Torn

Chapter 17 - Repeat Offenders & Momentary Forgetfulness

Chapter 17
Repeat Offenders & Momentary Forgetfulness

A/N - Special thanks to Stephanie for the beautiful banner to the side! 

Flynn and I ended up staying that way for hours.

There wasn’t so much talking anymore, but more just the physical aspect of us being there for one another. It was nice to know that someone was there to watch over you, even when you thought you had no one left. A part of me, a part I wish I could ignore, was still burning with the warmth from our proximity and his hidden kindness.

Maybe it was the fact that Flynn was trying so hard, all along, to save me without my knowing it. If I had known the story of baby sister sooner I probably would have grasped onto it. Now my view of him was just frazzled and distorted as the first time he walked into English class with that annoying way about him that everyone loved. I wasn’t sure whether I actually wanted to ignore the feelings I had for him anymore. I spent so many months pretending like I could give less of a crap who Flynn was and what he was about. Days were wasted taking my anger out on him and arguing every minute of the day.

But ever since he told me exactly why he stuck around for so long, I couldn’t help the feeling that welled up in my heart and head that maybe he actually felt something for me too. Surely the times in my closet and in his kitchen had to have meant something to him. Kisses like those don’t just happen out of the blue. Then the nagging voice of my conscience would explain to me that if he really had felt something for me, Olivia still wouldn’t be in the picture.

Perfect, little Olivia.

Sometime that night we ended up back at Flynn’s house. His parents were already off to bed, knowing that Flynn spent nights at the cemetery for months now. He’d told me that when he couldn’t sleep at night, he’d sneak into the gravesites and just talk to her until the sun came up. He’d tell her about how much he missed her, the things she was missing out on, his days, his secrets…and how sorry he was that he couldn’t stop the man who hurt her.

Apparently the boy, whose name he couldn’t bear to let roll off of his tongue, was spending a lifetime in prison. He had turned himself in the night after he left Flynn’s baby sister in a parking lot somewhere and claimed he was the culprit. According to Flynn, the man was belligerently drunk and smelling of some type of substance when he managed to get himself to the police station the night of the incident. He didn’t fight the charges, claimed he was guilty right on the spot, and was now serving sixty-five years to life to somehow make up for the death of such a young girl, far too young to be missing out on life this early.

I felt like the cemetery was all it took, one look at Macy’s grave, and the stitches had been ripped from his otherwise sealed lips. He told me everything there was to know when it came to Macy. I spent most of the night comforting him with gestures I was so new to, those I felt would help him like my mother helped me. I tried to ignore the buzz that ran through my veins when we were so close to one another, trying to bypass the shivers and tingles running throughout me. For now, what I wanted or felt didn’t matter.

It was Flynn’s time now.

“You want anything to drink?” he asked, jolting me from my thoughts to face him.

“No, I’m okay,” I murmured, my voice so soft I almost thought he didn’t hear it. I was scared to wake his parents, and frankly a little nervous to be sitting in his house at three in the morning when most of the world was fast asleep.

He nodded his head in acknowledgment and grabbed himself a bottle of water, heading to the living room. He was acting a bit odd on the way home from the talk we had. The whole time, he wasn’t really making eye contact with me nor checking to see if I had maybe fallen behind on the walk home. It was almost like he felt awkward for telling me all of those things about himself. I wasn’t sure if I should be worrying that our new found bond was on the cusps of being destroyed yet again, or not.