Page 32 of Professor Obsessed

I followed her as she sat in the park mindlessly wiping tears off her pink cheeks. I followed her down fifth avenue as she made her way to the bank. I watched her card get declined twice and slipped in, hiding in the stairwell when her nose was in her phone scrolling frantically through her bank account. I’d been wiring money to her to make sure she wasn’t going without, the scheduled transfer I set up, didn’t go through. The plan was to step out of the shadows and give her the money she needed and beg for her to take me back. Everything went awry when those three fucks walked in.

Waiting for my moment in the shadows was hard, as bodies fell in heaps to the floor, I found myself praying to all the gods in existence that Emma could be spared for just a moment longer. I couldn't give a shit about anyone else in that bank, but my heart was out there exposed.

When he pistol whipped her face, I knew he’d be my last target. The one I would savor. I wanted to taste his fucking death on my tongue and watch his lungs constrict. The shot of adrenaline I got imagining his heart stopping, his pupils relaxing with his oncoming death got my cock hard.

When I saw her sweet little body running towards me instead of out the door with the others, I almost didn't believe my eyes. The lapse in time, the small moment it took altered everything.

He pointed the gun at her and my body just moved.

The echoes of her screaming could be heard, but she sounded far away. I couldn't feel my lower extremities, the rest of me felt like I was pulling a sled of weights through quick sand.

Another crack of fire whipped through my body.

I couldn't tell which way was up, my hands grabbed onto something, my eyes clouded by red, only seeing shadows. I felt the gurgle and warmth of life being spilled onto my forearms, and the fleeting pulse fading under my palms.

Reality seemed to effervesce, tiny bubbles of memories left in the aftermath. I finally felt relaxed. Peaceful even, as the water splashed across my face. I could hear the voice I'd come to love, I could hear my name on her full lips, dying to trace them one last time with my own.

It was getting dark.

The flashing red light from the overhead sprinklers no longer invaded my vision.

The smell of the stale water that sprayed creating human waste puddles on the bank floor no longer permeated my nostrils.

Emma was safe.

The only thing I did right in my life was make sure she still had hers.

29

EMMA

Tears blurred my vision. An anchor of regret settled in the pit of my stomach weighing me down as Chase fell to the ground. I watched the last man standing crawl over Chase's body hoping to get a shot off to his head, ending him for good, surely to take me out next. Chase’s eyes snapped open at the last minute strangling the life out of him, taking one last shot to his right arm.

That bullet shredded through his bicep, but his grip never relented. The choking sounds of the dying man were going to haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life as I watched the life drain from him. Shoving him off, Chase’s figure was dragging itself using only his good arm towards me as consciousness slapped me back into my body, my mouth agape in a horrific scream that pierced my ears and burned my throat. My lungs screamed until there was no air left, nothing there to give the sound strength.

Red, white, and blue, flashed before my eyes as police and first responders flooded in kicking tepid water in my face. My tears refused to stop flowing as I held Chase’s head in my lap. Looking down at his face painted in blood as my vision blacked.

Pain throbbed behind my eyes as I wished more than anything I’d been shot too. I wanted to be with Chase regardless of the circumstance; death included. The most powerful love I’d ever felt, and I was holding it going limp and lifeless in my arms.

The caress of a hand wiping my face startled me.

My mouth was still hanging open as my eyes met the emerald green of his. Chase looked at me, his lids hazy with affection as he stroked my cheek.

“Don’t cry kitten,” his voice sounded wet. The vital fluid trickled out the sides of his mouth. He spit up blood uncontrollably.

“Chase,” I garbled out, “how, why?” I stuttered the words.

“I’m always watching over you, kitten,” he wheezed, “what good would I have been, if I couldn't even protect the woman I love.”

Fuck. His words rang on repeat, the words I'd been too afraid to say out loud after everything that’s happened.

“Please,” I could barely hear the words as first responders surrounded us. Throwing sheets over the deceased and calling for more assistance to be dispatched, “please don’t leave me.”

Chase’s eyes dilated. My heart stopped.

I regretted every shitty thing I'd said to him. Every awful moment we ever had together rampaged its way to the surface of my mind, only allowing me to think of the ways I’d failed him. The ways I'd hurt him.

Back on the sidewalk where I stood frozen in time, I watched myself break his heart for the last time, and he still died for me.

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