Evie
CALLING FOR A HOT DISPATCHER
ANGEL
wishing you luck today x
TRISTAN
you’ve got a banana bread slice with your name on it waiting for you when you return to work <3
KALANI
sending all the positive vibes!
BOOK CLUB BANDITS
BELLA
thinking of you today, let us know if you need anything please!
CINDY
keep us updated on how it goes
LAYLA
we love you <3
This is the first time since my birthday that I’m seeing the people who created me.
I’d say my parents, but they both lost that title a long time ago.
If I told myself three months ago that I’d be sitting in a courtroom, staring at the monster who not only raised me but harmed me in unspeakable ways without breaking out into a sprint for the nearest toilet, I would have laughed in my face.
But I’m here, sitting in the row behind the district attorney’s prosecuting table, Matteo beside me, his hand in mine, my brother on my right, and I’m…not dying on the inside.
I can’t say I’m all right, I don’t think I ever will be when it comes to this topic, but I am surviving, breathing, and living despite all I have had to face over the past weeks.
After I told Matteo I was ready to face the music, that I was ready to fight, we had one more night in the cabin. Caleb returned and we made a pizza from scratch and turned on a movie.
It was far from normal but I still look back at that night even to this day, mainly because it was the first time Matteo told me he loved me, but also because the two most important people in my life showed up for me in ways I’ll never forget.
Returning to the city the next day after three days of isolation was jarring to say the least.
Tristan was right, Nina was more than understanding and accommodating.
I was able to take eight weeks off work and still return with my job intact.
Having that stress taken off my shoulders, knowing I had the safety and resources to go back to work when I was ready…
I haven’t stopped thanking Nina to this day.
Because I needed the time off. I wouldn’t have been able to return like nothing had happened. Not when everything had changed.
Caleb moved back in because the press was camped out in front of the apartment building.
I couldn’t leave for nearly three weeks.
The only thing that kept me sane was the building’s gym—more specifically, the treadmill.
I ran miles on that thing, with Matteo right there alongside me on the neighboring machine.
To say I was lucky to have a partner like Matteo through this is an understatement. During the hours when I couldn’t sleep, the weight of the world watching and knowing what happened to me, Matteo was my oxygen mask, helping me keep breathing through the heaviness of it all.
I owe him my life, despite him disagreeing with that statement.
My therapist as well.
I spoke to her every single day for those three weeks while my days were filled with phone calls with lawyers and hours spent watching the news about my story and the women that continued to come forward.
After those initial grueling weeks, I dropped back the sessions to three times a week, then to two sessions a week.
Those haven’t changed. Turns out when the entire world is broadcasting your trauma and a large handful of people decide to call you a liar, your mind suddenly unlocks a whole new set of memories to prove that it did, in fact, happen.
I struggled with that aspect, and I know Matteo did as well; he would just never admit it out loud.
How could it not, though? How could it not crush him when he came in to give me a hug and all of a sudden it wasn’t him but my father on top of me?
How could it not affect him when he or Caleb said a certain phrase and it was like I was six again hearing my father slur those words in my ear?
It’s fucking exhausting to watch everyone around you tiptoe on eggshells because your mind is finally allowing you to remember something it was protecting you from.
Therapy, as amazing as it is, can only be done for so many hours in a day.
You can only process so much in a short time.
That, too, is exhausting, for a whole other set of reasons, but it’s worth it.
It’s worth it to continue to show up, because then, some of the most haunting memories stop chasing you in your dreams as much.
The triggers that easily set you off before begin to lessen.
And suddenly, it begins to feel manageable. That memory begins to be manageable.
Until a new one resurfaces and you’re back to square one.
Because that’s the thing no one truly explains about trauma.
It isn’t just one mass event you can talk about and then be fine.
There are intricate moments and details that your brain holds onto, like a thousand paper cuts.
They’re all equally deep and gushing with blood, and they all desperately need time and attention to patch up the one wound, yet you only have so many hands to heal them. At least, that’s how I see it.
