Strong

Chapter Fifteen

"Hey! Maria!" Alex shouts.

Maria begins twitching as she lies in the grass.

He watches as her body slows, and then stops completely.

"Maria? Are you okay?" Alex asks quietly.

She moans lightly, and he picks her up carefully and carries her to his car.

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Minutes later, he arrives at his apartment.

With Maria in his arms, he walks up the outside stairs to his room on the 18th floor.

With one hand, he unlocks the door and walks inside.

His feet sound on the marble floor and he throws his keys on one of the white couches in his room.

Carefully, he sets Maria on his white king sized bed and watches her sleeping face intently.

"I won't let that happen to you again, Maria", he whispers to himself with a hard look on his face as he turns away.

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Maria wakes up with a start and bangs her head on the dashboard. She panics, grabbing the white sheets on the bed, wondering where she is, gasping.

"Maria, you're awake", says Alex as he walks into the room.

Maria calms at the sight of him and starts to smile, but then remembers the previous events; how Alex almost took her to the hospital; when she freaked out on the side of the road.

She snaps out of her thoughts and starts to look around. She was in a huge room with white couches, marble floors, granite table tops in a mini kitchen, and fancy lamps hanging down from the ceiling. She felt the soft, silk sheets under the huge king sized bed with a frilly comforter. To her right was a huge glass panel that replaced and acted as a wall. It over looked the whole city. It looked beautiful at night with all different kinds of lights in the city. It looked like an apartment a celebrity would own.

"This must be your apartment", Maria exclaims in amazement, still trying to take it all in.

"Yea, I live by myself too," he says, taking a seat at the end of the bed.

Maria sits up and leans against the dashboard, then asks, "Why do you live all by yourself? Where is your family at?"

He goes silent for a while and looks out at the city. Finally he answers, "All that's left is my father, and he disowned me."

"Why would he-" she starts, but the look on his face causes her to stop and go silent.

"Alex..." she trails off, letting the silence grow between them.

She crawls out from under the thick covers and sits next to him.

"I'm sorry,"she whispers.

Alex looks over at her eyes, which sparkle in the moonlight. He leans in closer, almost closing in fully, but she backs away.

"I should get home," she says, refusing to look him in the eyes, "my dad must be worried."

But the look on her face says something different, because she knows very well that her father isn't worrying about her at all.

"You can stay," he says.

"I really should get going, Alex."

"No, please stay," he insists.

Maria stands up and grabs her jacket, and starts toward the door.

"Please don't leave me alone," he whispers.

She stops in her tracks, and turns around.

The look in his eye immediately made her reconsider. It is that certain kind of sadness that lingers in his deep blue eyes that she can relate to.

Without saying anything, Maria walks toward his slumped over form. She sets her hands on his shoulders, and he looks up to meet her kind gaze.

"I'm not going anywhere," she offers a small smile.

In that moment, his eyes told a million stories, and she only knew some of them.

"How blind can a girl be," she says to herself, laughing slightly.

"What do you mean by that?" He questions.

"You've only been worrying about me this whole time, and I haven't even given any thought about your story."

"Does it matter?" He said as he pulled her in and squeezed her in a hug and held her there for however long it was until they fell asleep like that.

And this time, she didn't pull back.