America's Suitehearts

**CC’s POV**
The first few minutes of the taxi ride were painfully awkward. We both sat silently in the dim, musky back of the vehicle while some weird country music leaked out of the radio. I drummed my fingers lightly on my leg while I thought about what those cops had said. Did she really date that low-life, scumbag? Was it true that he’d hit her before? What promise had he been yelling about when we left? I wanted to ask her, I already had the questions in my head, but no way of formulating them into speech. I began to open to open my mouth to speak but quickly shut it when the words got stuck in my throat. I sighed and looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She had her head leaned against the window, her eyes looking outwards, catching the light of the street lamps as we passed them, and blinking away the water that began to build up in them. She’d brought her knees up as far as her skirt allow and cocooned her upper half in my jacket. At this point it had been almost seven minutes since anyone had uttered a word and I could almost feel the words that needed to be spoken hanging in the air between us so I turned to face her and with a deep breath, I let the question spill from my lips.
“So, uh, who was that guy?” I asked. She stayed silent for a moment, leaving me to wonder if she even wanted to talk about it at all, before she sighed and sat up straight, staring at her hands as they wringed themselves nervously in her lap.
“His name is Kyle, I guess you could call him an ex-boyfriend, but that’s not entirely true though. I’d known him since the sixth grade, he used to bully me and my friend, Alex, who’s actually my roommate now, until the department my stepdad and his mom worked for got transferred and we moved away from him. He found us again when we moved back here a couple years ago. At first he seemed like he’d become a semi-decent guy, but then he started turning up at our place uninvited or showing up at my school and work and verbally attacking Alex whenever I wasn’t around. One day, almost out of the blue, he asked me out. I tried to turn him down as nicely as I could but evidently ‘No, thank you’ meant ‘Take me, I’m yours’ to him and I was too afraid to correct him. It went on far longer than it really should have, but I finally broke it off nearly a year and a half ago.” She said, her voice getting shaky at some parts. I gave her a minute so she could collect herself and I could think over the wording of my next question.
“Back there, those police officers said that he…” I began but I couldn’t bring myself to say it all “…is that true?” she swallowed and nodded.
‘Yeah, he did.” She said just barely above a whisper.
“Do you want to talk about it?” She turned her face towards me a little and hesitated for a moment. I reached over and took one of her hands in mine then gave it a supportive squeeze. She took a deep breath and nodded, still looking down at our hands. “I’ll listen whenever you’re ready to talk.” She stayed quiet for a minute and then, little by little, she began to open up.
“That first time it happened,” she spoke slowly at first “I tried to fight back. I wasn’t going to tolerate that shit, I didn’t want to be one of those girls that closed their eyes and pretended it wasn’t real, but that only got me a black eye, busted lip, and two broken fingers.” I looked at her and for a split second all I could see was a vision of her with one eye forced shut by a bruise and the sweet shape of her soft lips being distorted by a swollen gash and it made my heart ache with sympathy.
“He told everyone that he’d accidently closed the car door on my fingers and then opened it into my face while trying to help me, but my old boss didn’t buy it so he called and reported him. He pulled the ‘I didn’t know my own strength, I didn’t mean to hurt her, it was an accident, it’ll never happen again’ crap on the cops and got off with a warning then slapped me for getting him in trouble.” I could feel her pulse start picking up in her wrist and hear her voice getting shakier the more she continued to talk about it. To be honest, the more she talked about it, the more I began to wish I had thrown that fucker off the roof when I had the chance.
“After that, he was careful not to leave as many marks, or he’d at least leave them in places where they could be dismissed by my normal clumsiness.” She pressed her lips together for a second to stop their quivering. I put my hand on her and softly rubbed it in circles. “There was only one other time where he really did a number on me. He had invited himself over and expected me to make him dinner. I can’t even remember what had set him off, he either didn’t like what I’d made, thought I was being too slow, or maybe I gave Alex his food before him? I don’t know. He started yelling at me and I yelled back, the last thing I remember seeing was his fist flying at my face.” I could see the tears building up in her eyes, ready to spill onto her cheeks. God, this had to hard for her, talking about these painful memories, I’m actually surprised she hadn’t let the tears fall yet. She’s being so strong right now.
