Addicted | ✔

C h a p t e r S e v e n t y - S i x

                                                                     PART SEVENTY SIX

                            ❝You were the one who loved me, even when I didn't love myself.❞

The cold gas station lighting that illuminated  Leo's face, made him look almost other worldly. Which in a way, he was. Taller now, with the same beautiful and kind eyes that looked at me, curled up with my sleeping baby in my arms, trying to give her any kind of body heat. I stared at Leo, standing over me. 

"You came." I whispered. Leo nodded, he bent down to look at me. I was shaking, it was freezing cold. He sighed, he looked so much older. He was almost nineteen now. A college student, yet somehow he'd left class and drove 10 whole hours to rescue me.

"You knew I would." He said. I stood up, still holding my daughter tightly. I sank against him, tired, exhausted and used up. He wrapped his arms around me, his chin resting on top of my head. He still smelled like the cologne he wore when I was still his. Out of everything that had happened, the drugs, the rape, my daughter's life being in danger, prostitution, the near homelessness, now was the time I began crying. In the fluorescent lighting of the station, in the middle of isles lined with candy and chips, I cried in the arms of the man who loved me still. Actually loved me. 

"Come on, lets get out of here okay." He said, and I was shaking. Suddenly the gravity of everything hit me. I collapsed, it was all Leo could do to take Evie from me. I was having a breakdown, I'd lost everything and everyone and now truly I was alone. I was an addict, and a whore, and a failure. The clerk averted his eyes. Leo knelt down next to me now. Trying to hold my shaking body in his arms. 
"Kaitlyn." he whispered, and I didn't respond. Then it much more strident tone he said:

"Kaitlyn look at me." I brought my eyes to meet his. Still so beautiful, was all I could see in him. 

"Okay.." I said, still shaking. I had never felt so vunerable other than now. This was what you saw on TV, this was the progression of most addicts. I had become a goddamn statistic. 

"Listen to me, we are going to go home, and you are going to get clean, for your daughter. I swear, everything is going to be okay. Trust me Kaitlyn, I promise." He said, squeezing my hand. I watched Evie squirm from his arms and crawl into my lap. She looked up at me, with her beautiful blue eyes. I stared at her, and then at Leo. I nodded, and he pulled me to my feet while I had my daughter in my arms. 

Leo grabbed two redbull's, and a coffee from the fridge. I picked out a bag of chips, and a small package of m & m's. Leo also grabbed for a small box of diapers, that would hopefully get us through the night. Leo practically carried Evie and I out to his car, where he laid us in the backseat. I watched as my daughter laid her head on my stomach, where somehow I had managed to protect the little baby inside of it. Leo tossed me his sweatshirt, and I saw his face in the rear view mirror, sighing. I tucked the sweatshirt under my head, where I turned onto my side, Evie still in my arms.

Somehow, in the mix of things I felt so young at the moment. Falling asleep in the back of a car, watching the city lights turn to long expansive road. I glanced behind me. As if I expected to see Jack standing there.

"Leo?" I asked, two hours into the drive of silence. He glanced back at me and nodded, his way of answering me.

"what if he finds me?" I asked, my voice hardly above a whisper as if saying his name would bring him back to me. Leo sighed, the sigh I'd heard from my parents when they were disapointed.

"He won't Kaitlyn. Trust me, and if he does there's the police you know." He said. I shook my head.

"He'll get arrested Leo, I can't do that to him." I griped. Leo pulled the car off the road and turned to face me.

"Yeah and he should. Do you remember the night you showed up at my house, with your infant daughter, alone, crying because he hurt you? And you're arm. He stabbed you did he not? He's a shit human being Kaitlyn." He said, emphasizing my name. I flinched at his raised tone, and his expression softened. He leaned back against his seat.

"I'm sorry." I muttered. He shook his head.

"No I'm sorry, I'm sorry for everything that happened between us and with you. You didn't deserve that. I should've been a better boy- I should have been a better friend." He said, and I looked at him. He continued:

"I don't know how to do this. I'm trying to be your friend, I know you need someone, but I miss you. The girl who I used to party with, and you were always so chill and funny and I loved that about you. I'm not used to seeing you weak." He said, sighing afterword. I looked at him. That was the most honest anyone had ever been with me in a fuck long time. 

"I still was struggling." I muttered, and he nodded.

"I know, I know. Just it wasn't a worry, you were just being a teenager and now, now everyones moved on, I went to college, Katiana got clean and Isobel moved away within the time you've been gone man." That hurt. "And you just stayed frozen as a teenager, and I blame myself for it." He said, and then just as quickly he pulled the car back onto the road. As if he hadn't just crumbled my heart even more than it already was.