14

2.5K 170 21
                                    


Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.


My thighs cradled Grey's as the motorcycle came to a harsh stop in front of the driveway, and I was terrified that this was going to end. 

This easygoing dynamic that flowed so easily between the two of us...I couldn't bare it having to end so soon.

I was spared being alone with him and having to bear an awkward silence when Maria came bursting outside with her hands on her hips and two mugs of what I sincerely hoped was coffee in her hands. 

I wanted to get ahead in my AP Literature course before tomorrow, so that left either tonight or tomorrow morning for researching topics for our final paper. 

I preferred doing my studying at night, however, so if that was coffee...and if one of those mugs was for me, Maria was going to become my new favorite person. 

Or my only favorite person.  I didn't even know if Mori had that qualification yet. 

The slow decline of my mind started the moment I slid off Grey's bike, however. 

Like somehow, being in Grey's presence and the absence of triggers had allowed my mind to be fully free and clear, but now as reality was coming crashing back down, so, too, was the sinking realization that I could never escape the fact that my life was not my own. 

My life was in the hands of others who, more often than not, did not care about my own wellbeing, but the money lining their pockets from the state for taking in a foster kid. 

It didn't matter how hard I studied, how much I kept myself out of trouble.  It didn't matter if I got a job to make extra money to squirrel away, because somehow they all always found where I'd stashed it and took it for themselves. 

It didn't matter that I was in an apparently welcoming and wholesome home now.  It didn't matter; because the worst thing that could've happened to me already had, so what was the point in even trying anymore?

Because who would believe me? 

The police hadn't. 

Maybe Maria had, or maybe she was just biding her time until I turned eighteen and maybe would use her legal prowess to somehow make herself the beneficiary of my trust if she was my legal guardian at the time I turned eighteen. 

Maybe behind all the stainless steel appliances and granite countertops and manicured perfection she'd concocted in her home, they were secretly bankrupt. 

Maybe it was all Grey's fault and the expensive surgeries to bring back his voice to blame for it, too. 

Because what was I besides someone to use and defile for someone else's gain?

What was I besides an empty hollowed out vessel of a person who mattered less and less each day, the world taking chunks and pieces and bites out of me each and ever moment I survived.

The Lonely GirlWhere stories live. Discover now