Dangerous Love//Shawn Mendes

Chapter 24

Reaching my bedroom, I slammed the door shut and leant back against it, gasping. My heart was twisting around inside my chest, wringing painfully over and over, relentlessly. The entire world felt like it was collapsing around me and all I could do was watch. I thought about how this had all started, how different my life had been before I met him. I loved him in the kind of way people only dreamed about, a way my parents would never know, would never understand. And I could never have him.

Minutes later I heard the light thud of footsteps on the stairs; only one set, to my relief. I pulled myself up off the floor and furiously wiped my eyes, an insistent knock sounding through the wooden panels of the door. Dread filled me as I swung it open to reveal my father standing there, eerily still. I couldn't find the words as I slowly backed away from the door and he followed me inside my room.

'Sit down,' was all he said, yet somehow I could sense that he held all the power. The air in the room had changed, he commanded it; collected yet authoritarian. I did as he said and perched on the edge of the bed, awaiting my sentence.

'I don't have the words Eleanor.' As soon as he spoke I burst into tears. With every minute that passed I seemed to have a new realisation of how bad this really was. I couldn't look him in the eye, couldn't allow myself to register their disappointment.

'Your mother and I, we just can't believe what you've done. We thought that we knew you, we thought we raised you well.'  He seemed to be leading up to something, and somehow I knew he was about to drop the bomb right on me.

'But you've left us no choice anymore. Your mother and I have decided that you are not to be near him ever again, we will talk to Mrs Jones about having him transferred to different working days, and your mother and I will be driving you to and from school, dancing and anywhere else you go.'

'No,' I said far too loudly as I stood up from where I sat on the bed. I couldn't help my outburst, my voice was rising of its own accord, but I tried to keep it down because I knew it wouldn't get me anywhere. 'The only people who are hurting me are you and mom. You don't- you don't know him like I do. He wouldn't-'

'Eleanor you naïve girl. There are things that you don't understand, things you're too young to know. This toxic relationship, it isn't love-' Hot, angry tears brewed over onto my cheeks and I bit my lip to keep from screaming at him.

'Don't try and tell me what this is, who he is. You haven't even let me explain and now you're trying to act like you know everything.' My breathing had become ragged; I was almost hyperventilating.

'There's nothing to explain Eleanor, you are a 16 year old in a relationship of a sexual nature with a 21 year old.' He was really yelling at me now, and he paused a moment to compose himself.

'We're going to give you one chance to stay away from him, and otherwise we will press charges against him for statutory rape.' As the words escaped his lips I was already on my way out the door, I couldn't stay here and listen to this any longer, I had to get out. As I reached for the front door, my mother wrapped her hand around my wrist, jolting me away from the door.

'Where do you think you're going young lady.' She said sternly, and if she wasn't holding my wrist so tightly I would have felt the urge to slap her.

'I'm going to Wills, leave me alone.' I yelled and snatched my wrist from her grasp. I ran out the door and across the road, wrapping urgently on the door, my vision blurry with tears.

As the door swung open I threw myself against Will's chest, and after a few seconds he slid his palms along my back, holding me to him. It felt good to have someone to hold on to, right now he felt like the only person I had left.