Chasing Stars ✔️

27.

"When I looked up at the stars, I saw us. You were the stars, and I was the dark sky behind you", Jenn Bennett

She

The world was spinning, shaking uncontrollably beneath my feet... This time, the pain was in my soul, not my body. It was the same, after all. I tried to focus on years of learning how to stop the panic that twirled around my chest. Forcing my breathing to slow, I searched for something tangible to hold on to.

"Alexa," Jake's voice sounded distant in my ears until his hand rested gently on my arm, "Alexa, are you ok?"

I took a deep breath, the burning in my lungs traveled to my eyes. Two fat tears ran urgently down my cheeks; they felt real as I blinked them away to focus on Jake's face such a short distance from me. The beautiful blue speckles of his eyes seemed dull under the layer of moist that covered them. Did they always seem that haunted?

Some time must have passed because when I reached to clean more tears from my face, my hands weren't shaking anymore, and Jake's voice was clear again.

"I swear, I thought it was just for a few seconds. I remember how his eyes shut and I thought I was going to stop. I could swear I did, that there were people on top of me right the next second, to pull us apart."

"How bad was it?"

He ducked his head, hiding his expression.

"Tell me. You have to tell me, Jake."

"His... brain. There's part of it responsible for fine movement, balance... that's where I... that's where he was hurt. Partial paralysis of his legs. I regret it every day. I didn't think I would hurt him so much, I didn't mean to. I just... he kept talking about my mother, and he wouldn't shut up..."

"Your dad said you didn't have a criminal record..." the thought crossed my mind briefly, it almost seemed mundane, but I couldn't hear him talk about what happened in that ring any longer.

"Sean has means... They covered it. My dad cut the deal with Noah's family. He paid them a lot of money, plus what I send him every month..."

"Is he covering for you again, this man, this Sean? Your father said some people could take care of providing an alibi."

"Yes. He can do that, for the right price, he can do a lot of things."

"My God, Jake, can't you see how wrong this is? That you get involved with those people again?"

He exhaled; his eyes dropped, a sense of embarrassment lingering on them.

"What's in it for him, this Sean guy?"

"I make him a lot of money. I'm not afraid in the ring of anything or anyone. I'm good when I'm fighting. I always win."

His words did something to me. Like a shot of adrenaline injected straight into my veins, I stood up from the bed, pacing back and forward, despite the almost physical memory of my own injured brain.

"You always win? So you never knew how it feels like, to have someone breathing on your neck, to punch, and kick, and scream, let your most primitive instinct take over your body just to realize that it's worthless? That you will lose? Can you imagine what you feel like the second you realize..."

"Alexa..."

"...that the very essence of you is failing, that your life is no longer yours to control; that it's nothing but a string and that is in someone else's hands to cut it off?"

I turned around to see Jake on the opposite side of the room, seated on the floor, his back against the frame of the bed. His face was cast in the shadows of the upcoming night, peering through the window.