If Only (GxG)

Chapter 53 Just Unlucky

A/N
🎶Reluctant Man by Sprung Monkey🎶

『 °*• ❀ •*°』
Alison's POV

It's been a week since that night.

Since Blake's father stood in her kitchen with that poisonous smile and expensive suit, speaking like the world was already his. Since Blake pulled me behind her like a shield, like she could block out the whole damn past with the force of her body alone. Since she held me with a grip so fierce it felt like a promise: I will never let them near you again.

And now... I'm packing for college.

It's August, and the city is wrapped in that slow, sticky kind of heat that makes everything feel stretched and soft around the edges. The kind of late-summer evening where the air smells like warmed concrete and faint car exhaust, where pubs spill laughter onto the pavement and windows hang open just enough to let life bleed out into the street.

My shift at the bookstore just ended. I stayed late to do stock and let the quiet settle over me. Ross hung back too—ostensibly to help, but really just to argue with me about the Brontës while counting spines. He's still wrong, by the way. Charlotte is the most savage. Anyone who's read Villette knows it.

We finally locked up just after six, the street still sunlit and humming with early weekend noise. My motorbike is parked a few blocks away—tucked beside the bakery where the spaces are unregulated and the meter warden mysteriously never bothers to patrol.

I walk slowly, helmet swinging from my hand, trying not to think too hard.

This week's been... better. Lighter, in its own strange way. Blake's stopped hovering quite as much. She still walks me to my bike every morning, pretends she's just "going that direction," but her hand isn't gripping mine quite as tightly anymore. She's smiling again. Still sleeping close, like she needs to know I'm real—but not watching the door like she expects it to blow open.

And me?

I'm okay. I think.

I've caught myself flinching at sudden noises. I've double-checked the locks on our flat more than usual. But I haven't let it stop me.

Blake's father said he'd enjoy watching us fall.

But we haven't.

We're still here. Still choosing each other.

And for the first time in a long time, I feel like maybe the future isn't something to be afraid of.

The sun is low now, everything washed in that golden, glowing haze that makes London look softer than usual. There's a couple pushing a stroller across the street. A teenager walking a golden retriever who keeps trying to sniff someone's grocery bag. A cyclist whizzing by with a speaker strapped to their back, trailing tinny dance music behind them.

It all feels... normal. Safe.

And for a while, I let myself believe it.

That maybe things really are starting to settle. That maybe we really do get to have this—me, college, Blake, some version of a future where our pasts don't dictate the terms.

I don't feel afraid.

Not until I turn the corner.

Not until it's too late.

A shape lunges from the shadows behind the bins, and then everything happens at once.

An arm slams around my waist, another clamps across my chest—locking me in place, crushing the air from my lungs before I can even scream. The ground tilts. My body jerks. My breath is stolen before it forms.