𝘞𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 | 𝘎𝘪𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘎𝘪𝘳𝘭𝘴

32 :: 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘨

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!! Warning !!
This chapter contains mentions of sexual assault.
Read at your own risk.

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❝ You don't need to be silent. ❞

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MELISSA COULDN'T BELIEVE her eyes. She must've been imagining things. After a week of zero contact, there stood her boyfriend right in front of her with a spilt coffee cup in his bandaged hand.

Was he even still her boyfriend? Melissa wasn't sure. He'd just upped and left. Maybe that was his way of breaking up with her and she'd just been too stupid to realise it. Stupid enough to follow him all the way to New York.

The humility of it all caught up to her all at once and she'd never wished more to bury herself in a hole and stay there.

"Hi," she said. It was all she knew how to say.

"Hi," he replied. It wasn't much, but God, hearing his voice again made her stomach flutter.

"You owe me a shirt," she answered, pulling at the soaked fabric of her blazer and shirt.

"I do," he confirmed. He looked down, eyes landing on her chest. "And soon, I think. That shirt is
see-through enough without anything to help it."

He grabbed her hand in his unbandaged one and immediately he was tugging her off into the city without saying anything. Melissa wanted to ask what happened to his hand, but words were something she struggled for right now. Shouldn't they talk? Melissa felt like that was the right thing to do. If not about his hand, then at least about everything that had happened? Was he just going to pretend that nothing happened, that she hadn't been almost raped, and that they hadn't been in an accident, and she hadn't had a mental breakdown in the back of an ambulance, and that he hadn't left?

They were just going to play pretend?

Melissa trailed behind him, squeezing through the bundles of people Jess forced his way through. She didn't even get a chance to apologise to them before she was gone again. Her ankle stung with the quick movements and she winced with every step, but she didn't know how to tell him. How was she meant to tell him that she was in pain and that he'd left her to suffer in it?

Jess stopped abruptly before turning to face her in the middle of the sidewalk. People cursed at them for stopping, but Jess didn't say anything in response. Instead, he took both her hands in his and smiled sheepishly.

"Okay, so I actually don't have a plan, but —," He let her hands fall and began pulling off his hoodie. "You can wear this. I know it's not much, but at least you don't have to worry about flashing everyone."

Melissa couldn't contain her laughter. It wasn't even funny, she was just so happy. Should she be happy? They hadn't spoken yet. She'd nothing to be happy about.

"There's a dry cleaner over there —," he pointed to the other end of the street, "— and I know a dude who works there that owes me a favour, so we can get your stuff cleaned. There's also a thrift store next door so I'll go in while you're getting out of the wet stuff and get you a shirt too. That sound good?"

Melissa nodded. She couldn't stop smiling if she tried. Smiling couldn't hurt her.

"Okay, let's go." He brought her by the hand to the dry cleaners and he showed her to a dressing room. He'd snatched some napkins from a food stand they passed as well so she could dry herself off as much as she was able to.