The Bad Boy's Snowflake

Chapter 27: Cops

"Shh," he whispers back. "Get down."

He pulls me down quickly but gently. We huddle together on the floor under my window. I can feel his chest rising and falling quickly against my back. He smells like cigarette smoke. Reeks of it, actually. I open my mouth to ask him about this, but there is a sound from his bedroom.

"Tommy, you son of a bitch," an old men yells. "Come out from wherever the hell your hiding and no one gets hurt!"

I hear heavy steps through the open windows. The guy must bump into several things because I can hear something scrape against wood every few seconds. This dude must be pretty drunk.

"I swear to god that if you don't come out I will kill you!"

I gasp at this, and I can feel Tommy wince. The man shuffles around a little more before finally leaving. We both wait a good five minutes before moving. When we do finally move, Tommy pulls me up gently. When we are face-to-faceish I can see tears coming out of his non-black eye and streaking down his cheeks.

"Tommy, oh my god," I whisper. I wrap my arms around him. He doesn't hesitate to put his arms around me and hug back. A sob escapes him, but I can tell he's trying to contain them. "Don't fight the tears."

He lets another cry escape, and then he's sobbing. I can't even begin to imagine what could have made him like this, but I don't want to pry. He obviously just needs to let it all out. I'm not sure how long we stand there, but his crying eventually stops. He steps away from me wiping the tears away.

"I'm sorry you had to see and hear that," he whispers, his voice cracking at the end.

"Tommy, look at me," I reply forcefully, but not without sympathy. He lifts his gorgeous green eyes to meet my dull green ones.  "Do not apologize for something you can not control. I can handle some dumb words some abusive, drunk guy says. What I can't handle is seeing you like this, and I refuse to anymore."

With that I crutch out my door and down the hall to a door that I haven't touched in years. I don't know if Tommy follows me, but I lift my hand and knock anyway. My mother opens the door in an old t-shirt of my father's that says AC DC on it and a pair of sweatpants. She looks a little surprised that I'm there. Her eyes widen more, though, when she looks behind me. I realize then that Tommy must have followed me.

"Catherine, what's wrong?" she asks with surprise very evident in her voice.

"I need you to call the cops."

"Catherine, no," Tommy says the same time my mother asks what happened.

I turn to look Tommy in the swollen black eye. Tears stains are still evident on his cheeks. He looks at me pleadingly, but I can't not do this. I turn back to my mother.

"This is Tommy Arden and he lives next door," I start. Her eyebrows raise at the name Tommy, and I mentally curse Sam. "His step dad gets drunk a lot and abuses him both physically and emotionally, and I need you to call the cops on them because Tommy refuses to."

"Catherine, no!" Tommy says fiercely. I turn to face him. "You promised you wouldn't tell anybody!"

I sigh. "I'm sorry, Tommy. I really am. But you don't deserve this, and I refuse to keep hiding you in my room. It's not good for you."

"Catherine," he whispers. I can tell he's close to tears, and my heart breaks. "Please don't do this."

I turn to my mother, but she's no longer standing at the door. I push her door open a little bit and find that the room hasn't changed since my father left. It's still a gold brown color with a king size bed pushed against the middle of the wall opposite to me. It has a gold bedspread with wood nightstands on either side. One brown dresser is pushed into the corner to my right, and next to that is a dresser with a mirror attached. The wall on the left has two closet door, and one of them is pushed open revealing my mom's entire collection of clothes. My mother is pacing around the room talking on the phone.