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OLIVIA
The sound of the shot tears into every part of me.
My twitching, trembling arms wrap around Ronan. I hear Ruth sniffing, perhaps because of what she has done. My body rams into overdrive. My brain refuses to process that Ronan is down and chances are… I shake my head, refusing even to think about it because it might make it real.
I keep shaking my head, refusing to accept any of this.
He is my everything. I should have said that to him while I had the chance.
“Ronan?” I whisper. I try as hard as I can to shake him with my trembling body, but he instead falls to the side, “Ronan!” I scream, my little composure shattering as I come face to face with what I now know to be my greatest fear.
In a flash, that is how quickly my world has been spun to an end. My world was Ronan Gallagher. It happened too fast for me to grasp it. I would do anything to be the one down.
I shoot up to my feet with anger burning through my narrowing veins and dash for Ruth, not caring that she is still in possession of a gun.
She drops the gun and goes down on her knees, “I’m sorry, I didn’t meant to, I just got…” I trap her words with a heavy punch-like smack across her face and unload my fury, one I never thought I had inside of me. “You never mean to do anything, and you kill everything around you!” I shout at her in a voice I don’t even recognize. Hoarse, harsh, angry.
I throw punches, beating her any way I can, and I swear I will kill her if she doesn’t give me back my Ronan.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Liam rips me away from her, but I’m kicking both him and the air until I kick him in the crotch with my heel. I keep fighting, scrambling to get an eye for an eye as I dash towards Ruth, but a cop gets her before me and snaps her hands into a cuff.
“I will go with them; I have called 911,” Liam says, setting me aside. “You go with him, pull yourself together,” he barks and leaves with Ruth, making me wonder why he would leave Ronan at a time like this.
“How could you, Ruth?” I bark as they go, a little satisfied as I see her limp and a flash of her swollen, bloodied lips. “You will make pay for this!” I punch the air as I return to Ronan, slamming my knees hard on the tiled floor.
I scoop him as best as I can to myself and clamp his big body to my chest, holding him as tightly as I can to my heart, where he has always sat supreme and without any competition.
There was no other for me. How could there ever be?
“Ronan, if you can hear me, please, come back to me, mi amor,” I sniff, “I can’t live without you,” I break, sobbing, “There is no world for me without you, mi amor, please, come back.”
I think about how I let him go. I think about how I let anger have the best of me. I think about how nothing had felt right after him.
The years I spent trying to prove that I was right with my decision and that he shouldn’t have done what he did. The years I spent waiting for him to come to me, to find me, to apologize for what he did. Wasted years.
“Mi amor, don’t do this to me, I…” I sniff, hiccupping, struggling to get words out, and, at the same time, looking over my shoulders for any sign of a medical team.
“You will kill me faster the way you are holding me.”
I dart my eyes around before it clicks that the sound is coming from the man in my arms.
“Ronan!” I shriek, pulling away from him to take up his face, “You are…” I blink, not sure what is happening, still in the frenzy of the moment. He struggles to get up. “You can’t do that, you have to stay down until the medical team gets here.”
“I’m good,” he groans slightly as he gets on his feet, and I stand with him.
“You almost died, you can’t…”
“I’m wearing a bulletproof vest; the hit will give me a mean bruise, but I’m good,” he starts to strut towards the door.
I dash after him, not sure why, but punching him feels like the next best thing to do.
“How could you do that to me?” I rain punches on his shoulders. I come to stand between him and the door. “How could you…?”
“Save your life?” He chuckles, and while I feel relieved that he is alive and making jokes, I cannot stop my body from trembling or my hands from punching him.
“Don’t ever do that again,” I gain some composure now and find the will to stop punching him for fear he might pass out again, “I’m not worth it…”
“Never,” he clips so gratingly I can feel the gravel in his voice scratching my brain, “Don’t you ever…” He brings his index finger and thumb to hold my chin and tilt my head so I meet his eyes, “Don’t you ever think or say something like that again,” he towers, standing at his full height, “You are worth every fucking thing,” he lets go of my chin. I nod, not sure what to say to that.
