TW: this chapter talks more in depth about Bella's ED so please skip this chapter if you feel like it will trigger you <33

Chapter 60 | The Reveal (finally)

Isabella:

It is agonisingly silent.

Thick tension blooms in the air, crackling all around us, wrapping around me so tightly it's almost making it hard to breathe.

I watch Lucas as he drives. Taking notice of his hands that are gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turn white, searching his face that is as impassive as ever and trying to figure out what he is thinking as of now. However, nothing in his features gives away his thoughts - his expression remains blank, neutral and void of any emotion.

I swallow and draw my gaze away, dropping my head against the window and peering outside of the glass instead. I give up trying to read him, I'll find out what he is thinking soon enough anyways.

The town, as we drive past, is nothing but a blur of colours. As it is nearing sun down, covering the streets is a blanket of golden-orange, remnants of old snow litter the sides of the roads and the trees and the tops of cars that drive alongside us. The sky is a hue of blues, pinks, purples and oranges. It is beautiful but I can't focus on the beauty of it. Not with the way my head is pounding with a hundred and one thoughts, not with the way my stomach is twisting and turning and not with the way my heart feels heavy with dread for what is about to come next.

My leg bounces up and down anxiously at the thought, rattling the box resting on my thighs alongside it. Looking down at the contents only makes my stomach lurch once again.

Remember that you wanted this. You wanted to tell him, how you wanted to get everything out in the open and off of your chest. You owe this to yourself, it is the next step in your recovery.

I shut my eyes and try to collect myself, repeating this in my head like a mantra. It is true, this was my decision. I chose to make the decision to tell Lucas everything.

After my breakdown, I had come to the conclusion that I needed to get everything off my shoulders and come clean to Lucas and explain my story to him. He was surprisingly adamant that I shouldn't - not right now always but I wouldn't back down.

With Maria having gone and exposed me, my mind was all over the place. I knew my brain wouldn't rest knowing that Lucas knew but didn't know everything. The dread that had also settled in my heart once realising that I was going to have to tell him the full story soon enough anyways was too much. I wanted it over and done with. I knew I wouldn't get any sort of peace until he knew and I urgently needed to calm the storm that was raging inside of my head.

On seeing my absolute desperation, Lucas had reluctantly agreed and had even suggested that he we talk at his little spot on the outskirts of town and that's where we were headed now.

As for Maria, my family had sent her and her mom packing. Abuela had chased the two of them out of the house with a broom but not before my dad had given his sister a verbal ass kicking and my mom had threatened to beat them to death with their own louboutins if they ever showed face in our town again.

And before my family had a chance to turn all of their attentions onto me, I had grabbed Lucas, the box of diaries from my room and had snuck out the house before they could notice or even protest. I was not in the mood to get coddled.

Soon enough, we begin to near our destination. The roads start to become more deserted as we begin to leave the busy town behind and drive into the outskirts. It baffles me how we had only been here a mere three weeks ago when the distance from now and the night Lucas and I had come to skate feels like centuries away. So much had happened since then.

Not long after does Lucas park the car on the edge of the road. He takes the key out of the ignition and climbs out of the drivers seat before travelling over to my side of the car and opens the door for me shortly after. I stay rooted in my seat for a moment and try to steady my breathing. I try my best to ignore the nerves coursing through me and stop myself from thinking about all the different scenarios of how this will go down and how he will react. There's no point in overthinking.

Taking one last deep breath, I finally get out of the car where Lucas is patiently waiting for me. His face still remains impassive but he is now chewing the inside of his cheek in what seems like an almost nervous manner.

I wrap my jacket tighter around my body as a sudden gust of wind wraps around me and I balance the box of diaries in one arm before trailing after Lucas as he leads us to a spot where we can sit.

