Numb Pain

Chapter 21

Okay, me and my writing partner (WeLiveToBeFree) have talked about the fact that we keep hitting stalemates when asking for people to vote. So instead, we are just going to upload whenever we want to, depending on whether we have a chapter already waiting or are still writing the update. Enjoy this chapter and there's a lot more drama coming! We probably won't take any more than a week to upload anything new. Thanks for your continued support and we'd still appreciate any votes/comments to motivate us.

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ETHAN'S POV:

Trembles wrack their way across my sitting figure, relentlessly threatening to tear through my flesh should Ellie not return soon. Her baby lays, quietly sleeping in the back of the car, perhaps subconsciously aware of the solemn reason we are here. I tilt my head to glance at the child, a sharp pang of hope and despair throbbing against my chest, desperate to be addressed as the child's father. I still mourn for him. I shouldn't, of course I shouldn't. It's selfish and nasty, but despite it all I wish such an innocent young creature could at least grow up with his dad. I can hardly fathom what life would've been like without my own Dad. He taught me near everything I know. He played football with me, he made me laugh and honestly taught me what it is to live. George won't have that. And, though he will never know, it may even make it worse to think that his father whilst alive, took advantage of the most beautiful woman I know.

The car shudders with a gasp of wind, rocking gently on its wheels as the breeze whistles through the narrow slits in it's exterior. I look up, averting my gaze from where it was before fixed on my feet, to see Eleanor approaching with another man at her side. His arm sits comfortably across her waist, but I can tell by the related features that he is a sibling rather than a lover. I offer a smile of sympathy in his direction as Ellie slips from his grasp, muttering a softened goodbye as she climbs into the passenger seat. I offer no words, for as always I fear there is nothing right to say. I start the engine, which sputters painfully into life, spitting smoke as it begins to roll steadily forwards. I take a careful hand from the steering wheel and let it lay momentarily on Ellie's leg, stroking my thumb across her knee in a despondent act of reassurance before I am forced to change gear - immediately feeling the lack of radiating warmth from Ellie's flesh. Rain begins its slow descent from the heavens, as if it too cries over the undeserved death of an angelic baby girl. Whether it mourns too for Jai, the man who beat a girl who truly loved him for who he was, I don't know. I only know that, personally, I do not lament the monster.

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"I saw him." her voice is low and menacing, as if inhabited by another creature who devotes its life only to imagining the impossible. I shake my head, though the gesture is all but noticeable. I cannot deny the girl what she wishes was true, but at the same time would I rather watch her go slowly crazy, every day thinking she has seen the man who died with his neck trapped in a rope in their own bedroom?

"Ellie..." I mutter, the urge to protest rising heavily in my throat as I fight back the fear that bites my tongue.

"I saw him." this time her speech is heavier, getting ever surer that the dead man somehow found a second chance at life, blessed and forgiven by the stars that determine fate.

"No, you didn't." I counter, reluctant to let the broken women fall into an infinite oblivion where she can only desperately clutch at the hopes of sanity.

"I SAW HIM!" she shouts, surprising me to the extent that a solitary tremble runs its way down my spine, as well as stirring the baby and coaxing cries of confusion from his toothless mouth. Yet she doesn't stop. "I saw that man, Ethan. He was in the graveyard. And Rosalie too. You can't tell me no because you weren't there. Very well, tell me I'm crazy, tell the whole bloody world I'm crazy. But I know what I saw. And I saw Jai."