Page 119 of Hitting the Goal Line
Maybe when we get back to Chicago, I can have Logan go after him. Dude is Russian or at least I think he is, he doesn’t talk a whole lot about his life beside the fact that he has a brother, but I’m sure he would love to beat the shit of an asshole like Elijah Swanson.
“An ongoing argument that we had was that he would notice how you looked at me, or how I would look at you. He would yell out how I was looking at you how in the way that I should be looking at him. I always told him that I wasn’t. That I didn’t have feelings for you and I never will. But that was a lie. It was always a lie, a lie that I said to not only convince him but myself too. I never told him that, though, because if I did, he was going to react in a way that I wouldn’t like. So I just continued to lie. To the both of us. I even did it this morning.” Her voice breaks as she speaks.
“Why did you have to convince yourself?” I ask her, not wanting to hear the answer but knowing that I should.
Sophia looks up at me with big doe eyes, so much uncertainty flowing through them.
“I’ve been in love you for a long time, Blake.” She starts, taking a deep breath before saying anything else. “Like you said, you would watch me marry someone else just as long as you didn’t lose me. I felt the same way. I would have rather watched you have a family and grow old with someone else than lose my friend, lose the little boy that I met when I was five, forever. I was in love with you but after our second night together, I told myself that it would be best for me to shove my feelings for you away. That I should move on and just be grateful that I had you as my friend. That’s why I started seeing Elijah. Because I was trying to move away from my love for you. But no matterhow hard I tried to shove my feelings away, they were still ever-so present. I should have realized that what I was doing wasn’t working when I had wished that you would had told me not to go on my first date with Elijah. I kept telling myself that with time, my feelings for you would settle, and I couldn’t have to continue lying to myself anymore. But that never happened. My love for you has always been there, and it will always be and Elijah knew that. He knew, or should I say knows, that I love you and no matter what, that was,is, never going to change.”
As I hear Sophia speak, I can’t help but to hate myself.
If I had grown some balls years ago, she wouldn’t had to do that. She wouldn’t have had to shield what she was feeling and lie to herself or to anyone about it.
Anger rolls through my body, but I try to push it down. It’s doesn’t stop me from practically digging my hand into her thighs.
“Had it been going on for a while? The convincing Elijah?” I ask, wanting to know about the situation.
How it started?
When?
So may question are circling in my mind and I’m trying not to speak every single one at once.
Sophia gives me a slight nod, biting down on her bottom lip in the process. “Since the night I introduced the two of you,” she answers.
I try to think back to that night, trying to remember when that was. If I remember correctly, she introduced us after a game against San Jose at the start of the season. I also remember her being there for the first few games of but after that game, she hasn’t gone to a single one since. For four months, I’ve been playing without Sophia in the stands.
“In October? It started in October?” I ask, my eyes moving down to her cheek. It’s discolored, a hint of a bruise marking herface. If she’s been trying to convince him that she didn’t have feelings for him since October, how many other bruises have landed on her body? Have they only been on her face? The rest of her body? How fucking rough with her did he get?
“Yes,” she answers, her chin lowering.
Something pulls at my chest seeing and hearing her like this.
I close my eyes for a second, trying to find the courage to ask my next question.
“How-” I start but quickly pause because I don’t know if I can say the question out loud. After a few seconds and Sophia looking back up at me, I’m able to get the words to come out. “How rough would he get?” I finally ask, my eyes not moving away from her bruised cheek, hating the fact that even there in the first place. I should be the one with the bruises, not her.
I raise one of my hands and caress the skin with my thumb. She doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch.
My eyes stay on the movement of my thumb as Sophia answers.
“This morning was the roughest,” she admits. “Before this morning, he hadn’t hit me until a few weeks ago, when slapped me against my cheek. He has shoved me a few times, and choked me once, but never had hit me.”
I’m going to kill him. The next time I see the fucker, he’s fucking dead. Screw my hockey career.
A lump forms in my throat, but I’m able to push it down before speaking again. “What did he do to you this morning?”
I don’t have to know every single detail, but I want to. I want to know everything that she has gone through.
Sophia’s bottom lip trembles from between her teeth. She looks like she isn’t going to tell me, but that isn’t the case.
It takes her a few tries, but Soph finally is able to tell me everything. Not just what happened this morning, but everything she has gone through while being in a relationshipwith Elijah. She tells me how he grabbed her that first time and shoved her against the wall. How she came home that night because she didn’t want to be anywhere near him after that. She mentions the promises that he gave her that night and how she so desperately wanted to believe them. From there, she tells me about how after the first incident, she felt isolated from me, and our hockey friends. She tells me about Christmas and how she not only lied to me, but to her parents about how she spent it.
She tells me about every thought, every feeling she had these last few months. Every bruise, small or big that the fucker left on her body. Hearing everything, breaks my fucking heart, but when she goes into detail of what happened this morning, it shatters into a million pieces.
Silent tears roll down her face as she tells me every last detail. The hair pulling, the dragging, the stomping on her ribs, the feeling of possibly not making it out of that room. Everything.
I don’t know how she does it, but she is able to make it through telling me, without yelling, without breaking into a sob. She may have tears rolling down her face, sliding along her cheek, but she as controlled and poised as ever, and I couldn’t be prouder.