The sun has almost descended completely from the sky by now and is just about to disappear under the horizon. My breath catches at the stunning view once again, taking notice of all the buildings straight ahead that begin to light up, ready for the darkness that will shortly envelope the sky. It's a little scarier, now that we're here in the dimming light, as when I look down I can truly see how high up we are. The display is still phenomenal nonetheless and I have greater things to be worrying about than the extreme heights at which we're sitting at, so I suck it up and take a seat on the cobbled ground beside Lucas.

I keep a respectable about of distance between us and bring my knees to my chest, resting my chin tops of my kneecaps. Lucas has his own legs stretched out in front of him as he keeps his gaze trained on the sunset in front of him. He also plays with a miscellaneous rock in his hands and still remains quiet, presumably waiting for me to speak and break the silence.

I however, choose to let the sounds of the wind howling in the distance and the occasional cars zipping past behind us fill the quiet for just a little while longer...just to give me a little more time to get my self together before I talk.

I'm assuming Lucas' own silence and lack of speech is for the same reason too because although his face is unreadable, I get the feeling he is trying to collect himself for what I'm about to tell also.

"Do you remember my 8th birthday?" I ask, finally speaking the first words to be said between the two of us since we left my house. "When you caught me crying in my room?"

My question catches Lucas off guard and for a second, his blank expression drops and the corner of his lips curl up ever so slightly.

"Yeah." He nods his head slowly. "I remember."

"I wouldn't tell you why you why I was crying," I continue, tilting my head ever so slightly to gaze at his side profile. "So you just silently comforted me and hugged me and stroked my hair and told me stupid jokes to try and cheer me up."

Another ghost of a smile flashes across of his lips for a moment. "Yeah and then I got grossed out when I saw that you got snot and tears all over my new shirt."

I chuckle and nod my head, dropping my gaze to his scuffed up sneakers. "Do you know why I was crying?"

He pauses before side glancing my way and slowly shaking his head. "No."

"Because Bianca Meyers came to my party wearing the same dress as me."

Lucas blinks and I watch as his eyebrows furrow confusedly before I elaborate.

"It was ironic how she never invited me to her birthday party but had the audacity to come to mine." I shake my head at the memory, frowning as I remember Bianca's bitch face and her bitch friends.

Lucas continues to stare at me blankly, still looking as confused as ever with his lips pursed.

"Anyways that's besides the point." I wave my hand dismissively and he warily nods his head, still not understanding where I'm going with this story. "Okay, so this bitch little girl had the audacity to rock up to my birthday party wearing the same dress as me, mind you she also brought her little bitch posse along with her and then to top it all off I overheard her telling her bumlicker bitch friends that I looked horrible and fat in the dress and that she looked so much better. And then after saying all those rude things about me, it still wasn't enough and the motherfucker blew out the candles on my birthday cake."

Lucas frowns. "That's rude."

"Yeah," I snort, kicking a rock with my shoe. That was rude alright. "Anyways, after over hearing what she was saying about me, I ran to my room and hid out there and cried." The memory plays out in my head, I remember it so vividly like it was yesterday. "I remember taking one good look at myself in the mirror and crying even harder because that's when I realised Bianca was right. She did look better than me in the dress...that was also the day when I realised that I hated what I saw in the mirror. At only 8 years old, I realised that I was ugly."

"You were not ugly," Lucas murmurs in response, his voice laced with disbelief. He sends me an incredulous look as he shakes his head.

"Well I thought I was." I give him a blank look in return before continuing. "That was also sort of a turning point for me because from that day, things only got worse. I began to actually pay attention to everything people would say about me, whether it was relatives telling me I got a little chubby, to Bianca and her friends whispering rude things behind my back.....or you calling me Belly and telling me I was fat."

I watch as Lucas takes a sharp intake of breathe before shutting his eyes and wincing. "Shit," he curses, slowly beginning to understand where I'm going with this. "Shit Bella."