All in all, thirty-seven women came forward. I haven’t spoken to any of them, shame and guilt over the fact it was my father who hurt them coating my tongue and heart.
Thirty-seven.
Thirty-seven minds groomed and warped, the youngest being six.
Thirty-seven bodies violated.
Thirty-seven lives destroyed.
Thirty-eight if you count his own daughter.
Because of Marcus Ellington’s perverted mind, thirty-eight women have been affected, and that’s just the number of women who were brave enough to step forward and tell their stories. Just the number of women who remember what happened to them.
He groomed, touched, stalked and violated all of them. Being in the position of power he had as their little league soccer coach, with a new group of girls coming through every year, Marcus abused every ounce of his power.
But the thing that really nailed his coffin shut were the photos.
I’m not sure if you can truly call it luck considering the years of constant abuse I experienced from him in my own home, but I felt lucky the day I was told by the district attorney that Marcus Ellington would be thrown into prison for the rest of his life because they found photo evidence.
I didn’t want to know the details, didn’t want something else my mind could latch onto, but Caleb wanted to know everything.
He needed it, needed to confront his mind with the picture-perfect dad he grew up with.
So I sat on my brother and boyfriend’s couch hearing about the child pornography they found on our father’s computer.
Some photos were from downloaded sites, from groups he was a part of on the dark web, but the others…
The others were his way of reliving the torture he inflicted.
Photographs of little girls changing in the locker rooms, photos of them in his office…all of them terrified.
Marcus was still pleading innocent, same with my mother, all the way up until those photos. We never saw him give another interview after that. The social media posts slamming my name and mental health into the ground ceased.
Everything went quiet.
I’ve never heard such silence from that man in my entire life, and it was liberating.
We no longer had to stand before him and testify. Marcus Ellington pled guilty to thirty-eight counts of sexual assault of a minor, thirty-eight counts of sexual exploitation of a child, and possession, production, and distribution of child pornography.
The words I thought I would never hear in those grueling three months after everything came out now boom throughout the courtroom as the judge finishes listing off Marcus’s charges.
“The court sentences the defendant, Marcus Ellington, to life imprisonment to the Colorado Department of Corrections without the possibility of parole.”
A collective sigh seems to fill the room and yet I still don’t dare turn around and lock eyes with any of the other women. Especially not the one that has been weighing on my heart the most. The one that, when I was handed the list of names, made my stomach churn with bile.
Marcus will rot in a cell until the day he dies, but it doesn’t change what he did. Doesn’t erase the memories, doesn’t stop the nightmares, doesn’t make my day easier. It’s just relieving to know that, for once, a monster has been put behind bars.
My eyes slide to the side. Kieran Ashford sits beside Caleb with a silver sheen covering his eyes.
His monster may not be behind bars but there is a relief sweeping through him that at least mine has been. Kieran offers me a wobbly smile before sitting back.
There’s just one person who doesn’t sigh with relief, one person in this room that was still hoping and praying, holding onto a sliver of delusion that Marcus wasn’t a monster.
Serena Ellington sits behind the defendant’s table, lip and chin quivering.
Matteo follows my line of sight, his body stiffening before he wraps an arm around my shoulder, pulling me in tighter and placing a soft kiss on the top of my head. “It’s over, Dove. It’s over.”
I pull back slightly, peering up at my rock and smiling softly.
He knows this won’t fix everything, and he actually made sure that I didn’t put too many expectations on Marcus going to prison to heal me, and he was right.
In this moment, I feel such relief and safety but it’s not soothing the deep unending ache in my heart over everything.
Turning my head, I reach over, clutching my brother’s cold hand tightly as cuffs are placed on Marcus Ellington’s wrists, his head and chin held high despite it all as he’s removed from the courtroom.
This is the last time I’ll ever see my father.
I’m not sure what I was expecting but Caleb is sitting as still as stone, his gaze laser focused on the door Marcus was led behind. He clenches his teeth so hard I’m surprised I don’t hear his molars snap.