Roses

Chapter 9

Zoey

Adam's words from behind me make me stop in my tracks. Did he just offer to give me a ride home?

Throughout dinner, I tried my very best to avoid him and I think I succeeded too. I needed my body language to scream I was only here to find out more about my parents.

But now as he waits for my response, I can't bring myself to school my body's reaction to him. If he listened hard enough, he could probably hear my heart beat!

I turn around to face him and simply raise a brow. That's about all the response I can manage now.

"Come on, I'll drive you home," Adam speaks like he's talking to a child and walks past me to his car. His father seems to search my face for my reaction but I simply offer him a polite smile. He smiles back a moment later.

"It was nice of you to come by, Zoey." His eyes shine with something I don't quite understand. To be honest, he's had this look the entire dinner and it makes me believe he must have been really close to my parents. "I hope we can do this again."

"Me too. Take care, Abraham." I finally turn around and walk towards the elegant car with a certain someone leaning against it, waiting for me.

                                                                                              ***

We don't really speak as Adam drives me home. He asked me how I liked the dinner but I gave him a clipped response. I am not intentionally trying to be rude, neither was I earlier during dinner. It's just that the Thorns have me feeling all kinds of things!

The couple times I'd run into Adam during my childhood, he had given me the chills. When I told one of my foster sisters about it, she told me not to take it to heart since he was grumpy with everyone. But I just couldn't bring myself to believe her. He hadn't been grumpy with me. It had been more than that. It didn't matter, till I came back to Roses.

That first night, after realizing it had been him giving me a lift, I had been ready to avoid him no matter what. But then he actually made an effort to be half decent to me. I was almost done with my animosity towards him, when his father came into the picture.

And Abraham is a whole other story. He seems to be fixated upon me, probably because of his bond with my parents, which I'm slowly realizing may have been strong.

Call it my familiarity with living a quiet life without getting much attention from people around me or something else I was born with, anti-social personality perhaps, but getting all this attention is doing things to my brain.

In any other case, I would have done what I specialize in doing--running away. I wouldn't have run away from Roses, considering I just came here, but I definitely would have ran in the other direction everytime I saw a member of the Thorns household around. But I can't do it this time. Because Abraham may be the only one capable of bringing peace to that part of my brain which never moved on from the tragedy that broke my family and essentially orphaned me.

And Adam..... is someone I don't think I can run away from, even if I tried. And try, I did. I did my best to ignore him tonight and maybe he bought that. If only he knew what was happening inside my head the entire time...

The stupid thing couldn't stop thinking about how his arm rested mere inches away from mine on the table.

"So what are you going to do now that you're here?" The same man with the gorgeous arms asks me, pulling me out of my thoughts.

"I think I'm going to look for a job," I mutter. "A day job." He raises an eyebrow at that so I feel compelled to add, "I still want to be an author."

"Hmm." His tone is not judgemental as I expected. And it does something to my heart.