Not Warriors- Awsten Knight

Chapter 29

Awsten takes a shaky deep breath, whispering quietly "Is that.." and Claire jumps out of the bunk to go see what's happening.

She pulls open the divider and lets out a laugh when she sees Macayla standing in the common area, arguing with Jawn.

"What could you possibly fucking want?" Claire asks angrily, and both Jawn and Macayla turn their head startled.

She was angry with the fact that Macayla had even showed up today, but add in the fact that now she was here after everything that she did to Awsten and Claire was seeing red and nothing else.

"Oh shut up Claire. I'm talking to Jawn, I don't know why you felt the need to come out here like some martyr." she spits in Claire's direction angrily.

"Where is he? Crying in his bunk? He's a grown man he doesn't need you to defend him." Macayla says dryly, and Claire digs her fingernails in the palm of her hands in attempts to ground herself.

She refused to stoop to the level of the foul human being standing in front of her, but she also refused to let her talk about Awsten the way that she was.

Awsten laid frozen in bed, he knew that he shouldn't let Claire fight this battle for him but he was too exhausted to even face Macayla at this moment in time.

Claire lets out a bitter laugh, shaking her head.

"I know that he doesn't need me to defend him, but something happened not that long ago and someone that I love very much told me that they recognized that they didn't need me to defend them but they wanted to anyway. That's what you do for the people that you care about Macayla." Claire says angrily.

She notices a look of shock on Jawns face but she can't exactly figure out what it was for.

"I understand that you don't have the capacity to care or love for anyone other than yourself, but I am not going to sit here and let you come onto this bus in the middle of the night and argue because you are embarrassed of what happened today. The song was taken down, Jawn took his tweet down. There is nothing left for you here, so go." she tells her, pointing at the door to the bus.

"Oh so now you love him again?" Macayla says condescendingly, breezing past everything else that Claire had told her and Claire takes a step closer to her and Jawn.

"Stop making a fool out of yourself and go. Now." she says, her voice void of all emotion and Macayla rolls her eyes turning around and slamming the bus door on her way out.

Claire makes eye contact with Jawn, who still has a look of shock on his face and mouths "love?"

In the heat of the moment Claire hadn't even realized what she had said, she wonders if Awsten heard the entire conversation or if he had shut them out so that he didn't have to

She grimaces softly, letting out a deep breath.

"Aws how much of that did you hear?" she calls out, her face turning red with embarrassment.

She hears a soft sigh from the bunk, and his feet hit the ground when he hops out.

"Literally all of it, do you want to talk outside?" he asks her softly, wrapping an arm around her torso and pulling her into him.

Awsten feels Claire nod against him, and he grabs her hand leading her outside.

They sit down next to the bus, and Awsten speaks up first.

"Thank you for defending me in there, I'm sorry I didn't come out of my bunk." he tells her, his voice full of gratitude and she shrugs it off.

"You defended me against everyone on Twitter. It was the least I could do. We don't have to talk about it or her, I know it's not easy." she replies, picking at the skin around her fingernails.