Destroy Me Gently:Ex-Enemy Becomes My Lover!
Chapter 25: Bitter regrets

Chapter 25: Bitter regrets

Chapter twenty five

**Kieran Morisson**

I remembered how he stood behind his mom the whole time, as if he had been terrified of us.

I was the first to approach him. For some reason, I wanted to be friends with the shy little boy. I kind of liked him because he was cute, his large green eyes had been so perfect on his delicate features.

Through continuous family visits, we got to know each other, and the three of us became friends and became inseparable.

I used to have a crush on him, something I’d never admit aloud. Even at that age, I knew I liked him differently, my feelings towards him was different from how I treated Ginny, but I didn’t understand it then.

Time went past successively until that fateful day when my whole world came crashing down. It was a day that would be forever embedded in my memories. It always slashed my heart like a thousand knives each time I remembered it, just like right now.

It had been Ginny’s birthday, and I wanted to give her a surprise. Like always, our parents weren’t around. They were gone on one of their usual trips.

All three of us had gone to summer camp that year. It was supposed to be the best week of our lives—campfires, hiking, swimming in the lake. Ginny had been so excited about spending her birthday there.

But she had been feeling weak that morning. The camp nurse said it was just a cold, nothing serious. I should have insisted she stay back at the infirmary. I should have stayed with her.

Instead, I went with to the camp store to get the surprise I’d planned for her, a small birthday cake the counselors had helped me arrange.

I had told both of them to wait at our cabin while I went to get it, but Ginny said she wanted to go to the main lodge where it was warmer.

Then the accident.

A gas leak in the kitchen. The explosion that followed shook the entire campgrounds.

Children were screaming, the Counselors trying to get everyone to safety as the main lodge went up in flames faster than anyone could have imagined.

I remembered how panicked I was. I couldn’t find them anywhere. Without a thought, I tried to run into the burning building, but the counselors held me back.

I remembered how panicked I was when I couldn’t find either of them among the evacuated children. Without a thought, I had barged into the burning building, ignoring the counselors’ screams to stay back.

The building was on fire, thick smoke covering the air, debris from broken beams and shattered windows everywhere. Some blood stains on the floor made my heart race faster.

I had spotted Oliver first inside the lodge. He had been crying, a thick glass shard had pierced his leg and he was choking on the smoke, looking weak and barely conscious.

"Where’s Ginny?" I had screamed at him, my voice raw and desperate as I helped him up. "Where is she?"

His face was white as a sheet, tears streaming down his soot-covered cheeks. "She’s not... she’s not in here," he gasped between coughs. "She went outside... I saw her go outside."

Relief flooded through me instantly. If Ginny was outside, she was safe. I was pretty strong and tall for my age, so I lifted Oliver up and carried him outside to safety, the sound of cops sirens, ambulances and firemen filling the air as they tried to put out the fire while the paramedics helped those that they could.

But when we got outside and searched around, we still couldn’t find Ginny. After about ten minutes without finding her among the other children, I had gone into full-blown panic, screaming her name until my throat was raw.

Oliver had lied to me.

Ginny had been trapped inside all along. She had never made it outside like he said.

They found her small body hours later, after the fire had been put out and the smoke cleared.

Her health had always been so fragile, the doctors said she suffocated to death from the smoke before the fire had even gotten to her.

It had all felt like a nightmare, one I would wake up from to find her flashing me those smiles of hers, her little hand in mine as we walked to breakfast.

After hours it finally settled in my head that she was dead. I would never hear her voice nor see her beautiful gaze forever. They were now closed forever in death.

She had suffered. As her older brother, I failed to save her. I had wept bitterly for hours, totally oblivious to everything going on around me. The pain was so intense it felt physical, like someone was carving out my insides with a rusty knife. I wanted to die too. The pain, the agony, everything was too much for a nine-year-old kid to handle.

The worst part was watching her small coffin being lowered into the ground. She looked so tiny, so peaceful, like she was just sleeping. I kept waiting for her to open her eyes and smile at me, to tell me it was all just a bad dream.

But she never did.

Then my gaze fell on him.

Oliver.

He had also been crying beside me all along, his small body shaking with sobs.

Something in me snapped in that moment. The hate that consumed me had been instant and all-encompassing.

"You lied! She was in there!" my voice croaked out, raw from screaming and crying.

He stared at me, shaking his head profusely while sobbing uncontrollably, trying to explain, but I couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in my ears.

Over the next few days the hate I had for him grew like a cancer. Because of him, I would forever have to live without my sister.

But then I also hated myself even more. I was the brother who couldn’t protect the only sister I had.

About two weeks after the small funeral we had for her, Mom and Dad had gone on another trip, continued their life as usual as if nothing had happened.

I had been so lonely. I had never needed them so much, never wanted their comfort more desperately.

But when I tried to talk to them about Ginny, about how much I missed her, they looked at me with cold, distant eyes.

"She’s gone, Kieran," my mother had said, her voice devoid of any warmth. "We need to move on. Dwelling on it won’t bring her back."

"She was never really ours anyway," my father added, not even looking up from his newspaper. "We only adopted her as a companion for you. Perhaps it’s for the best."

That’s when I realized they never cared about her. They never once attended her birthdays, never showed her the love she desperately craved. She had adored them with everything she had, and to them, she was just an inconvenience that had been removed.

She was still their daughter, even though not by blood, so how could they have forgotten her so easily? How could they act like she had never existed?

I hated Oliver. I hated myself. Then I hated them with everything I had.

-

I took another drag of my cigarette, my hands shaking with the force of the memories. The pain was as fresh now as it had been all those years ago, a wound that never healed, never stopped bleeding.

The hate ran too deep in my veins. It couldn’t be forgotten easily.

If ever.

This is why I can’t forgive him. This is why every time I look at Oliver, all I see is her absence. This is why when he looks at me with those same innocent eyes he had as a child, I want to hurt him the way I’ve been hurting all these years.

This is why I shouldn’t have kissed him.

Because for one moment, just one fucking moment, I had forgotten. I had forgotten why I hated him. I had forgotten that he was the reason Ginny was dead.

And that terrified me more than anything else.

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