~ Past separated them, now pain will bring them together.~
A teenager Sofia Hayden, experiencing her falling apart family isolated herself slowly from everything that she held dear, especially from her best friend Max Wilder who had just realized hi...
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"Yes, of course, I'll arrive in London by next week. We can have that meeting with Mr. Carlton then," Max said over the phone. "No, you've heard it wrong, I won't be settling down in Asthel. I'm just here to meet the family."
Max cut the call. Hearing footsteps behind him then he looked over his shoulder from the window and bit his tongue. It was his father.
"Max."
"Dad."
Robert smiled looking at his son, but that attempt of a smile faltered soon. "Are you leaving?"
Tilting his head, Max studied Robert's expression carefully. "Yes, dad. I'll be leaving next week. Got to go back to work."
"What if I say that I don't want you to leave?" Robert asked, his eyes were tight with cautiousness.
Max looked away as Robert asked that. Earlier he had for a while thought to stay back for than one reason. But now, seeing Sofia everywhere, thinking about her and trying find answers of confusing questions that were related to her, Max had suddenly filled with the fear of returning to the place he was in ten years back. If the agony and his broken self returned this time, Max doubted if he then ever would be able to gather himself back together.
"It is better I leave, dad." Max said truthfully. "Besides, you were the most eager one, more eager than even mom, to send me off to London. You were so excited hearing I got accepted in Oxford."
"For studies, son, only for studies. Not to settle down over there, so far away from us." Robert sighed. "You've never come to visit me or your cousins here in Asthel, not even once, in the last ten years. It was me who had to travel all the way over to London each time I wanted see you. And I've been getting quite surprised seeing the way you changed over the years—slowly but surely. It was like you've been growing some kind of a hard shell around you which to make matters far worse have layers and layers of unbreakable material coated all over. You distanced yourself from everyone, Max."
Max clenched his jaw realizing his father had seen more than he'd thought him capable of. "That's called growing up, dad. People change, they change for the better, become stronger. You can't deny that my going away had secured my future, you can't deny that I used to be too weak, too much of a sad-case back then ten years ago. You seem to see more than you let on, dad, you must have been aware of that too."
His father had already had him decoded halfway anyway, so Max figured he could at least say his reasons at least indirectly now.
Robert nodded, but warily. "I agree with you on that. You would have wasted yourself if you were here in Asthel at that time. I don't know the reason, you never wanted to discuss about it and neither did I pressurize you to talk but maybe I should have—"
"What if I still waste myself here if I stay, at this time, as well?" was Max's wise retort as he cut in, the storm in him peeking out.
"I gave my consent to your decision to leave and was even happy for you, of course, thinking it'll be the best for you then but that doesn't mean in any way that I wished for you to never return. You're my only son, Max, and my heir. Don't forget that you're supposed to take over Wilders," Robert had his brows furrowed in diligence. "I would have let you off the hook gladly if you'd chosen another career, but aren't you a lawyer already?"
