Chapter 92 - Ninety-One: Hatred

" Why aren't you saying anything?" Becca asked, noticing how mute Leo had become. Her foxy green eyes widened as she stared at him.

Leo's eyes softened on seeing the look cute look Becca was giving him and pinched her left cheeks, making her yelp at the stinging pain his rough fingers caused.

" Hey!" Becca whined and rubbed the area Leo pinched to soothe the pain. But immediately her hand touched her left cheek, Leo went ahead to assault the one on the right. " Stop pinching me."

" Your cheeks are so squishy, I can't resist," Leo said with a smile, reaching to attack the third time and Becca snarled at him. 

" Leo!" Becca swatted his hand away and he chuckled and placed a kiss on her forehead.

Becca huffed, glaring so viciously at his head, it looked like she wanted to bite but still let him kiss her.

" It's getting late, let's sleep," Leo said, hoping he had distracted Becca and made her forget her question but realized his plan was far from successful when she didn't shut her eyes and kept staring at him, eagerly waiting for him to tell her about his parents.

" You haven't answered my question yet," Becca said, reminding Leo that he still owed her an answer. And like a little girl who wanted her father to tell her a bedtime story, Becca laid next to Leo, batting her lashes cutely at him.

Leo sighed and rubbed his forehead with his hand, thinking of a more delicate way to tell Becca about the horror show that was his childhood. 

" Listen, Becca..." Leo started but trailed off when he saw the sad eyes Becca was giving him. She knew he was stalling to avoid telling her about his parents and it hurt her.

Becca's heart sank to her stomach as she stared at Leo. All she wanted was to know more about him, to share his storyggles, and yet he didn't want to tell her anything. Not even about his parents. It hurt. 

He didn't want to share his past with her. Didn't he trust her? Didn't he want her to know him more? He said he wanted to give her everything but here he was, still hesitant on letting her in.

He didn't want to tell her

Seeing the look on Becca's face shattered Leo's heart into a million pieces. She didn't even need to say anything because just the look on her face was enough to bring Leo to his knees.

Just the look on her face was enough to crumble his entire world.

Disappointment ran through Becca and she let out a soft sigh, about to leave Leo's arms to move back to her side on the bed but he tightened his hold around her, not wanting her to leave. Not ready to let her go.

" My childhood wasn't something to write about," Leo said to her. He couldn't bear the sadness in Becca's eyes, the constricting pain in his chest just by staring at her with that disappointed look on her face, he couldn't take it. So he yielded to her, gave in to her requests because deep down he knew he couldn't refuse her.

He could try but would never have the heart to do it.

On hearing Leo's words, the disappointment on Becca's face turned to worry. 

" What happened?" Becca asked, her brows furrowed in both worry and confusion. What the hell did Leo mean? Was his childhood that bad?

Leo took a deep breath and exhaled to calm his demons down. The mere thought of his past made them go ballistic and revived the acrimony between him and the person who ruined him.

" After I left my grandma care and came to live with my birth parents, well, let's just say I saw and experienced shit a child shouldn't have." Leo lifted his eyes to look at the ceiling as he kept taking deep breaths to calm down, hesitant to keep going.

Though Leo never really told anyone, only very few people knew how messed up his childhood was. Becca was the first person he was willingly discussing this with, while his therapist had to force it out of him.

" Leo, you can tell me. What happened?" Becca asked, staring at him while he avoided eye contact by looking at the ceiling.

She knew he was hesitant to tell her about his past, for whatever reason, he felt the need to bury his childhood, to hide the marks that his past wounds left but the problem here was Becca didn't want him to. She wanted to see the scars, she wanted to share his pain. She wanted to see the real him. 

The real part of him that Leo was afraid to show her. The scary part.

Becca understood how intrusive her questions felt to him right now but didn't back down, she wanted to know but he was hesitant.

Was he afraid she wouldn't understand him? Was he worried about being judged? Why didn't he want to open up? Was the experience that painful?

Multiple questions clogged her brain as she kept staring at him with worried eyes. It was the first time she had seen him this apprehensive. It was the first she had ever seen him this way to even begin with. Leo has never hesitated on something, not even on stripping, and seeing him like that almost weakened her resolve to find out more. 

