I'm Holding On (Sequel to Making My Way To You)

Chapter 23

My whole body froze. My muscles tensed and I couldn't do anything to move. I stared back in his eyes, scared that if I looked any other way, I wouldn't know if he was going to do anything to me. Looking into his intense stare, I expected to see someone completely different than the Owen that I'd known years ago. But I didn't. He looked mad, sure, but behind that, Owen was still there. I remembered what Krista said about him looking scared when she found him in Washington. That's exactly what I was seeing.

After what felt like an eternity of looking at him, I heard Cole at the top of the stairs. I looked up at him and saw that he was going to come sprinting down the stairs so I reached my hand out to try and stop him. Owen hadn't done anything to me and for some reason, I felt like he wasn't going to hurt me.

"Get outside, Bridgette!" Cole yelled at me.

I held my hand out further and stepped between him and Owen. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm perfectly fine. But what are you doing!? Get outside, now!" Cole yelled again, never taking his eyes off of Owen like he was waiting for him to make the next move.

I felt Owen take a step closer to me and my heart started to race. I was now so closely trapped between the two of them that I didn't know how I was going to handle this. I pushed against Cole so I'd have some space and started telling him to calm down. "Cole, stop! Please, stop. He's not going to do anything to me." I said that and felt Owen back off a little.

"How can you say that? He attacked me up there! You need to go outside!" Cole stepped forward, clearly not getting any calmer.

Before either of them could make another move, I heard sirens coming closer to the house. Owen backed up and took off around me, headed toward the back door. Cole started to go after him but I grabbed his arm. "Cole, you need to stop! I don't want this to go any farther! He's not coming after you anymore."

"What if he leaves? Then we're right back where we started!"

"I think I can stop him and get him to come out of it though." I said confidently but walked toward Owen cautiously. "Owen. Owen, look at me."

"Are you crazy!?" This time, it was Cole who grabbed my arm to stop me. "I don't really care what you think you can do. I want you safe and I don't trust that he won't turn around and do anything to you."

I didn't want to ignore him, but I had a really good feeling about what I was doing. If Owen had a weapon on him, it would've been different. But as far as we knew, he didn't. For all we knew, he wasn't even here to try to hurt anyone. I was thinking that he didn't have any idea of why he was here in the first place.

"Owen. Please look at me." I spoke gently and carefully reached my hand out toward him. I was nervous to touch his arm because I didn't know if he would end up turning on me like he did Krista. But I had to get him to look at me. I heard Cole freaking out behind me and also opening the front door for the police. I didn't want them to scare Owen even worse than he already was. It might cause him to become violent again.

I touched his arm lightly and he finally turned around. "What do you want?" He towered over me but I stood my ground. I knew that Krista said you can't knock someone out of an episode but it seemed to me like he was halfway out already. I knew I could help.

"Owen. It's me, Bridgette. You know me. Do you remember? Come on, Owen, you know me." I continued to speak gently. I started getting really nervous though when I heard two officers come up behind me.

"Ma'am, come on back here." One of them stepped beside me and tried to get me to back up while the other grabbed Owen's arms, which threw him back into a violent state. He flung his arms around, getting out of the officer's grip and I started getting scared for him. Clearly, he was only violent when he thought someone was attacking him.