Somewhere in Between by Lynnette Brisia

the silence. "The sooner you talk to them the sooner it'll be over with."
    Her breath was haggard. It was too much, too soon. She'd just gone through a horrible exam, had to be touched again, prodded for evidence and now he wanted this from her?
    "Elliot…. No, I can't do this anymore. You don't know what this is like!"
    "No, Gemma. I know how horrible this is, how scared you are, but someone needs to stop these guys." He made sure to lower his voice at the end so as to not scare her any more than she already was. "Please, I need your help. You promised you would."
    She was stunned by his plea. Of all the things she had expected him to say in regards to her talking to the police, begging for her help was not one of them. Using her words against her wasn’t either. Then again, he saw. Elliot saw what had happened to her. This was too big to deal with though. "Okay. But not tomorrow. I can't do it tomorrow. I may throw up."
    "Monday after school. I'm sure you won't go, but I'll pick you up." His tone left no room for argument and while it bothered him to be so stern with her, he knew she needed to do this.
    "Okay. Monday." Her voice was small, she couldn't look at him because she didn't want to see his pain. Or relief. Both would hurt.
    "You should probably head inside," he said after several minutes.
    Gemma nodded, but then a moment of panic overwhelmed her. "They're gonna know. They'll see me and they'll just know . I don't want anyone to know." She knew going to the hospital and giving them those words she couldn't take back was a bad idea. Her father, a lawyer who made it his goal in life to find out if someone was lying or not, was gonna know something happened to her and it wasn't just a simple mugging like she had initially planned to tell everyone. "He's gonna talk to the police and they're gonna tell him all of what happened to me and I can't do this, Elliot!"
    The pain and agony in her voice made tears form in his eyes. He couldn't handle seeing her like this. She was Gemma, who if she tripped over thin air, she then laughed about it. Gemma, who sometimes snorted when she really got to laughing hard at one of his stupid jokes. Gemma, who, even though it drove her absolutely insane, didn't ever try to deter him from achieving his goal of winning Trisha, even though it hurt her, he knew, beyond belief. But the Gemma before him, with tears streaming down her face, and her eyes so lost and filled with fear, he didn't know this Gemma and that scared him. "You can , Gemma. You can do this. I know you can," he forced out through a sob. "I know you can because I will be here with you every step of the way."
    She hiccupped as he pulled her tight against him. He had no idea how much hearing him say those words meant. She was so scared. She felt so alone. "Stay with me," she whispered and didn't regret the words.
    "What?"
    "I don't want to be alone. Every time I close my eyes," she trailed off and he understood. Every time he closed his eyes too. "I understand if you would rather not be here, If you have someplace else you'd rather go, I mean look at me. But I just, I don't want to be alone."
    "There's nowhere else I'd rather be," he replied, trying to stop her line of thought. He could feel it in the tense stature of her body, the moment she said he'd rather be somewhere else, and he knew she was probably still thinking about Trisha. It didn't matter that he had told her he was done, the obsession gone because he did sincerely see the error of his ways. It didn't matter if he apologized a thousand times for acting so callously about the whole thing. It didn't matter because of what she'd been through tonight; trust was not something Gemma had readily available any longer. And that killed him. "Go on inside, and I'll climb the tree."
    She nodded, and after another couple minutes hesitation, she opened the car door and walked gingerly toward her front door. She could see a lamp was on inside, but she hoped and prayed it was just