I Can't Make You Love Me || Peter Parker x OC

Chapter 31: The Finer Details

⚠️Content Warning⚠️

Mild blood/gore/injury. Implied themes of family issues. Implied themes of domestic abuse/fighting

Sure, maybe I staged the whole thing, but that doesn't mean that I'm not scared out of my mind right now. The high-functioning part of my thought process is telling me that he won't actually hit me, and that I'm not in any danger at all. The whole point is just to get Peter to follow me, and then rattle him a bit with the shots. Hopefully, if everything goes according to plan, Peter will come up to my room to check on me, and then I can plead another sob story of having some sort of medical issue from the shooting that can't me measured. Then we're right back to where we started; us, together in my apartment, in love.

But the walls of love around my heart aren't bulletproof, and neither, apparently, are my windows. That primordial area of my brain, the one that hasn't been necessary for several hundreds of thousands of years, was firing on all cylinders. Instead of standing back up and calling for help like I was supposed to, it forced me to stay rooted to the spot, hyperventilating in panic.

I heard commotion outside, but I still couldn't move. I heard the clang of something hitting metal, and then grunts of exertion as something unknown happened in the area behind my apartment building. I still wasn't able to move when I heard sirens wailing on the streets as they came here. I didn't move till my door was busted open and police squads came into my apartment, scanning it for, well, me.

"Ma'am, are you hurt?" A beam of light cut across the disheveled room before landing on me and the window that was streaming cold air into the room.

"I-I don't think so." I was too shaken to even think of an excuse, let alone deliver it in a convincing manor. I let them pull me to my feet, and was able to get myself down outside by some miracle. My face felt numb, but that was a detail I was willing to overlook.

I was ushered over by the squad cars, and lead into the back of an ambulance. I flinched when a cloth was pressed to my forehead, and when it came away with blood on it, I realized why it hurt so much. Some liquid-soaked cotton pads were wiped on the area around the cut, and then a butterfly-bandage was set on top of it.

"What happened to me?" I asked to the faceless person who was helping me.

"Just a small cut," said a male voice. "It'll heal in a few weeks, just keep it clean and you'll be fine."

I felt a pat on my shoulder that told me I was free to go, and I unsteadily stepped out of the ambulance and into the cold and suddenly bustling street. A second police officer stopped me before I could get any more than 10 feet away from the scene, and lead me into the back of a police cruiser, just to be out of the cold, and the limelight for a bit. A shaky hand reached up, and I felt around the side of my forehead, between my temple and hairline. There was a large square bandage there, and the impression of the suturing bandages were just below the surface.

People bustled around everywhere, and the noise felt like it was splitting my head open even more. The car muffled some of it, but it still wasn't quite enough to appease my headache. So many voices were lost in the conglomerate of my own creation that I didn't notice my name being said any of the 5 times it was vocalized. When someone came up to the closed door and knocked on it, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I had totally zoned out, and wasn't prepared for it at all.

A few other cops had talked to me about what I saw, and by then I had gathered my wits enough to come up with a story that would separate me from any sort of guilt. The person that came up to the window wasn't a cop. It wasn't an EMT. It wasn't even one of my neighbors coming to check on me.