I nod, pulling my lips into my mouth and dropping my head. "I really started caring about how I looked from that point. I compared myself to everyone around me and wondered why I didn't look pretty like Mia or Grace or the other girls at school. Why I wasn't skinny like them. It also felt like the more I hated the way I looked, the more people would call names...especially you."

Letting out a shaky breath, I raise my head to look up at the sky, the corner of my lip lifting into a little solemn smile. "I adored you, you know that?" I tell him. My voice comes out quiet and my words take on a wistful tone. "As a kid, you were my everything. I liked you so much that every time I saw you there would be butterflies in my stomach and my heart would swell so much it felt like it would burst. You know I used to look at you like you hung the moon and the stars...so when you used to call me those names...it used to shatter me. Every insult that would come out of your mouth hurt 10 x more than anything Bianca or Maria or anyone else would say to me because your opinion meant everything."

From my peripheral vision I see Lucas downcast his eyes shamefully and I shake my head, memories of how hurt I used to feel every time he would make a jab at my appearance flickering in my mind.

"Fast forward to when we moved to London," I continue, tucking my chin into the neck of my jacket and wrapping my arms around my legs. "Something changed when I got to England. I became more reserved and shy. I made friends easily sure, but I wasn't the outgoing little girl I had been before. I became pretty introverted and went by school unnoticed. No one called me names anymore because I went by pretty unnoticed...but by that point, it was too late...all the words that had been said to me before had already heavily tainted my perception of myself."

"By the time I was 12, I loathed the way I looked. I was also severely overweight by this time too and doctors told me I needed to change my diet and take part in some physical activity or at the rate I was going it would lead to severe health problems as I got older. So when I was 12...I went on my first diet." I let out another shaky breath. That was the worst fucking mistake of my life, going on that godforsaken diet.

"I started eating healthy. I started doing swimming...I saw improvements but they were very small and came at a very slow pace. I was growing tired of putting in so much effort for such little outcomes but I kept on pushing. After a couple more months of this and still not seeing much change, I began re-searching more diets I could go on and more things that would bring about improvements faster." I close my eyes momentarily, trying to swallow the boulder lodged in my throat as I reminisce the next bit. Remembering this bit always gets me because that is when everything started doing downhill, if only I hadn't come across this, fuck, I wouldn't be here struggling right now. I run my fingers through my hair, willing myself to calm down before I shove my hands into my coat pockets to hide the fact that they're shaking and not from the cold.

"I came across a blog on Tumblr," I continue but having to pause again only moments after to steady my voice. "This fucking blog where a girl talked about how fast she lost weight in a number of months. I read her story and it struck me with inspiration just seeing how she talked about how easy it was for her to loose 20 lbs in two months, how good she felt and how good she looked. I saw the pictures she would post with the blog of her flat stomach and thin thighs and I yearned to look like her. Yearned to be skinny like her. I found more blogs of other girls saying they did similar things and I began copying what they did in their posts and soon enough...I saw the quick results they were talking about."

My breath catches and shame and disappointment flood through me as I think about the lengths I went to for this. The lengths I still go to for this. Fuck, it's so humiliating.

"It was hard at first. So hard. I was always hungry and my stomach hurt so bad from not eating. At the beginning I would starve during the day and then cave in during the night and go on a binge. Then I would cry, feeling so guilty over what I did and hate myself even more... and then do it all again the next day. Starve then binge, starve then binge."

"I slowly did manage to overcome my binging and it got easier to manage the feeling of hunger. Also by this time both my parents worked so they weren't aware that I'd skip breakfast or lunch at school or think too much of it when I wouldn't eat dinner. I quickly lost 15 lbs when I was in the gist of things. It made me so happy seeing how fast I made progress. I was so happy with the weight I was loosing...yet still not happy with myself."

"All during this, I knew in the back of my mind what I was doing was not right. I constantly felt tired and had no energy to do anything so I told myself I would only do this until I was a healthy weight and then stop."

