Running To Him - Forbidden Hearts Series Book 6

5| Different Lives Different Stories

"Would you like some more coffee or dessert?"

After briefly looking down at my now empty plate and coffee cup, I glanced up to the manager of La Rose De Baguette. "I'll have some more coffee, please. Thanks."

"Right away, mademoiselle."

Once he was gone, I leaned back in my chair and watched the people that were walking by on the street.

So many people. All of them living different lives with different stories. It was funny, actually. You never realized how much you didn't know about someone until you were going through something similar to what I was going through.

People would smile and wave as they passed me, but they had no idea that I recently lost my mom and ran away because I couldn't accept or deal with it. No idea at all. So I just smiled and waved back. I wondered if some of those people were going through something like what I was. Have they lost a loved one recently and were just putting up a facade? A mask to the world saying that everything was okay?

But when you were alone, the mask was off. And everything was definitely not okay. Alone is when my grief hit me the hardest. Sometimes it crippled me.

Whenever that happened, I would try to force myself to think of something else. I would try to push my conscientiousness to a place where there was no grief. No pain that lacerated my heart.

The only problem was, whatever I managed to get to that place I tended to not get out of the bed for days. Food and water went ignored. The days blurred by and I never knew one from the other. What usually pulled me out of it was Danielle calling me or coming by my place and dragging me out of my bed and feeding me.

I just couldn't keep doing that anymore. I couldn't stay in that apartment anymore. What I needed was to get away, to go somewhere where I could deal with this on my own terms.

Picking Paris as my runaway destination probably wasn't the smartest idea, though. This beautiful city was a place that my mom had always wanted to come to. As soon as I stepped off that plane, it was almost like I felt her walking beside me. I was a second away from going to the customer service desk and asking for a new plane ticket somewhere else. But I ended up not doing that. Good reasons or not, I chose this place.

When something to the right caught my eye, I turned to get a better look. There was a young man walking up to people in the cafe handing out flyers for something. Curious, I took one when he got to my table.

"Thanks," I said to him before looking to see what it was.

The flyer was for an art show three weeks from now. I wasn't too familiar with the area, but it didn't seem like it was too far from here. Probably within walking distance from my hotel.

The flyer made me think of Ollie. For a second, I wondered where he moved when he left the country. He never said and I never asked.

Thinking about him now reminded me of the last time I heard his voice. Completely overwhelmed by everything that was going on that night, I reached out to him like a lifeline. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted or needed from him, but I was just hoping for something.

Hearing another girl's voice was definitely not what I was hoping to hear that night.

I was so surprised and put off by it-and my reaction-that I didn't give Ollie time to explain. Instead, I shut my phone off and haven't spoken to him since.

A small part of me was curious where he was and what he was doing. Another part of me was still trying to figure out why I reacted the way I did and why he had such an effect on me.