She's Not Afraid - A Louis Tomlinson Fanfiction

Chapter Fifteen

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Close your eyes, give me your hand, darlin'

Do you feel my heart beating?

Do you understand?

Do you feel the same?

Am I only dreaming?

Is this burning an eternal flame?

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I abruptly pulled away from her, but still holding her within my embrace—I couldn’t get myself to let her go. “What was that for?” I asked with a clear confusion.

“I-I don’t know,” she stuttered, while lightly shaking her head. “It just … happened.”

For a while we just stood there without saying anything. It felt nice to hold her in my arms like I had used to. I had to admit that I had missed her badly, even though I had tried not to.

“Lou,” she said, making me jump when I heard her calling her by my nickname. Only my closest friends and family members called me that, and when I had been shutting Jessica out, trying to forget her, she now felt like a stranger to me—but at the same time I felt like I knew her better than anyone. She moved on, “I still have feelings for you.”

I crinkled my forehead in frustration. Once again, she was on her way to enchant me and put me under her spell. If we got back together now, we would still be dating in secret. I knew I wouldn’t be able to put up with it again. Before I knew it, the unwanted but true words had escaped my mouth: “I might have some for you, too.”

Damn. Now there was no way I could go back to trying to forget her; this was going to be harder than I thought.

I put my forehead against hers, taking in the scent of her sweet perfume, perhaps for the last time. “I think I know where you belong,” I said and squeezed my eyes shut, as I gently kissed her forehead. “But I’m just not sure it is with me.” I grudgingly let go of Jessica and stepped away from her, sucking in a deep breath.

At first it didn’t look like she had heard me, but then the realization of my rejection slowly started to show itself in her eyes. She grabbed my wrist and gently pulled me back towards her. “Wait. There’s something I have to tell you,” she said and snorted of herself. “I should’ve told you the day we met.” My eyebrows were slightly furrowed when I nodded at her in agreement.

“Pour your heart out.”

She sighed before she began talking a lightly shaky voice: “Around a year before I met you, I was dating a guy called Fletcher. He was handsome, fun and kind-hearted; everything a young girl could ask for. He was my first in pretty much everything and both my parents and friends loved him. Within the first month we had been dating, I knew that I loved him. I told him, and he said it back; and for a moment I guess you can say that everything was perfect.” She shot a look down at her feet that suddenly seemed to be very interesting, and fiddled with a broken sewing on her camouflage green coat. “That was until he one day came home, smelling repulsively of alcohol. He trapped me in a corner and started to yell terrible things at me … and I … didn’t do anything about it. I just sat the whole way through it, before he at last got up and left the flat.”

I was appalled and hurt at the same time; how could anyone ever do that to someone as amazing as her? Right there in the spot, I promised myself that if I ever met that Fletcher she was talking about, I wouldn’t hold myself back from hurting him. “He abused you, didn’t he?” I whispered. My hands had balled into fists without me realizing it.