Patience. People had limits to their patience. In my experience, the limits would vary depending upon the different circumstances. Waiting for someone to use the bathroom was an easier task than having to sit by while my boyfriend confronted his abusive father. Concerned knots entangled in my gut, making it impossible to focus on anything else.

Watching the finger on the clock ticked by compared to the same agonizing pain when my eyebrows got waxed. My hands grew moist, and I couldn't stop my leg from shaking up and down. Ambrose's mother stayed silent, playing with her straw as if everything was all right in the world.

But something in my chest was yelling at me to go check on them.

I sighed. "I'll be right back."

Before I could get out of the booth, his mother snatched my arm. "Don't you think the boys should settle it themselves?"

My eyebrows leaped to my forehead. Doesn't she know what kind of man she's married to?

"Maybe you can sit there and pretend everything is okay, but I don't trust that man alone with him." I tore my wrist from her grasp. "You should evaluate who's more important to you... Your only son or the man who abuses him."

I thought maybe I was wrong, and there was hope for his father. I'm still terrified and nervous and felt like a fraud, but inside, I had an inch of hope. Ambrose had implanted the idea of hope once again in my head. That it existed, and all we had to do was leap forward into it, but the moment I stepped out the door... My breath got caught in my throat.

My heart was replaced with a sledgehammer as I rushed over to Ambrose, his face dug into his hands. From the way his shoulders drooped, I knew all hope was lost, and that motherfucker crossed the line yet again.

"Ambrose!" I yelled, dropping to my knees beside him. "Are you okay?"

Pieces of my heart shattered as he turned away from me, wiping off what must've been tears on his face. "Yeah, we should probably get back inside before the food comes."

I reached out and put a hand on his face, my bottom lip quivering. "Please Ambrose, don't shut me out right now. What happened? Where's your dad?"

Ambrose withdrew from my touch, keeping his gaze in the opposite direction. "We got in a fight... It's no big deal." The ending was barely a whisper.

I stared at him with doubt. "If it isn't a big deal, then why are you shutting me out? Can you just look at me? I'm fucking worried about you!"

Slowly, the heartbreaking look in his eyes collided with mine. My stomach clenched at the sight of the swollen, dark purple bruise on his nose, followed by gallons of blood. His handsome face contorted with anguish when he, at last, spoke. "I'm sorry for making you worry. I just didn't want you to see me like this." He chuckled awkwardly. "But I forgot I have a stubborn princess as a girlfriend."

Fury rose in my chest. "He's such a fucking pussy! I wished he tried to hurt you in front of me. I would have made him feel twenty times worse."

His hand gripped my cheek like a bucket of water, putting out the fire in my chest. "No, we shouldn't lower ourselves to his level. I-I just want to go home."

I nodded. "Of course! I'll just go pay the bill and we can get a taxi."

"Holy fucking shit!" A voice behind us gasped.

The curse rolling off her tongue felt unmatched to her high-pitched voice. His mother stood still with her hand covering her mouth. "What did you do? Where's your father? Where's his car?"

I scoffed, springing onto my legs as I clenched my fist. "Are you fucking kidding me? What did he do? Is that all you have to say? Do you not care that your son is bleeding because of him?"

If it wasn't for Ambrose tugging on my arm, I would've faced assault charges because of this deranged woman. But his touch was truly my safety net, and the broken gleam in his irises brought me back to reality.

He shook his head. "There's no point. She always takes his side. Right, mom?"

His mother's expression darkened. "Why couldn't you just give him the money? We could've prevented this big blow-out if you had just given him a check. It's that easy. Now, he's probably going to get wasted, breaking his one-hundred and twenty-one days of sobriety because of you. What about me? How am I going to get home now? Did you spend a second to think how this would affect me?"

Jesus, take the wheel.

With the newfound outrage fueling my veins, I shoved my hand into my purse and threw a twenty-dollar bill at her. "There's your money! Now, if you can be a dear, please just go."

She scoffed as she picked up the bill from the floor. "Seriously? I live forty minutes from here! This isn't even going to cover half."

"Does it look like I care?" I gritted through my teeth.

Ambrose sprung onto his feet, dug into his trousers, and pulled out a wallet. Even though it was so wrong, Ambrose handed over one hundred dollars to his mother. My heart swelled with admiration for his strength and flicker of hospitality. Those two evil human beings might've birthed him, but they had nothing to do with the incredible person he had become.

Her eye's softened. "Thank you, Amby. I knew you would understand and care about your mother." She placed her hand out, waving in the street for a cab's attention. "I'll go search for your father. I can get him to turn around."

She smiled.

She fucking smiled those bright pearly white ones, like if she had visited Disney World for the first time. Shivers ran down my spine at how insensitive she was being in this situation. Ambrose had to deal with this for years, and it fucking broke the dam in my eyes.

As the silence grew fonder, a cab hauled up beside her, and she pulled the door open.

"Hey, Mom!" Ambrose called out, his brown eyes on fire. "This is the last time I'm seeing both of you. I'm tired of waiting for you guys to change and see me as a human being. I don't ever want you to contact me again and if you try to, I will go to the police. I will do anything I can to never have to be in the same room as you."

Her smile wavered. "Amby? Why are you pushing me away? I haven't done anything wrong. Your father hit you, not me. As your mother, I should be able to see you."

In a quiet voice, he said, "A mother cares for their child, and you haven't done that in years. You might've refrained from hitting me, but you always chose his side. Have you ever thought about how much that fucks up with your head as a little kid? I'm not changing my mind. I don't want to see you guys, so please just leave."

"Oh my gosh! Davina Dialaurentis?" A voice yelled gleefully behind us.

I craned my head back to see two teenage girls jumping up and down with joy laced in every movement. "You're even prettier in person! Can we take a picture together? It would make my year!"

