Page 74 of Catch My Fall

“A show called Yellowstone, I started it when I got out of the hospital. It’s pretty good.”

I didn’t feel like seeing or talking to anyone back then. I just wanted to be by myself, and having nothing better to do all day, I binged a shit-ton of TV shows, the latest being Yellowstone, and this is the first time I’ve managed to continue watching it. I wasn’t sure about it for the first few episodes, but season two has me hooked, Especially my two favourite characters; Rip and Beth. Swoon.

They’re currently sat on the roof of the house, and I think Rip’s about to tell her he loves her.

“Tell me… Tell me when it saves me,” Beth says.

My heart melts.

For the rest of the episode, Alec watches it with me, rubbing lazy circles on my ankle with his thumb. I have to fill him in on a few details so he understands what’s happening, but I love how normal this feels. The two of us comfortable with just sitting in silence watching a TV show. It’s so mundane, but it’s perfect.

The tension ramps up on screen as Beth is attacked in her office by masked men, and as the action unfolds, I can feel a tightness in my chest.

Memories flood back to me watching Beth get beaten to within an inch of her life, almost being sexually assaulted. I never knew what a trigger felt like until everything happened to me. How the subconscious mind reacts to certain words or situations that hit a little closer to home than others.

My heart thunders in my chest as I grip the cushion under my head. I flinch with every punch and slap she’s delivered, cringing at the disgusting words they spew while they try to break her.

A tear drips down my cheek and I try to swipe it away before Alec notices, but it’s too late.

He pauses the screen and tugs me onto his lap so that I’m sitting sideways. His arm wraps around my back, the other holding my face so that I have nowhere else to look than into his molten metal eyes. “Are you alright, princess?”

I nod, rolling my eyes. “I’m just being stupid.”

“It’s not stupid. You can’t help the things that trigger you, the things that remind you of what happened. It’s still raw and fresh in your mind and nobody could blame you for getting upset, but with time, it should get easier.”

His voice soothes me and I rest my head on his chest and his arms tighten around me as his lips find my forehead.

“They didn’t just take it in turns,” I blurt out and his body tenses against me, bracing himself.

Alec is the only one I’ve told the full extent of what they did to me. He’s the only one I trust with that knowledge, even though I know it must kill him to hear.

“Sometimes they’d do it at the same time… t—together.”

Look at her body breaking to fit us all in… That’s it, bitch, cry for us! Fuck, I love it when she bleeds…

The man’s laughter echoes in my mind, my throat closing up as an onslaught of memories hit me and I do my best to force them back.

Alec’s arms around my body ground me, keeping me in the present as the memories try to drag me into the darkness.

As if sensing it, his lips press softly against mine. “There’s nothing that I can say that will make it any better, nothing that will take the memories away, just know that I’m always here. I will always be here for you, princess.”

Curiosity grips me. “Why do you always call me that?”

“You’re only just asking me now? After I’ve been calling you princess since we met over a year ago?”

I giggle. “Yes, but… I dunno, I guess since we started… sleeping together, I just wondered if the meaning behind it changed at all.”

His face goes from playful to serious in a split-second as his smile fades. “Why do you think I call you princess?”

“Because I’m spoilt and rich and on a bad day a raging bitch?”

“Never that. I call you princess because that’s what you are to me, what you’ve always been to me. Special. Precious. Priceless. I was put on this earth to serve you, to protect you, and I will spend the rest of my life worshipping at your feet if you’ll let me.”

His words stun me and mine fail me. I don’t know what I was expecting him to say when I asked the question, but it definitely wasn’t that. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

He strokes my cheek with his thumb. “You don’t have to say anything, princess. You’re my entire world and I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t in it.”

I choke back a cry. “You’re mine, too. Being here with you, I’ve felt like myself again for the first time since all of this happened. Every time you touch me, I feel a part of myself healing, the wounds of my body closing up from your kisses, the wounds of my mind healing from your words. I hope you know how important you are to me.”

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