Don't Let Go: Deleted scenes & Extra's

Caught In The Act

TW: Smut!

———————————————————————

20th May 2025

The late spring rays beat down onto her weary back as Ellie traipsed home from yet another shift at the stables, small plumes of dry dirt disturbed each time her boot thudded into the hardened ground below and coating the dark leather with a fine layer of dust. As Jackson almost entered into its third week of May, it brought a much warmer climate in with it. The freezing winter nights, when ice would spider its way up on the inside of her single glazed bedroom window seemed like a distant memory as she bunched her sleeves up around her elbows. She glanced down, the skin beneath glowing with a thin sheen of glistening but sticky moisture; sweat. Ellie couldn't help but study as it beaded and settled into the individual grooves of her scarred bite, the longer she stared the more it itched as she became painfully aware of how the saltiness agitated the damaged skin. A sigh escaping her lips before sucking in a determined breath, doing everything in her conscious power to resist the urge to scratch it raw. ' Stop scratchin', you'll make it worse.' Joel would always tell her. He was always right, it did make it worse, every time... She fucking hated it when he was right...

All she could think about as she followed her path home was that she was just ten minutes away from jumping into a cool shower where all the sweat, grime, hair, shit and hay would swirl around and down the drain for another day... that and smothering her damn arm in some of that ointment Joel had managed to get from Maria the other day. She had no idea what it was but it worked- and that's all she truly cared about at this point in time. Anything for it to stop being so goddamn itchy in this heat!

The walk back from the main barn was hardly a trek, the journey being easily completed in ten minutes if she had a march on. Usually, she'd find herself taking a more leisurely stroll and more often than not, making a pit stop at Cat's for a secret smoke and catch up before then opting to take the long route home so she could successfully air out the smell of weed that had been soaked into the fabric of her clothes to avoid having to deal with Joel's wrath the moment she entered through the front door. Like he'd never smoked it before... He fucking had... She heard him and Tommy reminiscing all about it one night after one too many whiskey's. Hypocrite .

Today however, she just wanted to get home and get clean. No pit stops, no joints and certainly no extended walks. She wiped the build up of perspiration away from her top lip with the back of her hand, shaking the droplets off onto the porch floor before nudging the front door open.

All seemed silent as she walked in. A certain stillness in the atmosphere downstairs... The house shouldn't have been empty... She'd come to learn Joel's rota just as well as her own and he was definitely down to have completed his patrol at three o'clock that afternoon... and not only that but Ava still wasn't back to work at all so where the heck was she?

Ellie dropped her pack onto the shoe rack by the door, kicking her boots off and leaving them in a less than orderly fashion, strewn across the floorboards in the entry way. Cautiously, she padded her socked feet into the kitchen to pause by the last chair at the dining room table, taking a moment to absorb her surroundings.

It was like they had just upped and left? The kitchen work tops messy with what appeared to be the beginnings of food prep. A large chopping board with a pile of vegetable peelings, a half chopped carrot along with its knife and a jug filled with what looked like a broth of some sorts... A saucepan of cold water ready and waiting on the hob to be boiled and as she stepped closer, she could still feel the low heat radiating from the oven... although it had since been turned off...