I Walk the Line ♤ (gxg)

chapter 14: reluctance

The sound of the girl softly speaking her name made her task even harder.

Her gun was aimed right at the back of the girl's head. If fired, the bullet would tear through her light brown hair and into her skull, forever depleting her brain that seemed to be a machine, always thinking up smart responses and insults that the woman had grown to be amused by.

Maybe that's all it was—amusement. Maybe Willow found some sort of companionship in her usually lonely life, apart from the people in her gang that were only nice to her because she could and would kill them. The girl crouching down in front of her and waving her hand through the water also knew Willow could kill her, but she still retorted at every comment. This was maybe the incentive for the somewhat infatuation that Willow felt growing inside her for August. She pushed the boundaries and relentlessly angered the woman, regardless of the fact that her life was in her hands, to be decided as over at any given moment.

Willow's reluctance burgeoned when that dainty voice sounded out, "Why did you take me here? To Utah?"

She couldn't do it. She visibly winced at the delicateness of the girl's voice, lowering her gun and quietly putting it back into her belt. She didn't know when she would do it, or if she even would, but she couldn't in that very moment; and it angered her as to why she couldn't complete the task she had completed so many times before. What was it that was shielding this girl from feeling her wrath? What was so important about this particular life that prevented Willow from taking it away?

She took a few steps forward, swallowing all the feelings inside of her to regain her aplomb composure. Crouching down beside August and gazing at the ripples of water and the pale hand that disrupted its flow, Willow gave her an answer. "To protect you."

It was as if her words had preceded her own realization of the fact. She had plucked August from her own little life and brought her into her world for a reason that was completely unknown. She had to either kill the girl or just keep her away from the strife that was slowly boiling to fruition in New York. Her motives at first were ones that were for the protection of herself and her gang, because that was the job of a gang leader—to do all things necessary to keep your people safe. But now her motives were unclear.

Willow was terrified, petrified at the idea of any sort of unclarity in her life, but smoke filled her mirrors when it came to August. She felt a need to protect the girl's innocence and to even protect her life. She knew this from the anger that shook her when one of her men laid his finger amongst August's brown curls in the elevator last night. When she had watched from the corner of her eyes as the man had leaned closer, it was like a million alarms went off in her mind. She didn't know why, but she just knew that she had to protect the girl.

"Protect me?" August's eyes startled Willow. They were such a deep, cobalt blue that felt icier than the winter air surrounding them.

Willow simply nodded, looking back down at the water to avoid the girl's stare that penetrated any sense of togetherness she felt. She ran a hand through her black hair as if that would run away the chaos erupting inside her.

August didn't know what to think of the woman. She had kidnapped her, taken her across the country, threw her to the floor in anger the previous night, and now here she was, her eyes softer than she had ever seen them, fiddling with her hair as if she was nervous, telling her that she was protecting her.

Her point of view of the whole situation shifted as she saw the woman in a new light. Sure, the woman had gone about it a bit wrong, but maybe she could form some sense of the fact that she was, indeed, protecting her. If August had still been in Ithaca, whatever rival gang the woman had mentioned would have probably been the ones in her dorm, except they wouldn't have given her the mercy that Willow had given her. She probably wouldn't have even been alive.