Loose Change~ Montgomery De La Cruz / Zach Dempsey/Scott Reed

Part 3 Chapter 3a

tw: mentions of abuse

There is a time in a relationship, after the honeymoon months, where you wonder if maybe you were wrong. Maybe that's not the person you're meant to be with. The time where you first feel an ounce of doubt of your significant other.

Ophelia felt this doubt when she learned about Zach and Hannah. And since the information caught her off guard, her suspicions didn't go away, and she felt the same doubt when it came to Zach and Chloe. Thankfully, they worked passed it.

There was a lot of stuff Ophelia and Montgomery worked passed. He was aggressive, and he had anger issues, and he cursed as though it was normal vocabulary. And sometimes, Ophelia had feared him.

But Ophelia remembered very clearly the first instance of doubt she had. The first glimpse into his darker side.

It had been early in the relationship, but she pushed back against it. So Montgomery suppressed himself. But for a moment, she saw it.

She saw his pain. And she saw his hate. All of it came from his father. But all of it ended on her.

*****

"Oh my god! What happened to your face?"

Montgomery had shown up to Ophelia's house with an ugly cut in the side of his face. Like he had hit his head against something hard, and scraped skin off. She had seen him injured from sports before, but this was different.

Montgomery stormed past Ophelia into her house. "Are your parents home?" Montgomery asked.

Ophelia watched him let himself in. She was too flabbergasted from his injury to say anything against it. "Um, no. They took Honor to-"

"Good," he said. He went over to her sink and turned their large kitchen facet on. He stuck his head under it, and hissed in pain.

Ophelia was horrified. "Monty, what happened? Did someone hurt you?" It had to have been someone that did it. Why else was he acting so cryptic?

Ophelia knew he had been in fights before, but none yet while they were together. Had he been in one now?

He picked his face out of the water, turning the faucet off and picking up his shirt to dry himself. She caught a glimpse of his abs as he did this. She looked away, knowing it wasn't the time to admire them. Washed, his face didn't look as bad. But she still saw the cut.

"Monty, who-"

"My fucking dad, okay?" he told her. "My fucking dad did it!"

Ophelia stopped, frozen. His...father hurt him? His father?

"Was there...an accident?"

Montgomery laughed, humorlessly. "I was the fucking accident. He fucking hates me."

Ophelia was confused. Was he still talking about his dad? He couldn't have been.

She came up to his side quickly. "I'm sure that's not true."

He scoffed. "Of course it's true. So does my fucking mom."

What was he talking about? Ophelia was sure his parents loved him.

"Monty, be real," she said. "There's-Theres nothing to hate."

She reached out, but he shoved her hand away.

Ophelia recalled the first time she went to his house, and how his father screamed at his for drinking his beer. How he cussed at him and threw stuff at him. But...this? It had to have been an accident.