Solace (completed)

Chapter Seventeen

Elias Salazar

   Four days.

   It's been four days since I found my girl beaten and bloodied. And each day becomes harder than the day before.

It's an endless cycle of heartache and torture and I fucking hate it. I hate sitting here and holding her pale hand like she's my girlfriend I refuse to take off life support.

I know I said girlfriend, leave me alone.

Each day after school I rush straight over here. Each day I spend a few minutes worshiping her body. Rubbing the back of her hands with my thumbs, smoothing back the soft strands of her hair- maybe I should comb it for her? I spend a few seconds leaving soft kisses to her forehead, and then I move to the skin of her knuckles.

Holding her limp hand against my lips is fucking painful. I don't care if all she does is rip her hand away from me, at least then she'd be awake and not unconscious.

Sometimes I use both of my thumbs and I rub her forearm in a circular motion, like a massage. I honestly don't know why, maybe because it gives me a way to touch her more without crossing the line of boundaries.

Leaving her here has been hell. It's like I'm leaving a piece of me here. I slept here Saturday and Sunday but once it finally hit Monday, Ma dragged my ass out of here for school.

She sympathizes, she does, but she wants me to at least get out for a few hours even if it means going out is going to school.

Having to tell everyone about what happened made me feel something I haven't felt yet... anger.

(Flashback)

I can't go to the library. Going there without her, it feels like I'm cheating. Like I'm betraying her in some way. That's our thing to do together and to go there alone, it wouldn't feel right.

So I drag myself all the way over to the cafeteria with the slowest walk known to man.

A part of me feels like I should tell them what happened. We haven't known them for long but we've all become sort of... friends I guess. Alex has told me herself how she views Jasmine and Maya as her friends, so shouldn't they know?

I step through the doors and my eyes immediately land on the table we sit at when we don't go to the library. Maya, Kenji, Jasmine, and Devon already sit with their trays on the table and smiles on their faces.

Fuck.

My feet carry me over to them and Maya must hear my footsteps because she turns around in her seat with an excited gleam in her eyes, but it diminishes slightly when she sees it's just me.

A lazy, untrue smile forms on my lips as I pull up the seat next to her. "Hey, kid."

She pushes some hair out of her face and smiles. "H-Hi! Where's A-Alex?" She peers her little head around the cafeteria in search of my girl.

My hands clench against my jeans and I feel a tick in my jaw. She looks back at me and, as if she senses my annoyance, sinks down into her seat to make herself small. She looks down at her lap. "S-Sorry."

Ah fuck. A harsh sigh pulls from my lips and I run a frustrated hand down my face. "It's not your fault, kid. It's just—" Fuck. Should I even say it?

She deserves to know. "Something happened to Alex."

Immediately, all eyes turn to me. Jasmine looks shocked, Devon looks confused, poor Maya's turned pale, and Kenji just lifts a curious eyebrow.