"You drew stars around my scars, but now I'm bleeding..."
Gaia Ashmore has lived under the radar of her strict mother all her life. Every aspect of her life - from her fashion sense to her career - is controlled by her mother. And even when Gaia mov...
"Choking on the circumstance. Self-sabotage is a sweet romance seems like all I'm worth is what I'm able to withstand, sooner I can realise that pain is just a middleman." — Choker, Twenty One Pilots
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The Calendulas in my hand were displayed so beautifully in a small bouquet as I tried not to destroy the flowers like I did with everything else in my life.
What Gaia said yesterday made me realise how stupid I'd been about everything in life.
She might not have been there when I was seven years old, but if I stretched her words back in time, they would remain as true as they were today. I wasn't a good guy, no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise I wasn't. She was right; I hurt a lot of people, and my newest victim had been her. I didn't know what to say to her when she showed me her hands, brought both her palms together and tried to rub one off another as if the feeling of disdain could be erased. The image burned bright in the back of my mind. The revolting memory of her helping me, talking to me and smiling at me like I didn't just possibly murder someone in an alleyway.
I read somewhere that Calendulas symbolised comfort and recovery; with its bright, orange petals, the flower was known for its healing properties, and often used in several herbal medicines. So, of course, I'd bought a bouquet of them to take with me to the hospital.
When I was sitting at the coffee shop with Jane yesterday, she'd gotten a phone call and had said the name of the hospital out loud. I didn't think much of it until I met Gaia and understood that the Russian - Dimitri - was admitted there. I'd spent the entire night trying to find something else to direct my attention to, but when Satcher and I had planned the scheme (him, mainly), it wasn't supposed to end like this.
It wasn't supposed to land one of them in a hospital bed, in a coma, no less.
So, I messaged Satcher at the early hours of dawn, letting him know that I needed to speak to him urgently. He called me right after my message, complaining about getting interrupted in the middle of a code that was sure to work before asking me what was so important. And there I was, sitting on my bed in my room, with clouds obscuring the sunrise outside my window as I said everything to him. Everything.
While I was the restless one, getting irritated at how our plan turned against us, he assured me that no one other than we knew. Well, me, Satcher and Gaia. She wasn't supposed to know, but of course, I just had to play the honest guy and tell her about the jacket and forget my duffle bag at her place the next morning. Classic.
Regardless, Satcher went through everything with me again, trying to remember if we accidentally left something behind that might lead anyone to us. Lucas was already on it, though I doubt he had anything to start with. I told Satcher about Jane and when I mentioned the hospital, he suggested I visit just to see for myself, pretend to be Dimitri's friend so I could get some information about how he was doing.
