Fighter {Completed}

Chapter Twenty-One: You're Worth It, Ellie {Cole}

Chapter Twenty-One: You're Worth It, Ellie {Cole}

She shifts as she prepares herself to speak, her eyes avoiding mine and her hands fumbling and wringing together. I zone in on her hands, particularly the same hand she placed on mine moments ago.

Did she feel the burn, too?

I can still feel her hand on mine.

"We met at the beginning of my sophomore year through a friend of ours. He was...perfect, in a way. Straight A student, star athlete, loved by everyone, really. He was kind and generous and protective. When my piece of shit brother showed up out of the blue back at my mom's house, Keenan knocked the shit out of him for calling me fat. He'd bring me flowers a lot..."

Fucker...

How do you go from bringing someone flowers to beating the shit out of them and threatening them?

My mind burns with anger, but my heart tugs for Ellie.

"I thought I fell in love with him, and I thought he was in love with me. It felt so good to be... wanted after my mom and brother decided drugs and alcohol were worth more than me." She raises her hand to scratch at her jaw, before forcing herself to stop. "The changes were small at first, and I didn't really notice. Like, he stopped bringing me gifts, and he was crazy possessive of his phone. Before then, he'd always let me use it to play games or anything I wanted. Then, he'd flip shit and blow up on me if I touched it."

Ellie laughs humorlessly.

"I guess that should've been the first sign." She sighs. "I didn't live with him, just stayed over a few days out of the week, but I didn't think anything of it when he always offered me to take showers or when he'd give me just his shirt and a pair of underwear to sleep in. I didn't have a choice but to wear them, else he'd lose his shit. I was so fucking stupid."

"No, you weren't. You thought he loved you, and you didn't want to upset him. You did nothing wrong, Ellie." My anger makes my words seem harsh, but she doesn't seem to mind, and only smiles softly, sad eyes flashing to mine.

I can still feel her hand in mine.

Grab her hand. Hold her hand, you idiot.

Reaching across the table before she can continue wringing her hands, I grab her wrist softly, holding it gently as she stares with wide eyes. My skin burns like someone poured boiling water on it, but it's a good kind of burn.

"Uhm... We dated all the way up until the end of my senior year. By that point, he'd blown up on me a number of times. He was super distant and snappy but also insanely possessive of me, but I just chalked it up to stress. He'd dropped out and got a job and his G.E.D. No one knew why, either. He'd gone from this king of high school to a dropout working at a mechanic shop. People...People thought he knocked me up and that was why but we'd never even... We've never had sex. He pushed it a lot, but I wanted to wait until marriage. He hated that, and always got pissy whenever I turned him down."

I bet she's happy they didn't do it.

"Now, I'm thanking god we never had sex," she says, smiling as she voices my inner thoughts. I grin softly, unable to fight my chuckle. "No matter what I told people, they didn't believe me. They kept saying I'd start showing soon, so I just ignored them. One night, I came home from a football game and Keenan was waiting by the door of my mom's place. I'd been trying to call and text all day, but he never answered. I knew he was pissed and I expected him to blow up on me, yelling like usual... But this time, he did something different."

I'm not sure if Ellie realizes, but her hand squeezes mine, and I can practically feel the tears building behind her eyes.

"He just picked me up and threw me in his car and took off to his house. I tore my shirt when he shoved me in and he ended up tearing it off of me, cussing and yelling about how I was nothing but a slut and a whore and asking who got me pregnant. God, I was so confused until I realized his friend had told him about the rumors at school. He thought I was cheating on him." She shakes her head, lip curling. "Fucking hypocrite. After I explained, he calmed down and then went to shower the oil and grease off of him. He left his phone in the bedroom and... I went through it."