Her Road|Book 2|

Day 22|III

I was still rooted in my spot. I didn't move when they took Harry away. I didn't move when the crowd started thinning around the grounds, not bothering to go back to class. I didn't even move when Bran was moved.

My friends all disappeared. Annabeth followed Harry. Cass followed Bran. Shana followed London. Jessica and her group were somewhere nearby I presumed just like West and his friends.

I just stayed there, a perfect view of the bench and the broken window. The cracks breaking the smoothness of the glass, a red stain on the edge the grey stone bench. No one reached out to me. Not one of my friends came to me. They were wrapped into their own world. I was too but I was falling a lot harder.

"Alice." A familiar soft voice spoke. I wasn't aware of my surroundings but I remember capturing a familiar grey charger. But it was the woman standing directly in front of me that made me snapped.

Chief Naomi. She scanned my face, professionally capturing every detail of my face.

"Finally arrived, eh?" I spat out but she didn't give me the satisfaction of an reaction. "I'm sure you know already but your precious boy is in the hospital now."

She finally took those broken eyes off me and peered at the scene around us. I'd come to hate those eyes because they'd seen too much. Like Harry's.

"I'm here to apologize. Uh, to you." Her eyes returned to me. "To say sorry for asking you to watch him."

"Sorry? Sorry? What exactly are you fucking sorry about?!" I screamed as everything that somehow gathered up inside rose and spilled. "Are you sorry that my first day was a woman vandalizing his car? Or maybe you're sorry that my second day a boy pointed a gun at me? No, no no. Maybe, just MAYBE you're sorry that my first day I almost walked into a group of gangsters on the beach. Does that sorry cover everything? Does it cover the fact that I love him too?"

The wind strangely made my cheeks burn. When I went to touch them, they came back wet. Somewhere during my rant I had started crying.

Naomi didn't say anything for a while, just standing there taking my abuse. Eventually, as she watched me hyperventilate and basically break down, she did speak.

"Come, I'll take you home." She tried to reach me but I stepped back, shaking my head.

"No. No. No. I'm not going back. I'm not g-going..." Her hand clasped on my shoulder and pulled me forcibly into her. Her thin, muscular arms wrapped around me as I melted. My tears seeping into her uniform.

"You don't want to face your parents, I understand-" She tried to understand, bless her sweet heart but her words just made me choke and sob more.

"I don't want to go home because I know he won't be there waiting for me." I mumbled softly into her. Her hand smoothed my hair. She was strong, stronger than me.

After a while (God knows how much time past) she slowly led me to her charger. I lowered myself into the passenger seat while Naomi made her way around to the driver's. I didn't notice it at the time but she didn't speak to anyone at all. She must've spoken beforehand. Her underlings must have been better prepared than last time.

As we pulled out and sped down the road, a news van came flying past towards the school. News had already spread but I didn't care.

I love him. I love him. How did I come to love him? Harry was everything wrong with the world. A victim. He was so far away from Becket and yet, in some ways, he was worse too. He came with troubles too, far greater than a cheating ex ever did.

Was it him being in my room? Or was it him jokingly making references of You while looking at my underwear? Perhaps the time he made my bed for me while I was in the shower. Or when he saved me on the beach, when he smiled at me for the first time since the incident, when his sister told me he wrote in journals like me. When he told me that his got me.

I really did love him.
Please let him be alright.

When we arrived, the explorer was already in driveway. I didn't understand how but Chief Naomi was quick to explain.

"After what happened with Harry, we figured we should have a system to alert us townies before the rest of the world has time to invade and bother us all. You Hadley's are apart of us too."

I nodded, numb. Before I got out, I turned to her one last time. "Will you... Will you let me know if anything happens to him?"

She looked me over once more before nodding. She carefully watched my every moment, from the minute she arrived at school till I was in the door. Never once did she get angry at me. Perhaps she loved him too and understood how hard it was to stand by and watch.

"Babygirl!" Arms wrapped around and pulled me off the floor. My dad hugged me fiercely. "You're okay."

And that was it. Another barrier for me, the last of my walls, crumbled down and I sobbed like a little princess wanting her big, strong dad to save her. My parents had made peace and all it took was Harry getting hospitalized. Ridgeway revolved around him.

I laid in bed that night, staring at my phone. I hadn't heard anything from Chief Naomi nor Annabeth. I had heard that Bran was okay but he was still processing what he did. My friends were all busy. All of them...

My fingers swept over the screen and the sound of a line ringing filled my ears. Eventually, she picked up.

"I shouldn't have even picked up-"

"I fell in love with him."