I Walked Away Seven Years Too Late But Right on Time novel Chapter 80

"The summer before high school, I went on a bike trip to the suburbs with some friends. I let a girl from my class ride on the back of my bike. When Eileen saw us, she sprinted over, shoved the girl violently off the bike, and stood there screaming and crying, forbidding me from ever being with another girl."

"The girl took a terrible fall and smashed the back of her head on the pavement. I had to carry her to flag down a cab. Eileen just stood there throwing a massive tantrum, screaming at me to drop her on the street. She was only ten years old, but the paranoia was already absolute. She refused to listen to a single word of logic."

"After I graduated high school, a few close friends came over to celebrate. She was there too. A girl in our group had always liked me, and she finally confessed her feelings that night. Eileen absolutely snapped. She grabbed a heavy glass liquor bottle off the table and smashed it directly over my classmate's head. There was so much blood."

"The party ended in total disaster. Harold had to pay the girl's family a massive settlement just to stop them from pressing charges. But afterward, Eileen cornered me and forced me to swear I would wait for her to grow up, demanding I never look at another girl. By that point, I was genuinely terrified of her."

It was an agonizing, sprawling tragedy. As Luke bared his darkest secrets, Sophie didn't utter a single sound.

"When I moved to San Francisco for college, I avoided going home at all costs. She wrote me hundreds of letters, and I burned them. She called, and I ignored her. During my first winter break, someone told her I had gotten a girlfriend on campus. That very night, she stole Victoria's eyebrow razor and slashed her own wrists. That was her first suicide attempt. She was only thirteen."

"After that, my parents, Harold, and Victoria all sat me down and begged me to just play along. They told me not to date anyone, saying she was just going through a chaotic teenage phase and would eventually obsess over someone else."

"The result? She genuinely believed she was my girlfriend. She called my dorm phone every single night to interrogate me on my whereabouts. She drove my roommates completely insane, to the point where I was forced to move off-campus."

"During my junior year, she came to visit me on New Year's. I was playing basketball, and during halftime, a girl from my class handed me a tissue to wipe my sweat. Eileen grabbed a full bottle of water, dumped it over the girl's head, and viciously attacked her."

"I dragged her away and tried to put her in a cab. Instead, she sprinted straight for the campus lake and jumped in. I dove into the freezing water to drag her out, and she locked her arms around my throat like a vice. In that moment, I honestly thought she was going to drown me. I realized that if things kept going like this, she was eventually going to suffocate me to death."

"During my first year of grad school, I finally brought a girlfriend home for the summer. I thought if she saw us together with her own eyes, the delusion would finally shatter. Instead, she walked into the bathroom, grabbed my dad's shaving razor, and sliced her wrists open right in front of us. My girlfriend was so traumatized she bought a train ticket and fled the city that exact same day."

"After we rushed Eileen to the ER, my dad beat the living hell out of me right in front of Harold and Victoria. I knew he was just putting on a show for them to prove our loyalty, but it still broke me. I was completely trapped. My parents were trapped. We had paid off the embezzled money years ago, but a debt of gratitude is a shackle you can never break."

A bitter, self-deprecating smile twisted Luke's lips. "That girl had chased me for months. But after witnessing that nightmare, she treated me like a walking plague."

"That was the final straw for Harold and Victoria. They finally realized her obsession was genuinely dangerous. Terrified she would do something irreversible, they shipped her off to Europe for boarding school."

"We all naively prayed that being in a new country, meeting new people, and experiencing a bigger world would cure her sick obsession."

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