"But you didn't." Lucas' gaze is glued onto the ground as he speaks, his jaw clenched and his Adam's apple bobbing up and down aggressively every time he swallows.

I shake my head. "I couldn't. It was like an addiction Lucas," my voice comes out in a whisper. "Once I started I couldn't stop. Being at a healthy weight wasn't enough. I still felt too heavy and fat and ugly and I wanted more improvements. So I continued. People were also telling me I looked good by this point. I was getting lots of complements and people for once actually praised how I looked instead of making fun of me and although I didn't see it, their validation drove me farther. If people thought I looked good then what I was doing must've been good right?"

"Everyday it was all I could think about. All that consumed my mind was not eating. My parents started getting suspicious, but I didn't let their suspicions deter me. This went on for a year, I lost God knows how many pounds during this time. It got so bad that I felt faint all the time, my hair was falling out, I lost my period, I felt cold always."

"Then one day..." I sigh defeatedly, staring back up at the sky and the stars that dot the atmosphere. "I went...too far because in school I collapsed. They ran all kind of tests on me at the hospital. Told me I was lacking in iron and a various other vitamins and that I was at a dangerously low weight. My parents then finally fucking realised what was happening and...I-I got diagnosed with anorexia when I was 13."

My heart hammers against my chest as I recall this and both sorrow and nausea wash over me. My eyes burn with tears and my stomach twists with the feeling of dejection knowing that I went through all this at such a young age...and that it still hasn't stopped, that I still am going through the same issues even 3 almost 4 fucking years later.

"My parents tried to help me but I was stubborn, I didn't get the problem because to me, when I saw myself in the mirror I was still that fat little girl. I got admitted into an eating disorder clinic shortly after because it got really bad. I was very dangerously underweight and probably on the brink of death. I mean at the rate I was going...I was slowly killing myself."

"Jesus Bella."

When I turn to look at Lucas, he has a hand running down his face, his face paling as the story progresses. There is a slight sheen in his eyes and pure anguish is drawn across his features.

"Fuck...Bella," he repeats continuing to look distraught and letting out a huff of breath. "Fuck."

I nod solemnly and draw my gaze away from Lucas, my throat tightening at the look on his face. I have to pause briefly to try and collect myself, biting my trembling bottom lip so hard to stop myself from crying. It takes a moment but I manage to get myself together so that I can continue with the story.

"When I got admitted into the clinic," I exhale, kicking yet another rock with my shoe. "I refused to talk to my parents for the first month I was in there. I strongly believed I didn't need to get better. I threw tantrums, ripped the IV drips from my arm and refused to follow doctors orders. I was fucking miserable."

"By the 2nd month I realised I wasn't going to be let out if I didn't do what the doctors told me to do so I gave in. I made sure it looked like I was making progress, I drank lots of water before getting weighed to make my weight go up, I did what the doctors instructed, I slowly regained some weight, my parents were delighted thinking I was better. Although it felt like torture, I did what everyone told me to do and my plan worked because I got released on the 6th month mark...everyone thought I was fucking better."

I let out a dry, humourless laugh and shift in my seat, changing sitting positions when my leg begins to cramp. "Everyone thought I was fucking better but I wasn't and I was just waiting for someone to fucking notice."

"And no one did?"

I shake my head. "No one did."

Lucas nods his head solemnly.

"Anyways, after I was released, my parents of course kept a close eye on me, I forced myself not to fall back into old habits just to show everyone that I was okay. I kept up with this façade. I still hated myself and I was still fucking sick but I just didn't show it. I was careful. For the next couple of months I ate dinner regularly with my parents...but I would purge at night when they were asleep. I was careful however, not to go to the extents I had gone to before just so that it wouldn't show physically what I was doing."

"A couple months after...I realised that my parents were going through troubles in their marriage. They were arguing more and more and my mom also accidentally got pregnant with Sofia. They would be careful not to fight in front of me but I overheard them a couple