Guilty seeped at my chest from leaving Ambrose alone after he poured his emotions out like dough, but I didn't want anyone to catch a sense of everything. The media didn't need to twist his life story into something worthy of selling, so I had to do everything I could to keep that from happening.

"Sure!" I forced a smile onto my face.

By the time we stopped taking pictures, a whole crowd formed behind them, wanting their own shot of taking a picture with a big-shot celebrity. This could've worked out any worse, but I didn't want to be a bitch to my fans. They helped me reach this star status, but all I wanted to do was to console Ambrose.

It took about an hour for the crowd to dissolve and I couldn't be any happier. Ambrose waited in shadows, and I'm just praying no one caught him. Goosebumps emerged on my skin as I imagined the thousands of ways the media would eat this shit up. I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep tonight.

By this point, the blood from his nose had drenched up his buttoned shirt and dried up on his face. He hadn't uttered a word during the drive back to our hotel, and I couldn't shake this horrible feeling. Ambrose never shut up. Being this silent waved a million red flags in my head, but I didn't want to bring anything up on the cab ride.

So I dragged him to my room because I wasn't leaving him alone tonight. With all the hope lost, he needed to know someone cared about him. That, someone, loved him and would do anything for him. And he wasn't going anywhere until my love for him was tattooed on his skin.

Keeping his head down, he kicked off his shoes before beelining to the bathroom. The water rushing down the faucet shattered the silence, and I watched him washing his face. Once he shut the water off, I grabbed the rag hanging on the bathroom door and used my other hand to pull him towards the toilet.

After pushing him down to sit, I dug through the cabinet until I found an emergency kit. With shaky hands, I picked up the washcloth and turned to stand in front of him, carefully cleaning the cuts.

Our gaze connected for the first time in hours, but he didn't utter a word. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I held them back, trying to be strong. One of us had to be in difficult moments like this. Ambrose was my safety pillow when I met with my dad. Now it's my time to repay the favor.

Having cleaned the blood off, I switched to the alcohol. "This might hurt a bit." I poured it onto a new rag and lightly dabbed it on his cuts. The liquid must've burned like hell because he slightly winced against my touch.

Ambrose pulled me closer until I'm standing between his legs and kept his hands wrapped around the back of my thighs. "Don't worry. I think I can handle anything after that mean punch."

My gut twisted with sadness. "I shouldn't have stayed inside. I had a gut feeling. I should've listened to it. Then maybe none of this would have happened."

Standing up, Ambrose softly cupped my face and held it steady, his brown irises piercing through mine. "Stop. I knew if you came with me, you would've jumped right in front of me and taken the punch. That's why I'm glad you didn't come. I didn't want you to get hurt because of me."

"I'm already hurting having to see you like this..." I whispered, sniffling as tears left my eyes.

Slowly, his one hand moved from cheek to my hair, his brown eyes searching mine. "D, I promise, I'm okay. This isn't my first rodeo... You don't have to be strong for me... You have done enough for me, so let me be strong for you." I couldn't take the look in his eyes anymore, so I closed my own, sinking into his chest.

His woodsy scent was bright as day on his suit as he hugged me tighter. Tears spilled over my lids and trailed down my cheeks, refusing to stay quiet. The fight burned in me, deep in the pit of my stomach. It sparked and ignited, consuming my body until all that was left was a crying, broken girl.

I wasn't crying because they had said all those things about me.

I wasn't crying because they thought I wasn't good enough for Ambrose.

I was crying because, after all my promises of never letting Ambrose get injured again, I gave his dad the benefit of the doubt and let it happen again.

This burning feeling in my chest matched the same pain I felt when I watched my sister rush in for surgery. I couldn't do anything right. I was hopeless.

"Ambrose, I'm so fucking sorry, I'm such a phony. I promised I would stop it from happening, but I didn't. I'm so sorry," I sobbed, gripping onto his back.

He stroked my hair with so much care.

I didn't deserve him.

"Baby, it's not your fault. He's just a shitty person. It's my fault for believing in him."

Our arms unwrapped from one another and instead traced the slops of our faces. We kept stroking each other's face in silence, his fingers wiping off the damp tears rushing down my cheeks. In a blink of the eye, he connected his lips with mine, and walked me backward, away from the door.

We kept walking until my back pressed against the door, and Ambrose broke the kiss to unlock it. He gently lowered me onto the bed, adjusting me so that I'm lying on the pillow. Ambrose doesn't lie adjacent to me. Instead, he pressed his head against my chest and listened to my heartbeat as he secured his arms tightly around me.

I brought my hand up and began to caress his hair in long, slow movements. We lie quietly for so long; I started to wonder if he had fallen asleep. But after a few minutes, his grip around me grew desperate. He tilted his face until it's completely buried in my dress, and his shoulders shook as he started to sob.

It felt like my heart exploded into millions of tiny shreds and I wanted to wrap myself around him while he let it out. Deep down, I knew he wasn't okay, but I didn't want to press further, afraid it would push him away. But the cries escaping from his throat were the most heartbreaking sound I've ever heard.

Ambrose believed in hope even when all matters seemed lost. The possibilities of his father changing were always low, but he held tight onto the faith. But it must've sunken in. That his desire for a family was hopeless, and he had to let the idea go.

"I hate him, D," he cried, the vibration of a low chuckle coming from his throat. "I hate him so much..."

I could tell he didn't want me to acknowledge him crying. So that's exactly what I did, I tenderly stroked his hair until his cries were no more

Why did the brightest people have to go through the worse things?

As your author Davina and Ambrose, I'm sorry for making you guys go through this 🥺🥺! Send them some love guys! Hopefully things get better!