Fight For Me

Darlin

Chapter 14-Darlin by Avril Lavigne

18 Years Old/20 Years Old

Graduation Day

It seemed that it had taken forever to get to this day, but finally, Josie was graduating this afternoon. She was extremely excited and couldn't wait for it to be over. Not that she wasn't happy about graduation and hadn't enjoyed all of the festivities of the past week, but what she really wanted was on the other side of graduation.

Hope!

Josie couldn't help but miss her girlfriend while she was gone. She was just trying to make it through the next hour until Hope got home.

What Josie didn't know was that Hope was on her way home to her, with thoughts of her running through her head. It had been an eventful trip, but she was so happy to be coming home to the girl that she loved.

The past few years have been amazing, and Hope couldn't wait to start the next chapter. With so many changes in her life, she was glad to know that some things would always stay the same.

Hope had graduated two years prior and now worked for the Salvatore School as a recruiter with Caroline. She found the students that would be best suited for the school and went to talk to them, or in some cases the parents, to convince them of why they should come to the school.

After Hope had turned eighteen and the school along with all of her parent's and uncle's holdings were turned over to her, she had sat down with her aunt and Alaric to work out exactly how things were going to be moving forward. They had to figure out where they were together.

Hope assured Alaric that she didn't want his job, at least not yet. For the time being, she wanted to leave most of the business in the hands of her Aunt Freya, as she had just graduated herself and wanted to be able to go to college and get a job and in general, life experiences outside of monster fighting and the supernatural. She had already talked to her aunt about how everything would be handled and what Hope would be taking an interest in and when she would have to be responsible.

For the most part, Freya would handle everything just as she had been. When she had to have a signature from Hope, she would let her know what was going on and they would talk through everything as they always had. This suited both of them, as Freya knew what she was doing and this was a job that gave her freedom not only to do what she wanted, as Hope fully trusted her, but also the freedom to be with her family.

Hope had truly only taken over one holding in full, the school. This is where she saw her future. She knew that no matter what else she did in her life, she would always feel that this was her place. She had put too much of herself into this place.

It didn't hurt that Josie wanted to get her teaching degree and be a teacher here. That was all Hope needed to hear to know what her plan was. With a plan in her mind, and knowing all the players, Hope sat down with Alaric the week after she graduated.

"Alaric, thank you for taking the time to meet with me. I would like to make this a short meeting. Josie wants to get going soon."

"Ah, you two leave for New Orleans today. That's right. I guess this means that Lizzie is leaving for Europe today too."

"Actually, we convinced her and Caroline that we should all spend time together this summer. So Caroline is coming to New Orleans for six weeks and then we are all going to Europe for six weeks. I emailed you about this last week, you know, inviting you to come and spend time with your family."

"Yeah, I really should check my email one of these days. Or maybe I can get a student secretary, offer it as an elective."

"I think that would be good, especially if that student were on the Honor Council. You want to make sure that you can trust the with sensitive information."