Always There

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Four

I laugh, even though it's forced and hollow. "Mint chocolate chip? Not cookie dough?"

Malcolm raises an eyebrow. "I've only ever seen her eat mint. Why?"

I squeeze my eyes shut.

Because mint chocolate chip has always been my favourite ice cream flavour, and she usually only eats it when she's thinking of me.

"No reason," I say instead. "So, before all this recent shit went down, she's been happy and healthy?"

Malcolm and James make eye contact. They both look hesitant to answer me, but James eventually turns back to me and says, "We thought so, but we recently found out that the guy she's been going out with has been hitting her."

I sigh. "Yeah, I know about that. She's never going near him ever again. I'll deal with him. I need to go help Blossom now, but I just wanted to make sure that she's been taking care of herself."

Malcolm gives me a small smile and James inclines his head towards me in acknowledgement.

I smile back and turn away from them. I expect Mochi to jump off my shoulder and hurry away from me, but she remains curled up against my neck.

I approach Blossom's bedroom and consider knocking, but with my fist halfway raised towards the door, I decide against it and reach for the doorknob instead.

I push the door open and wince at what I see.

Blossom is standing in the centre of her room, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She's no longer wearing the oversized sweatpants and hoodie from earlier, and is now dressed in only a plain cotton bra and underwear set in a shade of nude only slightly lighter than her skin tone.

Her body is beautiful as always, all soft curves and smooth skin, but all I feel while staring at her is a sense of wrongness.

Because she's covered in bruises from head to toe.

Her neck is decorated with bruises in the shape of fingertips. Much larger, round bruises line her ribs, her hips. A long, thin scratch runs down the left side of her abdomen.

I shut the bedroom door behind me much harder than I should, and Mochi leaps off my shoulder and onto Blossom's bed, where she promptly curls up atop a fluffy pillow.

Blossom watches me watch her through the mirror's reflective surface, and when our eyes meet in the reflection, she whimpers.

I glance at her body again, scraped and bruised and scratched and beaten, and my chest feels suddenly hollow.

I know that I should be angry, that I should feel the urge to break things and hurt somebody, but all I feel is a deep, devastating sorrow as I imagine Blossom taking the blows, forgiving whoever hurt her as she tried to forget about me, tried to replace me.

I force myself to look at her face, the only part of her that isn't marked in one way or another.

"Come give me another hug. You look like you need it." I try for humour and force a smile on my face, but Blossom's expression remains the same: devastated.

Head hung low, she makes her way across the room. I open my arms and she slumps against my chest, exhausted and weary.

Her suitcase is open on her bed, half-packed with clothes that all were once mine, including some merch samples I had my team send her way. Several drawers of her dresser are thrown open and a pile of shoes sits messily beside her bed.

So unlike my Blossom, so out of character that it stings.

"What can I do to make it better?" I ask, wrapping my arms around her small body and holding her close.