Of All the Things that I Don't Know (Spot Conlon + OC)

Chapter 26

My decision to ask for Spot's help in ending things with Jack had not been one I had arrived at easily. Truthfully, the Brooklyn leader had been the last person on Earth I would have ever considered for such a task. And it had not just been due to his long standing friendship with Jack, though one could have found that alone as reason enough for Spot to be a poor choice of ally. My strong hesitation in reaching out to him had more stemmed from not having seen or heard from the Brooklynite in several months. And though his newly cemented relationship with Julia had undoubtedly been a substantial catalyst for this long absence, I had been more convinced that it had really just been another sign highlighting his true feelings of apathy towards me. Despite the fact that we had spent countless affable hours in each other's company for years at that point, I had twice crossed a line with him, instigating a physicality that he had been clearly averse to. I had momentarily allowed for the possibility that Spot Conlon, the handsome, untouchable leader of Brooklyn, could have thrown his skirt-chasing days to the wind and daned to be interested in me. And I had lost him for it.

But as I had sat in the sick room of the Manhattan lodging house listening for Jack's continued slumbering sighs, I had numbly realized how truly desperate my situation had become.

I remember adjusting myself quietly into the corner I had squeezed into several hours prior, closing my eyes against the pain that had mercilessly radiated throughout my bruised body. Tears had stung against my closed lids as I had covered my mouth with my hands to stifle the sobs threatening to erupt from within me, terrified that any minute noise might awaken Jack, and with him, the unbridled rage he had unleashed upon me several hours before. However, although I had been stunned by the level of brutality that Jack had proven capable of that night, I had honestly seen the impending explosion coming for quite some time. It had been a steadily building fusillade-one forged from two year's worth of poor decisions, repressed anger, and rampant, unchecked denial. But the final descent into the fallout I had found myself in with Jack had only truly commenced the moment I had watched Spot exit the Manhattan party in Julia's sloppy, though firm embrace two months prior.

It had been the worst night of my life up to that point, and a sickness had pervaded throughout my body in the hour following the sight of them together, an agonizing pain that I had attempted to quiet with copious amounts of alcohol and mind-numbingly rough sex to which Jack had happily acquiesced. And in the weeks following, I had commenced a harmful, erratic spiral, plummeting into a series of parasthetically destructive acts that had rendered me badly hollowed and damaged. I had found myself falling into a blackness with no trail of breadcrumbs to guide me out, and what had been most concerning of all was that there had been no one there to stop me.

My parents had barely noticed my presence at home during those long, embittered weeks, so they had certainly not paid any mind to my increased absence. My mother had collapsed into her own darkness several days before the fateful party that had sparked mine, and my father, having already sent my younger sisters to stay with his parents, had requested that I keep up the books at the store and manage the deliveries in his stead. But he had been otherwise too preoccupied with my mother's swiftly vacillating hysteria to check on me at any point afterwards. And so, left with only the horrible, aching pain that had been associated with any thought of Spot Conlon, I had taken it upon myself to try and wipe my mind clean of those torturous blue eyes by any means necessary.

I had been angry, but had been too broken to allow for the real reason behind it, and that had only led me to seek further destruction. So, without my usually tempered pushback or anyone else to stand in the way, I had numbly allowed Jack to take more and more control of me, until one night I had no longer been able to passively succumb to him. But my rebuke had come far too late and he had not hesitated to quickly and violently suppress it.