Page 97 of The Longshot

“It had been going on for months. Months, Gary, and I didn't know what to do. I thought that he loved me, he told me he loved me! But then something in him would switch, and suddenly, he’d become this different person. I was so afraid of him, and the last time it happened, it…” she can barely finish her sentence. “It… it was here… it was right here.”

There’s an absolute hole in my heart as her eyes guide me toward the greenhouse at the end of the lot, where I can’t help but notice a single shattered pane.

The hole is no bigger than that of a fist, and as I watch the fear fill Chelsie’s eyes, I’m taken back. Taken back to a moment in time, where I knew something was wrong—the day I walked in on her and Simon.

Simon.

“He hurt you,” I can hardly say the three words without feeling completely sick to my stomach, though nothing pains me more than the way Chelsie doesn’t deny them.

It breaks a part of me watching her so broken. Watching the way the tears she’s trying so hard to fight against pool down her face and soak her neck. I would give any part of me if it meant that it’d make her whole, though I fear it goes way deeper than that.

All I know is this, and this, I can’t hold out on any longer. “I’m going to fucking kill him,” I say between clenched teeth, fists bawled up so firmly that my knuckles have turned stark white. “I’m going to find him, and I’m going to fucking kill him.”

“Gary, no!” Chelsie attempts to pull back on my arm as I charge my way forward, but she’s unsuccessful. I’m on a mission. I’m going to find this son of a bitch and completely ruin him for ever thinking to have laid a hand on my girl.

He’s dead.

The world goes mute with each step up the hill. My mind tunes out her pleas until, all at once, she shouts, “I want you, Gary!”

I halt.

I stop.

I turn back around slowly, where I’m met with a desperate look on her face. “Please,” Chelsie whispers. “I—I want you, Gary. I do, just… don’t go,” she cries. “You promised you’d be here for me. You promised.”

It only takes a matter of a few steps before I’m back down the hill and wrapping her into my arms, whispering a promise that I’ll stay. That I won’t go.

She’s all that matters.

“My parents don’t know, Gary,” she hiccups. “They don’t know that that’s what's why I left him… why I came to Crawley… why I?—”

“Took a break from school.” Everything starts to make sense—her truth unraveling in front of me. All the discourse leads back to him.

“Yes.” There’s a look of shame ridden along her face. “That’s why. I thought leaving would mean he’d leave me alone. But he found me, and now he’s tormenting me any way he can. I’m scared he’s going to tell my parents where I am and?—”

“Hey.” I kiss her forehead, cutting her spiraling thoughts short as I pull her safely into my arms.

Seeing her like this makes me go weak in the knees. How could anyone do this to her? There’s no one more perfect in this world, and seeing her crumble beneath me is what a stab wound to the heart must feel like.

“You’re okay now,” I murmur into her hair. “You hear me? I will never, and I mean never, allow anything to ever happen to you again. Do you understand that, Chelsie?” I pull back but steady my hands on her arms, looking her directly in the eyes as I repeat an unbreakable promise. “I will never, ever hurt you. You can trust me. Please tell me you know that. Please, baby girl.”

“I know, Gary. Trust me, I know.” She continues to wipe away the residual tears. “I’ve always known. I just… have been too afraid to admit it.”

“You’re safe with me,” I whisper, pulling her back in tight. “I promise that you’ll always be safe with me.”

For a while, we stay together. It takes some time for her tense frame to settle, her breathing to relax, and her face to free itself from all the redness it once possessed, but eventually it does, and the feeling of her soothed heartbeat brings a smile to my face.

“I want to be with you, Gary,” now she’s the one to look into my eyes as she whispers, “I do. I want you. All of you. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to finally tell you that, but it’s true. It’s you.”

Hearing those words come from her mouth is like finally receiving the one thing you’ve been waiting for your whole life—a gift. My girl. It’s like after all this waiting, I’m getting the one thing I’ve always believed in—love, and just like I suspected, it came when I least expected it…

“Kiss me.” Chelsie guides my lips downwards, dragging me in close. I melt into her, kissing as if we’re one because, somehow after this conversation, we are.

“Take the lead, Gary,” she murmurs into my mouth. “I want you to take the lead.”

TWENTY-FIVE

C H E L S I E

---