Isabela Part 3

I wanted to feel angry at him for kicking me out of here, for the heavy things we experienced in the last few days, for the suffering he put me through seven years ago. But I can’t live like that anymore. And I don’t want to. I don’t want all these little bits of pain anymore.
"I need you to keep telling me about these things, Isabela..."
I slowly start to think again about the confessions I made about my past.
"My stepfather... He terrified me. He used to threaten my grandmother. And after I attacked him, he only managed to keep me locked up at home when he used you as a bargaining chip. He said he would dig up your accusations and find a way to screw you over if I left the house before I turned eighteen," I say, making circles with my finger on his chest. "Even if I was really mad at you, I didn’t want him to hurt you."
"First of all, I’m glad you crippled that bastard because that's even too little for what the jerk deserved." His voice comes out like a roar. "I don’t know if that had anything to do with him, but I ended up spending a week in a juvenile detention center because of the blog. They managed to find some pictures of me spray-painting the wall of a military base. Since it’s public property, it went really bad. They used the blog's account to get to the security camera footage and identified it was me. They’d been looking for me for a while and were happy to finally send me to the reform school. It was the school that gave the police the screenshots from the blog since they deleted that crap the same day and there was no way to access it anymore." He takes a deep breath, as if talking about it is difficult. "And about setting the boarding school on fire, that didn’t cause any major issues. There was no evidence in the blog, just an accusation."
"This made you hate me more, right? Thinking I was the one responsible for you getting locked up..." I ask, and I don’t even need the answer. Who wouldn’t hold a grudge for ending up in a reform school? "I’m so sorry!"
"I'm sorry, Isa! I was sure it was you who made the site, so I spent years blaming you for everything. When I saw you here at Revolta, I still thought you were the author of that crap," he explains, inhaling the scent of my hair, as if my aroma had some kind of drug in it because he exhales intensely, as if he’s getting high. "I was in the gutter for months after we broke up, trying to destroy myself as if my life meant nothing. I barely ate, didn’t take care of my appearance. Sometimes, I would take pills and spend entire days sleeping. Even spray-painting lost its flavor. I was so messed up that I sometimes forgot what day of the week it was, easily lost track of time, or wandered the streets looking for someone to hang out with and try to fill the emptiness inside me. I would disappear from home for weeks, with Bianca and my dad going crazy looking for me. I went from whorehouse to whorehouse, trying to fill the pain with sex, drugs, and alcohol... Man, it was the worst crisis of my life. I closed myself off so much that even Bianca couldn’t reach me," he confesses, kissing the top of my head several times. I try to say something, but it’s as if the part of my brain responsible for speech has been affected by the shards of his confession. "I was filled with anger when I saw you here, but the longing was also hammering in my chest, crushing my heart. I wanted to kiss you and fight with you. I wanted to kick you out of here, and then run after you and beg you to stay. Isabela, you confused me because I thought you never loved me, while I made you the center of my world. Only when you cried for thinking I wanted you invisible to me did I see how much you still love me. That’s when I started to come to terms with reality. I was trying to find others responsible for that blog, realizing I had been wrong all this time because, even after seven years, you still like me. If there’s so much feeling, it wouldn’t make sense to end everything that way, with a poorly done blog that indicated they wanted to blame you for the authorship."
"I don’t want to be a hypocrite. I have a lot of resentment inside me for everything. For breaking up with me that way, doubting my feelings, and never coming back to check if I was alive or okay," I say all at once, without the courage to look up and seek his face, because I know he’s shaken, just like I am. But I need to let out the things trapped inside me. "And when you slept with me at the Trote to mock me, it hurt me deeply..."
"I didn’t sleep with you to hurt you!" he interrupts, pulling me by the chin, forcing me to face his expression of pain and surprise. "I was just crazy with jealousy and worried. I wasn’t going to let another guy sleep with my girl, and there was the issue of your trauma. I was thinking that someone could abuse you if you decided to back out at the last minute."
"So you were trying to protect me?"
"And to fuck you too, duh... Do you know how long I wanted to fuck you, Isabela?" His eyes are now hotter, undressing me. "I saw the girl of my life in a sexual prank, saying she was a virgin and was going to go out with some random guy; did you really think I was going to back down? I’m a rolling stone down a hill. It’s impossible to stop me when I’m desperate. And at that moment, that’s exactly what I was. Raving with fear that the love of my life would give herself to someone else."
"Aren’t you ashamed to say that out loud?" I tease, pinching one of his nipples, and Nate almost pushes my hand away. But he remembers the cuts before touching my battered wrists. "I’m the love of your life, am I?" I provoke, and I know my eyes are shining with fascination at hearing him talk about me like this.
"Of course you are! And the reason for my outbursts too. I was really pissed that you didn’t recognize me at the Trote. You didn’t even remember my voice, Isabela, or the mouth you said you loved," he says, seeming to have a lot of resentment tied to the memories I can see floating in his distant gaze. "I would recognize you just by seeing you smile. I recognized you in a dark club from a distance."
"Cutie, I spent years trying to pretend you were dead because it hurt to think about you. You have no idea how painful it was to try to forget you. I dyed my hair so I wouldn’t look in the mirror and be stabbed by memories of you..." I confess, holding back a tear before it appears. "I’m sorry if that hurt you."
"I’m sorry for not saying it was me there. I know I could have tried to convince you not to participate in the Trote, but... Things were too intense inside me. It was like an explosion impossible to contain."