Embers

~17~ Weakness

Taylor's POV

Seeing a woman cry is my biggest weakness.

In past relationships, it never mattered to me how mad at them I was. The moment they started to cry, it was game over.

I've never seen Ellie cry. The one time when she put her head in her hands, I knew she was crying...but I never saw it. I left before I could. I couldn't handle seeing it, so like the coward I am, I left and went outside.

Unfortunately for me, looking at Ellie, I can see that her face has lost the fight she had earlier with Jones. Her strength is gone; She looks defeated. A secret that she's carried around for the last 5 years, haunting her, is coming back up to the surface.

"Chief, please don't make me do this," she pleads, barely above a whisper.

I want to rush over to her and hold her hand. I want to fight Ryder for putting her in this position. I should have been the one standing next to her earlier, instead of Greene. Why didn't I think of that?

We're all staring at her, waiting. We don't know how bad this is, but we're anticipating the worst.

"Come on, Ellie girl, it's time," Ryder says softly. I've never heard him talk to anyone like this before. I know that he's known her since she was young, but he genuinely loves her. He thinks of her as a daughter.

She takes a deep breath, and I'm now bracing myself.

She looks at each one of our faces. She stops briefly on each one of us before going to the next. Once she gets to mine, she begins.

"It was an icy night in February. My partner and I had gotten called out for a domestic violence case. The lady had gotten smashed up pretty badly."

She stops for a minute, runs her hand over her ponytail, and begins again.

"We get there and the head wound was bad. We get her in the back of the rig, and I start to work to get the bleeding stopped. Suddenly someone else yells for us to come quick, because another person had gotten hurt. We should have called for backup. That was our fault."

"So, my partner tells me to stay with the girl. We were not in a great end of town, so he thought that I would be safer staying in the ambulance, where I was near the street lights. He ran inside to help the next victim."

This is the part where I'm going to lose it. She starts biting her lip and shifting in her seat. She's about to start crying at any time.

"He wasn't gone for more than two minutes when I could hear someone come up behind me. The guy was drunk, and he saw that I was alone, with only a bleeding woman to help me. He grabs me, and I know I'm moments away from..." she lets the sentence hang. She didn't need to finish it. We all knew where it was going. I could feel the rage consume me. I start seeing red.

"Jake, my brother that lives in town, thought it was a good idea if I took some self-defense lessons with him once he found out this was the field I was going into...In case I ever got into a position like this. So, when I realized that I didn't have much longer to do something, I reacted. It happened so fast. All I remember was grabbing the ambulance, and using my weight to kick him as hard as I could in the chest."

I realize at this point that I'm leaning forwards, about to get out of my seat and hold her.

"Somehow, I was able to kick him hard enough for him to fall back. The fact that he was drunk, mixed with the fact that there was ice all over the ground, resulted in him falling and cracking his skull on the cement. I should have went and helped him."

She starts to softly cry. This will be my undoing.

"I didn't. I just stand there, watching as he bleeds out onto the ice. Doing nothing. By the time my partner got back, the guy was dead."

Tears are streaming down her face. You can tell she wants to get up and leave, but she doesn't.

"By the time the cops got there, there wasn't anything anybody could do. My one saving grace was the head wound victim. She saw it all. She vouched for me, and after a court hearing, they ruled it self- defense. It may have been self-defense, but I will never forgive myself for killing that man."

She is sobbing at this point. She can't even get anymore words out. She just puts her head in her hands and sobs. Greene starts to get up, but he looks at me and pauses when he sees my hand out, signaling for him to stop. He nods and sits back down.

I stand up, grab her by the arm and pull her into me. I can't stand it anymore. I don't care if I'm overstepping. She might recoil from my hug, but I can't just stand in the background anymore while the woman I love is suffering.

To my surprise, she leans into me and lets me hold her. For one glorious moment, I'm holding her in my arms, and nothing else in this entire world matters. This building could be crashing down, and I wouldn't dare move.

She calms down now, and all of a sudden she jerks out of my embrace. I can see the shock on her face. She didn't know it was me holding her. She must have assumed it was Ryder or Greene. This whole time, I thought she was starting to give into the feelings we have for each other. But she wasn't. I feel like I just got punched in the stomach.

She gives me a hard look, and leaves the office. I don't see her again for hours.