“Apparently, he punched me and I fell back and hit my head on the kitchen counter which knocked me out cold. Alex freaked the fuck out and locked himself in his room while he called the police, the medical emergency center, my parents, and pretty much anyone else he could think of.” My anger over the situation lessened for a moment and I was grateful that someone had had her back when shit hit the fan. Note to self: Be extra nice to Alex if I ever meet him.
“I woke up the next day in the ER with a neck brace on, a hell of a headache, and three staples in the back of my head. Needless to say, that was the day it ended with him.” She finished as she finally brought her eyes up to mine, tears flowing freely down her face now. My heart melted in my chest from just seeing her cry. I wrapped both of my arms around her and pulled her into a huge bear hug. She buried her face in the top of my chest so that my chin rested on her head as she clung to me the way a scared child does its favorite teddy bear and broke down into hiccupy sobs. Is hiccupy even a word? No? Fuck it, it is now.
“Shhh, it’s okay, you’re alright now, it’s over, it’s all over.” I murmured as I ran my fingers through her hair to comfort her. She shook her head and whimpered as her sobs became more hysterical.
“But it wasn’t! He couldn’t just leave me in peace, could he?! No, he stalked me for about three months afterwards!” she choked between sobs “Every day I would come home to something he left on my doorstep. He would leave a teddy bear and chocolate and a soppy letter about how much he loved me on one day and then leave a box with a mutilated doll with a letter that detailed exactly how he was going to kill me on the next.Occasionally, he’d leave me pictures of nooses and his bloody wrists and…Oh, God, I’d just…s”
“It’s okay, just calm down, sugar, calm down.” I said as I held her tighter
“Do you know what I had to do to throw him off?” she continued, ignoring me “I had to quit my second job and pick-up extra shifts at the hotel, Alex had to tell him I’d quit that job too, I had to change my entire class schedule, I had to go to the grocery store eight miles away instead of the one down the road, I had to block his number, fuck, he’s the reason you have to show your ID to get into my apartment complex!” I took her face in my hands and made her look at me.
“Hailey, honey, look at me. It’s all going to be okay now, he’s not going to hurt you anymore, alright? I promise.” I said looking her deep in the eyes
“But…HE promised too!” she whined with a worrying amount of fear
“What did he promise, baby girl?” I asked very calmly, covering the inkling of fear that began to creep into my own mind. Her eyes darted around nervously before she dared to speak.
“He promised that the only way he’d ever let me leave him with you was if we were both in body bags.” She whimpered in a whisper. Almost instantly after hearing that, my heart plummeted into my churning stomach. I would be lying if I said that wasn’t one of the most disturbing things I’d ever heard. My God, this guy had to be really fucking sick and twisted to even think of saying something like that to another person. My face must have given away just how much that disturbed me because she began violently sobbing “God, I’m so sorry!I never meant to drag you into-“
“Hush. Don’t even start that shit. You had no control over any of this, you didn’t do anything wrong, none of this is your fault.” I said as I pulled her into the tightest hug I could give “He’s going to locked up for a long time somewhere where he can’t hurt you, or me, or anyone anymore, alright?” After a couple of seconds, she whimpered something into my chest that vaguely sounded like ‘okay’ between sobs. We stayed like this for another five-ish minutes, her locked up tight in my arms while I murmured comforting things to help her calm down, before she said anything else.
“C-CC?” she stammered as she looked up at me with those beautiful eyes of hers all red, puffy, and tearful.
“Yes, sweetheart?” I asked
“W-will you s-stay with me? J-just for a l-little while? P-please?” she asked softly. I knew that I would be leaving in the morning and that I really shouldn’t do it, that I should head back to the hotel right after I dropped her off and do something useful like pack or sleep, but you would have to be some kind of soulless monster to look at her right now and say ‘no’. Oh Jesus, those eyes had me wrapped around her finger.
“Of course I will, baby girl, of course I will.”

Notes

So yeah, I feel infinitely better about this version than the original :)
Sorry ya'll had to wait so long for it, but with the amount of positive feedback I've gotten from you guys, I felt like you deserved something better.
And in other news: 40 subscribers?! ERMAGERD! Thanks so much!! This is really so much more than what I could've hoped for!