, it was likely the piece of shit who'd molested him would be there.

"You want me to come?" I breathed.

He nodded curtly. "Yeah, if you don't have anything else to do. I tried to talk my mom out of it, but this was part of the punishment for the fight and suspension."

"Sure. Of course." I nudged his shoe with my own. "I'll go with you."

A small, sad smile touched at his lips, but his eyes remained on the wall ahead as he lost himself inside his head. I turned my attention back to April, who was anxiously tapping her foot, breathing shaky. Coming to the conclusion that, like me, she had no desire to speak, I reached out and squeezed her hand. She froze for a moment, then slowly her finger wrapped around my own hand, and when I glanced up as Joel sat down, I saw a stray tear roll down her cheek.

*

I'd just finished hanging the few articles of clothing I had in the closet when Gage walked back into the room. I'd been so lost in myself the last few weeks I hadn't pushed and pried much at the fact that he was snorting drugs, but in that moment, some kind of switch flickered inside me and I straightened and shook my head.

"You told me when we met a couple months ago, to give you my pain because you could handle it." I said, quiet enough Alyssa couldn't listen in, but loud enough that Gage could hear me loud and clear. "You told me your were stronger, that you were getting better."

He must have knew what I was getting at, because his jaw set and he slowly met my eyes, his usual beautiful amber eyes hardened and dark. "Well, I lied, alright?"

"You're killing yourself, Gage."

He pressed his finger against his chest aggressively. "I try so fucking hard to be okay. I thought that if I forced myself to believe it, I would be. But it's like a cancer, it just won't go away! Never leaving, relenting, always there to strike again."

I was cautious as I approached, not sure if he'd lash out at me. Once I'd reached him, he lifted his head up a fraction, his hand trembling slightly.

"I keep trying to be okay. I pray that if I pretend enough it'll become true." His voice cracked and it took him a minute to continue. "Most nights I can't breathe. I feel like there's this heavy weight pressing into my chest and the more I try and fight it, the heavier it gets. I can't be normal. I can be a normal fucking teenage boy who gets an erection and be okay with it. Because every time I do, I think about that piece of shit stroking me, touching me, forcing himself on to me. I think about him manipulating me into thinking it was okay, to not tell my parents. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year."

I felt my own cheeks starting to dampen with tears as he finally returned his eyes to mine, the cold guard dropped and tears now threatening to break the surface.

"Whenever I get urges, urges that should be normal for a man, I do this. I snort. I inject. Because it distracts me, it makes me forget. I'm free from that piece of shit for a little while." he touched his hand to my cheek and breathed, "Just like cutting has always been your escape from the pain, drugs are mine."

I hesitated for a moment before reaching up and touching my hand to the side of his neck and pulling him down toward me. He didn't fight me, and tangled his arms around my waist and buried his face in the crook of my neck, soaking it with tears seconds later.

You don't need to carry the weight of someone else's emotional baggage right now, April had told me that day in the car a few weeks ago. And she was right to an extent, as every time I saw her or Gage I felt as though their pain was washing over me in unison with my own. What she nor Gage understood, was that their fight was my fight too.