Bring Your Own Chick ✔️

33: Hide Outs

Art of Letting You Go by Tori Kelly

She listened intently as glass shattered downstairs. Tears ran down her cheeks and her hands shook in her lap.

He screamed in anger before more glass shattered. She flinched in fear, clenching her eyes shut.

This couldn't be happening again! He was doing so well! They were doing so well! What changed?

He found them.

Usually he would never go into her things but he did and what he found made him lose all the progress he had made over the years. Everything gone.

He was back to being the same man he was before.

She felt stupid for leaving it out like that in the open for him to see. Of course he would get angry when he saw it! She had always known that what was in the past was supposed to stay in the past.

After another smash, this one much larger and scarier, she scrambled for the phone, dialing the same one she used to years before. Except now it went straight to voice mail.

She didn't know who to call and she was panicking. Her heart beat was beating out of control, her entire body were racked with tremors, and her thoughts were a mess. When she heard his heavy footsteps on the staircase she knew she had to leave.

And now.

With only her phone in her hand she rushed to her window and pushed it open. It's been years since she last escaped like this and she wasn't sure if the tree branches could hold her weight anymore. But she had to try. Every stair that creaked under his weight was another heart beat she skipped.

Taking a leap of faith she climbed onto the thin branch, quickly crawling to the thick trunk where she could hold on. From there she hurriedly climbed down the trunk until reaching the last branch, cutting her hands along the way from the bark. She grabbed onto it and let her legs drop below her so she was hanging on.

Of course it wasn't strong enough.

The branch snapped sending her to the ground. She landed on her ankle, hissing in pain. But she didn't have time to cry over her injury, he had reached her bedroom and was currently calling her name. It was only a matter of time before he saw the open window and ran through the house to catch her.

She jumped up from the ground and ran across the backyard, climbing up the fence behind the shed so he wouldn't see. If he did than he would meet her on the other street, where she was going.

Landing on her ankle once more sent a wave of screaming pain to go up her leg but she couldn't stop now. She had to get away from him.

Twenty minutes later she had reached the park where she used to always run away to. In the back of her mind she knew that he would find her here, he knew her hiding spot, but right now she just wanted to rest. She sat under a big tree, facing away from the road so he wouldn't see her if he came.

Minutes passed as she let herself recuperate. No amount of breathing exercises could calm down her racing heart.

She pulled out her phone, noticing the blood on her hands. She had to call someone who would understand and at that moment she could only think of one person.

...

It was a week after Keenan saw the scars and Jesse was still being hounded by the Lockharts. It has also been a week of him avoiding them. Well to the best of his abilities.

It was hard at school for the first couple of days because Keenan seemed to be everywhere he was. Eventually he got the idea and kept his distance, but he started to say hi to him in the hallways and invite him over for family dinner.