𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 || 𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘭

𝟐𝟗: 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭-𝐛𝐮𝐥𝐛 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭

Walking out of the courthouse felt like turning away from the life she almost had. The perfect life that would've been possible if her dad wasn't always one step ahead.

She just kept replaying it in her head. The defeat etched into her mother's face as she uttered the words that would surely break Sophia.

"He changed the court date."

She wasn't just sad. Sad wasn't a word strong enough to describe how she felt. How could she label the feeling that came from possibly losing some of the only things that gave her life meaning with a wimpy three-letter word like 'sad'?

No. She was enraged. heartbroken. devastated. bitter. defeated. The tears that she constantly wiped from her eyes weren't sad. They were angry and hot, the closest she could come to letting out a scream. Her voice stopped working soon after she was pulled into Walker's arms.

She had checked out physically, eyes staring at nothing, movements not quit calculated. While her mind and heart were violent as stormy waves crashing against the ocean shore, she was perfectly still on the outside.

Now every little detail about the past few days felt so...temporary. How could she have experienced that contentment and joy from being away from her dad for a mere fortnight and expected it to last forever? Gullible. That's what she was. Just a gullible kid trapped inside her father's manipulative web, unable to claw herself free.

The car ride back was silent. Her hollow gaze bored into the back of the front seat, and she failed to notice the dozens of worried glances being thrown at her by Walker.

She let her feet carry her back inside the house, up the stairs and into Walker's room. Nobody stopped her, but a second pair of footsteps followed loosely behind, their pattern hesitant and unsure. She slid opened the window, stepping out onto the tree branch. As Sophia had done hundreds of times before, she curled her body into the nook of the trunk and pulled her knees to her chest. The wind that gently whipped her hair around her head found its way to her bones, leaving ice under her skin.

She didn't want to think or talk about anything. All she wanted to do was sit and watch as the breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees across the street, and to feel her face get progressively more numb as the cold bit at it. To experience something that wasn't the dull aching in her chest.

Even so, she was unable to stop the memory reel in her mind as it replayed moments from last summer and onwards.

Walker knocking the welcome muffins out of her hands the first time she laid eyes on him. Sending in her audition for Percy Jackson. Meeting Leah and Aryan at comic-con. The friendship bracelet Walker and Leena made her. Her and Walker's big fight. Her first and definitely last Halloween party. Walker saving her from Archer. Walker falling into the pool with her in his arms. Walker asking to kiss her on New Year's Eve. Walker, Walker, Walker.

His name was stuck in her head like a broken record, and she only escaped the endless loop when his voice came from the window she had stepped out of earlier.

"I don't think it's smart for you to be alone out here any longer." Walker's words floated in one ear and out the other, her gaze still not moving from the roughly paved road. The whole world seemed gray to her now.

He slid with ease down the branch and came to a stop next to her, a soft bundle clutched in his hand. "I brought you a sweatshirt." He offered her the thick jacket. "Your cheeks and nose look like they're about to get frostbite."

She gave the slightest shake of her head. "I'm not cold."

Her statement was met with a light sigh, and she felt the sweatshirt being set in her lap. Walker's hand still rested on it, giving it a soft pat.