Loose Change~ Montgomery De La Cruz / Zach Dempsey/Scott Reed

Part 4 Chapter 11b

"What are you talking about?"

Scott ranted, "I don't want you to rule out all your other options, and then decide you don't like me as much as you thought you did, and end up hating me for making you go to Sanderson."

She frowned. "Where the hell did this come from?" Didn't he realize she was currently obsessed with him?

"I don't know. I mean, you're cutting a lot of people off right now. I have a little reason to be worried-"

She scoffed, and crossed her arms. "No."

"Ophelia, I love you, but you're kind of know for bottling up your problems and eventually things get too much for you-"

"Gross, I don't do that." Even though she could admit she sometimes did that.

While Scott knew she always did that.

He said, "Just promise if I do something to upset you that you tell me and don't just keep it to yourself?"

She sighed, heavily. "Yeah. I promise."

They drove in silence for a moment.

Again, Scott felt compelled to bring up what Honor brought up to him while Ophelia was in the hospital. When Honor claimed Montgomery hit Ophelia more than Ophelia admitted.

But he didn't want to make her upset before school. He changed his topic to Zach.

Scott told her, "Look, I don't want to repeat anyone else's mistakes either. Were there any problems with Zach that, you know, would be a problem if it started happening with me?"

Ophelia thought back to dating Zach. She took a moment before saying, "There's a lot of things that happened in my past relationships. Both of them." The ominous reference was to Montgomery too. "I don't want any of those things happen again."

Obviously, Ophelia wasn't worried about Scott hurting her. He never do something like that.

But at the same time...she didn't think Montgomery would either.

Having a loving boyfriend one moment, and an abusive boyfriend next...it fucked you up. It made it hard to trust anyone. Even Scott, who she trusted more than anyone in her life.

She continued with the topic of trust. "One of them was, um...I don't think I was trusted." Scott looked over at her as they came to a red light. She ran a hand through her hair. "Montgomery...it's like he knew I would never cheat on him, but when he got angry that's all he thought about. He'd accuse me of flirting with everyone. But he knew that I wasn't? I don't know, it was really back and forth with him."

Scott spoke up, "I think I know what you mean. Whenever you guys would hang around us, he'd be fine with it. And then if you got in an argument he just...wouldn't let it go."

Ophelia shifted in her seat. "Yeah," she said, sarcastically. "Glad to see he was angry enough for everyone to notice." She groaned. "God, it was so embarrassing..."

"For him," Scott said. "Not for you. And we'd even-" Scott stopped himself. They'd even tease Montgomery about how jealous he got. And Montgomery would always say the same thing.

'You guys don't get jealous because your girlfriends don't even compare to mine.'

Scott didn't like thinking back to those teasing times. Because he didn't like the fact that some of his memories with Montgomery were still good ones.

He asked instead, "What about Zach?"

She sighed deeply. "Zach..." It felt like the ultimate betrayal to trash talk Zach in front of Scott, the boy Zach had always been most worried about. It'd be like Zach trash talking Ophelia to Chloe. But she still said, "Sometimes he didn't trust me either."