Her Home, His Heart | ✓

☆*✿FORTY-FOUR (44)❀*★

♪♪How can I erase decisions I've made?

How do I go back? What more can I say?

All that remains are hearts filled with shame

How do we say we're sorry? ♪♪

ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ [Blank Page] - [Christina Aguilera]

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The room stilled for a second as everyone took in the weight of her words. Ronnie's slumped position became more alert, Kian turned straight to Esmé with a raised eyebrow and Hermione's mouth fell open, though she was the first one to recover and plunge the silence with a sneer.

"Of course you do." She glowered with a pinched expression.

Esmé's brow arched upwards at the tone of her voice, but she didn't settle there as Ronnie pulled her attention to him.

"She told you about it?" he asked in a cautioned tone.

"She took me there."

Ronnie bolted into a standing position from his seat, snagging his car keys from the table where it was. "Then, what are we doing? Let's go?"

The others stood up except Kian.

"What are you doing, man?"

"Esmé should be the only one to go actually," Kian said, looking inward, deep in thought.

"What?" Hermione and Esmé asked together with scrunched up brows.

"What do you mean by that?" Esmé further asked.

Kian looked up at her and then at Ronnie. "What exactly are you going to do when you get to where she is?" he asked him.

The question shot a hole into Ronnie's confident stance and made him draw backwards.

"You haven't thought that far, have you?"

"But what does that have to do with me going alone? I'm pretty sure I'm the last person she wants to see. It's definitely not the person not batting on a full wicket."

He sucked in a harsh breath, pausing for a second before he stood up to look at her. He tried not to make it show just how affected he was anytime she mentioned that, but softened his gaze as they met her hard glare. "Please listen to me, okay? You just proved my point right now by referring to yourself like that and you're going to keep doing it until you have a one on one with Petra. The rest of us here hurt her, but you're the only one she hurt and that's why I think you should go first even if it's not to go comfort her but just to show her how you feel."

Ronnie watched them silently. This did not settle well with him at all. He scowled at Kian. "Are we expected to just wait here while she goes?"

"Yes," Hermione said, staring at Esmé like she suddenly understood something she didn't before.

Esmé didn't know how she felt about going to see Petra alone, she knew how Kian felt about this and she trusted his judgement, but it didn't make it easy.

With Kian's questioned look pointed at her, she sighed. "Fine." A smile appeared on his lips. "But I'll need a bottle of beer."

And it dropped as fast as it came. "What? Absolutely not."

"What do you mean, absolutely not? You're asking me to go do something I'm not totally into and you don't want me to take something that'll unwind my nerves?" Her voice dropped low, and she arched an eyebrow up.