Kate Hopper thought she'd finally had everything taken from her.
With her father gone and her sister all the way across the country, she truly didn't have anything left. Since her father's death eight months before, she'd broken up with her boyfrien...
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STEVE HAD SAT on the bathroom floor with his arms around Kate for almost an hour, trying to calm her down enough to get her off the floor.
It had taken her a while to stop crying, to finally calm down. He didn't want to force her to talk about it, but she'd gotten out a few shaky descriptions. Most of what he'd gotten was that she'd seen her sister, seen her dad, but she had not seen a grandfather clock, which was more than good news in his eyes. However, that didn't stop him from remaining to be completely worried about her.
Before he'd heard anything, he'd been sitting on his bed in his pajamas, waiting somewhat impatiently for her to get out of the shower. He'd always known that Kate loved taking long showers, but she was taking forever. When he'd heard the initial smack of her body against the tile, he'd jumped out of bed, rushing to the door and knocking on it. "Kathy, you okay?"
No response.
"Hey, Kathy, you're about to give me a heart attack."
When she'd screamed, he'd knocked on the door again even more urgently. "Hey, what's going on?" More knocking. "Kathy, you okay?" More knocking. "Jesus Christ, Kathy, if you don't open the goddamn door right now, I'm coming in, okay?"
When he'd knocked again and she hadn't responded, he considered for only a moment as he heard her sobs from the other side of the door—worst case scenario, he saw her naked, and it wasn't like he hadn't seen that before. Without a second thought, he started hitting the knob on the door until it finally broke the lock, and Steve barely let the door open before he barged in. Whenever he found her on the floor, he rushed to the ground, immediately pulling her in his grasp as he attempted to pull her out of an episode.
