THE B TEAM // Pretty Little Liars #WATTYS2014 #FANFICTION

Chapter 80: The Role Of Perfection

Luckily, we are only a minute away from Holbrook’s house. Once we enter the house, Holbrook tells me to sit on the edge of the bathtub and I do what I am told because I have nothing else.

But my hair is still protecting me and Holbrook starts at my arms, cleaning the wounds and applying bandages. He lets me wash my mouth and my face by myself but doesn’t leave the bathroom. There are still remnants of struggle and glass in the other bathroom but this one is reasonably clean.

Unlike my state of being.

“Why won’t you look me in the eyes?”

Holbrook is sounding desperate when he asks that.

Because when I’m with you, you make me disappointed at the person I have become.  You make me want to be someone better and to know that I’m nowhere close to that makes me embarrassed to confront you. To look you in the eye.

But I don’t say any of that.

Maybe it’s because of lived too long in a world where words have always been weapons. And I feel like if I did say what was on my mind, I would be considered weak.

And I can imagine all the people that would want to use those words against me.

I am weak.

I can trick myself into thinking I’m not.

But I am pure weakness and flaws playing the role of Perfection.

And Gabriel Holbrook had that ability to make me forget that. Forget I was living in a world with wars around every corner. He made me want to forget everything I had ever done bad to people. He made me want to be a better person.

All the glass in my body has gone and all the wounds have been bandaged. And Holbrook is leaning against the wall with his head in his hands as he stares at the pile of glass that he picked out of my body.

I don’t want to do this anymore.

He looks up and walks to sit next to me on the edge of the bathtub.

We are sitting side by side in destruction.

He slowly reaches for my hand, pulls my fingers out from the curled fist they were in and slides his hand into the grooves of mine.

Then he leans his head onto my shoulder.

“I would like for us to talk. I would like for you to let me be here for you,” he whispers.

I am still looking at the floor because a curtain of hair is nothing interesting to look at.

I squeeze his hand gently.

What an awful person I am.

“You haven’t changed,” I say. “You are still awfully persistent.”

I receive a small smile from Gabriel between the strands of my hair.

“And you are still running in ever direction,” he smiled. But then he pauses, “And all I want to know is how far I have to run to catch you.”

His question catches me by surprise so much that I look up and my hair falls away from my face, getting lodged behind my ears. Holbrook grabs both of my hands to prevent me from pulling it back over.

He is looking at me with the softest and determined eyes, “ Because I will run forever if it leads me to you.”