stay (jenna ortega x female reader) AU (editing and revising)

chapter 22

i love that you people are noticing how my writing is taylor swift coded because it is SO taylor swift coded

i love that woman and i love you

Jenna's POV

After Y/n had walked away that frantic morning, I had lost all hope of ever having the chance to speak to her again. The more that I thought about the bittersweet sentence she left me to dwell on, I realized it was more of a goodbye. It was masked with a sugar coat that hid the true meaning of I don't want to ever see you again. But I don't regret anything that happened either. I had come to terms with the farewell and decided I needed to start the process of moving on.

So when I awoke to the phone ringing in the middle of the night and her voice answered, it brought a significant amount of confusion and complexity to what speaking terms we were on. I was also at a loss as to how she knew my number, and why she would call at this hour.

But when I heard her shaky voice barely be able to form a sentence without breaking into a sob, I put the terms in the back of my mind and focused on helping her.

I quickly threw a coat on over my tank top and pajama pants before running out of my apartment into the cold fall night. I saw my breath as I huffed air out of my lungs and sprinted, all the while I felt sick with worry. I ran on pure adrenaline as my feet barely hit the ground before being lifted up into another stride. The coffee shop was about a ten minute walk from my apartment, but I made it about a 3 minute sprint this night. My mind raced with my body as it spiraled, wondering what happened to make her call what I thought to be the last person she would dial. But as I saw the condition she was in, all of my anxious scenarios were nowhere near as bad as she looked.

I saw Y/n's figure leaned against a streetlight with only a bra on her top half, and she was slightly hunched over on her right side as her hand lightly held it. As I got closer, I saw that the left side of her face was swollen and bruised, and blood was dried right below her left nostril. She was shivering from the chilled air and crying quietly when she collapsed into me.

I was in a state of shock, and most of all, I felt my heart break into a million pieces at the sight of her physically and mentally hurt. My thoughts immediately went to dark places, thinking she maybe had gotten mixed up with the wrong people, was victim to a hate crime, or raped and beaten. I felt my chest become tight as Y/n's body was pressed against it, and suddenly I desired to hold her tight and never let go. I had not the slightest clue as to what happened, but I knew that her life was certainly at risk, and the possibility of her death was something I had never thought of nor one I could ever fathom.

I slid my arms around her back, pulling her close despite the inhumane temperature of her skin. My eyes remained wide and were fighting the urge to fill with tears, as I still didn't believe what I was seeing. Her usual flowery scent was coated and replaced by a thick reek of marijuana, which was cause for more concern. Was it a bad drug deal? Was she drugged? Questions flooded my thoughts as we stayed embracing, but I decided against asking once she asked to go home.

Y/n pulled away once I agreed to my place, and that's when I saw the deep purple bruising around her ribs. I quickly put together that it was the cause of her hunch and the reason she could barely stand up straight. My eyes trailed up her body to her neck, where there were small patches of bruised skin, and in the dim lighting, I couldn't make out if they were bruises or hickeys. I selfishly felt a pang of jealousy ring through my mind, despite the fact I didn't even know if the marked skin was caused by the same force that gave her the other injuries, or from lips other than mine.