Hate You - LN

24 - Devin

"You did what!" She yells and I slam my hand over Kika's mouth.

"What's going on?" Charles perks up from his seat on the small private plane. Kika swapped seats with Pierre for the flight back to Monaco so we could catch up. It still meant that Charles and Pierre were only a few steps ahead of us and well within earshot.

"Nothing!" I yell back at Charles he shoots me a confused look and Kika snickers beside me. I glare at her. Thankfully, Charles puts his headphones back in and goes back to looking at his phone.

"I can't believe you slept with him!" Kika thankfully lowers her voice to a whisper but somehow she's still yelling at me. She'd flown into Japan to surprise Pierre last night, even if it was just the extra time that flight back to Monaco took, it was time they could both spend together in their busy lives. Or at least that's how Kika had justified it.

I groan and lean back in my seat. "A moment of weakness I promise."

"Uh huh, sure. You're still in love with him." She teases. My eyes are on Charles, making sure that he isn't watching or suspiciously listening in on our conversation.

I rub my face. "Even if I am it doesn't matter anymore."

"What? Why not? If you still love him there's a chance things might work out between you two." Kika looks genuinely confused at my answer and I pause for a moment, not knowing how to answer. How do you tell someone nothing matters anymore? Something must have changed in my face and Kika catches it because she reaches out and grabs my hand. "What's going on Devin? You've been off since Australia."

Selfishly I'd wanted one night with Lando before my dad found me. I wanted to have him like I'd had him before. But he wasn't the same. He'd impossible more now. He means more, he makes me ache for him more than before, he makes me feel things I thought I'd forgotten how to feel. And yet.

He hates me because I left him. I'm sure he'll hate me all the same, no matter if we'd slept together or not.

But I'd had him to myself for at least one night. And that would have to be enough because no matter how much I wanted time with him to work things out, to try and make him not hate me, and make him at least forgive me. I don't have time.

My life has a ticking clock edging closer to the batteries being ripped out of it. And I have no idea when and where it will happen that the clock stops ticking, but it will.

We all spend our lives running towards our graves. Some run fast, others slow. But I started dancing around that hole in the ground the moment I called Charles from the bath of my own blood. As I lay on the floor of my childhood home, broken and bleeding. I should have died. Death sat next to me that day. And I ran from it. Like I always do.

I've spent four years mourning myself, feeling ever so slowly as if I could step away from my headstone, and feel like the earth wasn't going to swallow me whole. I'd felt safer, as if for all the times I circled my grave I could break the loop and walk away. live despite what my dad wants so honestly.

I now realize that I'm stumbling, and the hole is already dug. I'm tripping over my feet and dancing to a tune that's stopped playing. No matter if I have the energy to keep running or not. Death is chasing me, and my father is giving it a lift.

"Nothing, everything's fine Kika. Have you told Pierre yet?" I ask to change the topic. Thankfully, she doesn't push and instead, it's like all her hidden nervousness about telling Pierre she's pregnant comes back.

"No, I haven't. I don't know how. It's like every time I get the courage up to tell him something in my head goes, 'No Kika'. I hate it."

I force a laugh and try to make it genuine. "You're overthinking this Ki, just tell him. It doesn't matter how you do it, he's going to be happy no matter what."