Soulless

Thirty Five | My angel and my devil

Lunden Evergreen

There's a tapping noise outside. It's a drip from the recent rain that's past. But it's right outside our window. I could see it leaking from my bed and as I sit up and stair at it, I'm positive I'm going insane.

My stomach gurgles and I'm hungry. Atlas is passed outside beside me, he was a light sleeper but tonight he was knocked out. But I might have had a hand in giving him a reason or two to be so sleepy.

Slipping out from the bed my bare feet meet the cold the ground. I leave our room and quietly head down to the kitchen. I walk through the door way and flick on the lights. A rush fills my body as I'm startled at the sight of her.

Hope stood with a jar of peanut butter in hand scooping it out with a spoon just sitting here in silence.

"I was too lazy to slice up apples, you know?" Her body leaned against the counter and as she stared straight at me her eyes moved down.

My bump had begun to shown more now at sixteen weeks. I was no longer hiding it either and had informed Josie's parents the other day. I still was wrapping my head around it.

"I think my extra curricular's have to be ceased while being pregnant" The spoon is placed on the counter as she stares in shock. But moments later and stands and pulls me into a hug.

"Oh thank god, I thought you were dead or... worse!" I could hear the worry in her voice. I could understand why my absence could be scary, let alone after finding out my partner was hunting me.

"Nope, just pregnant and hiding. But apparently not so well, how'd you find me?" Her eyes moved to a frame on the windowsill. It pictured me and Verena out on the courtyard, the one good photo of us just being college students.

"I cited my sources and struck luck with one of them... everyone else said you were dead. You know your Mother isn't friendly when it comes to speaking about you?" There it was, that guilted feeling. My mother thought my body was discarded and six feet under, but it was safer this way. She'd move on eventually.

"She's grieving her dead daughter" Reminding Hope, she nods in understanding. She told me she didn't really have a relationship with her own mom growing up, but her husbands mother made up for it.

But I was taking my fake death hard as well, because I was about to be a mother. I wanted my mom's advice even if it wasn't great or just to even meet the child some day. She deserved that at least, yet here I was. Hiding.

"So Atlas didn't try and... kill you?" I glanced back to the open doorway and then to Hope.

"No... he wanted to take me away from it all and live a life just the two of us. Well now I guess it's three, well four actually" Pepper was snuggled into her father's arms right now, she'd been very attached to him since he returned. I couldn't blame her, I took her dad away.

I hear a soft sigh of relief fill her again and I'm drawn back into her arms as she holds me, "I was just so worried, I mean if anything happened to you I don't know what I would've done... Theo even asked," Her grump of a husband was reserved and I understood that. But it was nice of even him to notice.

"Angelo" My eyes peered to him as he stared at the two of us in the kitchen. This would look worse if we were more than friends, but alas she was more like my mother. He stood confused as Hope held me in her arms tight.