THIS IS ME!

CHAPTER 9: The Truth

STEPHANIE’S POV

Maybe I do need to talk to someone about this. Maybe someone should explain to me who my father is and what happened between him and my Mum, and why everyone told me Joe was my father.
Don’t get me wrong, not matter what happens I still regard him as my father, he’s the one that’s always been there for me, that’s always looked after me, that helped my Mum when she had me at sixteen, so to me he’ll always be Dad.

“Stephie, wanna let me in?” I smiled, it was Uncle…Nick.
“Hi Nick,” I opened my bedroom door
“No Uncle today?” I shook my head, “You found out, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” I sighed and sat back down on my bed, I was over the tears, everything is just going wrong, I guess I’ll have to accept it.
“Did your, umm…Joe tell you what happened?”
“We haven’t spoken,”
“Well….do you wanna know what happened?”
“I know what happened; my parents lied to me for fifteen years, I thought I was part of this family, but I wasn’t,”
“Kiddo, you know you would be part of the family no matter what, just like your Mother is,”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Because, she didn’t want to hurt you, and it hurts her too you know,”
“Come on, it probably wasn’t even that bad,” I hissed
“Actually, she did have it pretty bad, I’m surprised she didn’t hurt herself worse then what she did,” Uncle Nick sighed
“You lost me,” I confessed,
“Do you really wanna know the whole story, all details?”
“Yep,” I nodded

“Okay, well I’m gonna start from the beginning, this might be a long story,”
“I’m listening,”
“Your Mum, she was under a lot of stress. Okay, we where best friends, but then we had a fight and I left, my career was the most important thing to me at the time,”
“That’s not so bad,”
“Well, while I was gone, she found out her father kept a whole family from her, and then, he left her for a man and it was like he didn’t care about her anymore,”
“At least she knew who her father was,”
“Steph, please. Well when her father moved back with his...umm, boyfriend, her mother found it really hard because she had also found out her boyfriend was cheating on her, so she left you Mother to live with just her brothers and sister,”
“Oh,”
“She still hasn’t heard from her to this day, but when her Mother left, your Uncle Jared, he didn’t handle it well and Demi thought it was her fault, but she didn’t really do anything until she went to Tae Kwon Doe one day, where she had met Brandon Jones,”
“Jones….Dad didn’t like that name,”
“And for good reason to. After that she left, she ran away, she was gone for a few weeks, nobody knew where she was and we looked for her everywhere,”
“Okay,”
“When she came back, she was not herself, she wouldn’t let anyone touch her, she didn’t even want us near her, and then eventually she told us what had happened,”
“What did happen?”
“Well, that night she went to Tae Kwon Toe, she was, well, Brandon raped her, and Jacob wasn’t talking to her and I was preoccupied with my girlfriend at the time, she didn’t think she had anyone to talk to except Joe, and she didn’t want to worry him,”
“She was raped,” I muttered under my breath
“After a while, she wouldn’t let go of Joe, he was the only one who could touch her, go near her, he was the only one she wasn’t scared of, she wouldn’t even go home, so she stayed at out house for a while,” he paused to look at my reaction, but I kept an emotionless face, I wanted to know exactly what happened, “When she went home, she was sick, VERY sick, and she wanted to know why, and when she found out she though she was too young, she was freaked, she cried for ages,”
“I was why,” I closed me eyes

“Yeah. She wanted to have you no matter what, but she really would’ve driven herself crazy if it weren’t for Joe, she thought being a singe teenage mother was the worst thing for you, but he promised to always be there, to act as if you where his,”
“And he did,”
“He did, but she did have a rough time during the pregnancy, people were quick to judge, not thinking about any situations she might have been put in for this to happen, she hated it, but she tried to ignore it for your sake, she already loved you too much. Then there was the birth, I’ll never forget that. She was at out house, it was unexpected, she just started yelling at us, she yelled at me the most especially coz I was with her on the way to the hospital,”
“How did you handle it?”
“I did well considering. I was sixteen, and so was your mother, so I was scared for her, for Joe, for me. But the second you where born, Joe fell in love with you, so did I, and so did your mother, she couldn’t give you up, even Jessica was there when you where born,” he laughed a bit, “But she thought it would be better if you just thought Joe was your father considering she was with him at the time and they loved each other, and you, she didn’t want you to have to grow up thinking you where different because of what your father did, she was so worried about what would happen if she told you,”
“So instead of facing her fear, she just didn’t tell me,”
“She really thought it was Best Stephie,”
“How is not knowing my father best for me?”
“Because, you were happy having a proper family, and your…real father, it wasn’t the first or last time he had done something
like that,”
“Oh,” I started crying, this was the worst, the worst thing that could’ve happened! Nick enveloped me in a hug and I cried for hours, I’m surprised he didn’t leave, how could you put up with a fifteen year old girl crying for that long?