No Strings Attached

Chapter Twenty One

“Why do you have to?” Jay was frowning, but his eyes were following after Nate, almost as though he was trying to be a part of both conversations.

“Well, because Ava is getting bigger now, and you two should have your space. Plus this shit with Sebastienne, I mean, right now we know he doesn’t know where we are, but it could just be a matter of time, couldn’t it? And I’d never forgive myself if something happened to any of you guys, because of me.”

Someone walked over her grave, she mused. That was the only way she could describe the shiver that ran down her spine in a stone cold tingle.

Much as she wanted to brush Sebastienne under the carpet, and pretend like his threats, and the menacing tone he used to deliver them, had meant nothing to her, she knew enough to know that he was unpredictable, and she didn’t want to take a chance with Tori and Ava.

Something about him had Nate and Jayden wired up – she’d never seen them this edgy about anyone before. She had to consider that before she threw caution to the wind.

“It wouldn’t be ‘because of you’,” Tori broke in, her voice low and intense, “Stop taking responsibility for the shit that gets thrown at you! It would be because Sebastienne is a psycho. An absolute fucking psychopath.”

Her rigid, angry posture caught Jayden’s attention from the phone call that was going on out in the hall. She looked ready to fly across the coffee table at Shannon for that one flippant comment.

“Babe?” he ran his hand down her back tenderly, expecting to calm her – reign in her anger like he always could, but she shrugged him away.

“No! Don’t try and mollycoddle me,” she whipped her head around to Shannon – the anger assimilating with fear for her best friend, “You’re scaring me, you have been for months! If you continue to take the blame for this shit that keeps going on around you, then it will just keep happening! You will lie down quietly and take it, Shan, you need to stop thinking of yourself as a perpetrator to any of this! You’ve been assaulted, and abused, and stalked – but not one fucking second of that was your fault! You just keep cutting yourself off and running away before you can actually stand still for long enough to see that!”

Shannon stayed dangerously quiet for two long moments – her dark eyes narrowed in anger at her best friend. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she probably could recognise Tori’s words as the truth, but somehow – in her vulnerable, confused state with everything that Nate was forcing, and Sebastienne a cruel taunt over her head – as well as the ghosts – both from the past and the present that seemed to be haunting her recently, she couldn’t take them at face value – she couldn’t take Tori’s anger, her words, as anything other than a cruel jibe.

“Fuck you Tor!” her voice was painfully intense – low and intimidating as she stood up over her best friend, “Is my ‘shit’ interrupting your perfect little existence? I do apologise!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tori shouted to Shannon’s retreating figure as she headed for the door – suddenly thoughts of moving too fast, or protecting herself were eclipsed by the burning compulsion to get the fuck away.