Almost.

Becca had made up her mind, she was determined to milk it out of him one way or another. Whether it would be tonight or tomorrow, she was willing to wait for him but at the same time, she knew Leo. With how he was hesitating, if she didn't force it out of him, he would just look for a way out so he wouldn't have to tell her and that was what she wasn't going to settle for.

Leo was the love of her life. The man who broke through her walls, melted them to the fucking ground, and made her feel things. She loved him and was willing to love his scars and pain if he shared them with her.

" Claudia and Lorenzo Kane, my parents, hated each other. They were always at each other's throats and sometimes shit got violent. Things always got violent and then the violence somehow found its way to me." Leo shut his eyes, his body shuddered slightly as memories of his demented childhood flooded him, crushing him. " Their fights weren't lovers conquers and would always start with arguing, some shouting, the sound of pieces of furniture being broken would follow right after. Screaming. Then the next day I would see my mother with long sleeves, heavy makeup, and dark shades." 

At first, Leo would stand in front of their door contemplating whether to knock or not. He wanted to go in and make them stop fighting but he was too afraid to, so he would just stand there, waiting for them to calm down. Sometimes their ruckus would wake up his little sister and she would also end up waiting outside with him until they both eventually fall asleep in the hallway.

But after it happened multiple times, the screams stopped bothering him, he became immune to it. It became a normal thing to him but it did still wake his sister, Amelia, up. So instead of waiting by his parent's door, whenever he heard them arguing, he would just head straight to his sister's room to put her back to sleep.

His parent's violent fights stopped bothering him after a while but what kept haunting him was the fact that his mother always took out the frustration she had with his father on him.

" That must've been awful," Becca commented and Leo glanced at her. She wasn't crying, it was good.

" It was," Leo replied and stayed silent after that but Becca kept staring at him, begging him to continue despite him not wanting to.

" What did you mean by the violence somehow found its way to you?" Becca asked to push him to continue. From what Leo told her, she concluded that his parents had an arranged marriage. Their families might have forced both of them into the relationship. If not, then why else would two people who hate each other get married?

" I was always caught in the middle of it. While my father would always pretend like nothing happened, his wife always blamed me for everything. Everything fucking bad thing that happened." Leo gritted, unconsciously tightening his hold on Becca until even she couldn't breathe and he only realized what he was doing when she touched his face with her hand. " I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me." Leo apologized and Becca smiled before pecking his lips.

" It's fine." She responded.

" You must be tired, let's forget about all this and get some sleep," Leo said and Becca thinned her lips. She wasn't tired and still wanted to hear more but knew that it must have been hard for Leo to share those things with her so she decided to let it be for now. 

Leo, sharing a portion of his past didn't just make Becca feel closer to him, it also made her feel kinda special. A man like Leo, who did everything to hide his scars from the world, was opening up, hesitant or not, he was still making progress.

" Okay," Becca said and rested her head back on his chest, and shut her eyes.

Silence hung in their midst as they laid together with their eyes shut, looking like they were asleep but at the same time knew each other was awake.

" Leo," Becca called out after pretending to be asleep for a while, a small smile playing on her lips as she moved closer to Leo to nestle deeper in his embrace.

" Yes, my love," Leo answered, rubbing her arm with his hand.

" Thank you for sharing with me tonight. And I don't mind lending you my ears in the future, they are pretty big too." Becca said, smiling and Leo smiled as well, remembering when he said those words to her. 

Becca looked up at him, staring into his eyes, the same ones that always found a way to hypnotize her.

" You know you can tell me anything, right? I won't judge, I promise. Even if I don't understand or relate, I will try my best to." Becca vowed but Leo didn't respond and just kept stroking her arm.

She might not judge but it didn't mean she would accept it. She wouldn't relate to what he had gone through, all the betrayal and torture he had gotten and all the torture and betrayal he had given back. She only said all that because he told her the least painful thing he experienced back then.

Sometimes he wished that growing up in a broken home was the only hardship he faced but it wasn't. The noise of his parents fighting or his mother's hatred and abuse didn't give him the scars on his body. No, a monster did. 

A monster he wished he had killed with his bare hands.