Frightening

Watching Beth walk away, Justin felt a twist in his gut. He always did when he spoke his heart, only to see it was not taken well. He probably shouldn't have felt so strongly about this whole thing in the first place. Who was he to have told her all that? What right did he have anyway?

Sighing, Justin looks up to the clouds again. "Great. Do I screw everything up, or just the important things?" He could swear he heard God chuckle.

Lowering his gaze, he starts to walk slowly back towards the parking lot where this whole day had started. This whole miserable, rotten, ineffective, stupid day. He sighs again. Beth was looking for someone to ride it out with her and take the time and take the effort... but she showed no signs of ever being willing even if that someone showed up. It was vicious circle and he was sad she was caught in it. Maybe he'd handled the whole thing incorrectly from the beginning. But how far did he have to go? Couldn't he ever find a normal relationship? Maybe it was him. Did he attract people who needed more than the average person or was it just a coincidence?

Getting into his truck, Justin hardly notices his cold, wet clothes clinging to him. He doesn't leave right away. His mind was still too busy.

Beth viewed him as unwilling to stick it out with her. That much was obvious. He hadn't meant that by his speech. He was just trying to express what he felt and maybe it came out all wrong. Part of the time he... he had been talking about himself. But seeing that look in her eye... the one that said she was happy the way she was.... he had resigned to the fact that she probably didn't view him as that person. So he'd made a point to say he didn't need her to change for him - he hadn't wanted to scare her away from him. Apparently that backfired as well.

He liked Beth. He liked seeing her when he came here. It broke up his day and gave him someone to talk to once his session with Scott was over. Would she even want to talk to him after this? He hadn't meant to hurt or offend. He just felt such passion for... for...

His hand comes down hard on the steering wheel. That was his problem. He had too much passion. He was too aggressive. Always pushing too much. He refuses to think about all the people he had actually helped. Today he was focusing on the negative and the few people he'd never been able to help. There were just a few, but what had happened? Why hadn't he been capable of helping them? Even now, he was losing his grip on Scott and his case was about life or death in the end.

Justin tires to push all his thoughts aside as he starts his pickup. Who was he to think he was so important that people's lives rode only on him? He hadn't just made or broke Beth - she had her own life and he was a mere speck in everything else she had going on. Whether he'd been stupid today or not wouldn't matter much. And with Scott - Justin wasn't the only one that had worked with him. It wasn't like the whole existence of the Elite rode on his shoulders. Was he really so prideful to think that the things he did and say would have that great of an impact? Or... was it reality? He finally pulls out of the parking lot.


Scott stares out his window, his fingers pressed against the cool glass. Ever since he'd gotten back to his room, he had felt something inside being torn. He wasn't sure what it was, but something inside was breaking again. What Justin had said... what Scott had been made to think through... would this torture ever end?

His lower lip quivers. He was still in his wet clothes but didn't move from the window. He was going to have to face the shadows, wasn't he? He was going to have to do it. And it was frightening... so very frightening.

The first of many tears rolls down his cheek.