November Dreams (M.C.)

Chapter Forty-Nine (Luke's POV)

       

I stormed through the hotel halls, away from them, that mess, and away from her as fast as my feet would allow in my rueful state. My finger jammed the elevator button frantically, hoping no one was following me, but as they began to close, she came into frame. Her face cried through the metal doors, begging to be let in after me, but all I could manage to do was look at her in the eyes, her beautiful blue eyes, and cry.

Her hands slammed against the closing doors as she screamed my name over and over again in pure desperation. Her screams became raspier and more strained as the crack between the doors grew smaller and smaller. It felt like I was watching this happen in slow motion; her face twisting as I averted her gaze.

"Luke! Luke please! I'm sorr—"

"NO!" I found myself screaming, my fists colliding with the elevator doors as the last sliver of her face disappeared completely and my body was carried slowly downward. I sank to my knees, fists banging against the doors between choked sobs, the tiny hellish walls seeming to close in further and further with each floor I descended.

As the elevator came to a dull and creaking stop and the doors rolled open to a silent, marble lobby. I climbed to my feet reluctantly and shuffled through the lobby with my hood tugged tightly over my head and my hands shoved into the far corners of my jacket pockets. I kept my head down and kept walking as far away from the hotel as I could get without getting hopelessly lost, occasionally checking over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't being followed.

My head was clouded, my feet and body felt numb; just as I felt as if I were about to collapse into nothingness, my body dragged me unconsciously into a small clearing in a tiny wooded area not too far from the hotel. In the middle sat a small slide and a set of two lonely swings. My feet carried my aching body to them; I sat slowly, the swing lurching slightly beneath me as my feet sat pressed into the ground.

I sat there for what felt like hours, barely moving, drowning in my melancholy as I asked myself the same thing over and over again: why?

Why her? Why him? Why did it have to be them, together? Why did I play with my heart? Why did I put it out there, so sure it was safe? Why did I dangle my self-respect on a string, only to have it cut by a rusted pair of scissors, clutched by the hand of my beloved? Why did I have to fall for her, so easily it was like falling asleep? Why did she have to break me?

Why?

My head hung in my hands as I fought back the river of tears that was ever-building, but in vain. My body shook increasingly more so, my hands slippery against my eyes as tears pooled inside of them. I tried to keep my volume at a nonexistent level, but to no avail. My head snapped up violently when the distinct sound of crunching leaves rang through my desperate lack of silence.

"Whoever's there, go away!" I managed to shout through my sobs.

"Michael, Czara, that better not be you!"

Her hand raised in the moonlight, signaling her intentions of peace.

"Its just me, Luke," November's familiar voice was the calm to my storm right now.

She eased into the swing next to me, her tiny hands snaking around the chains suspended on either side of her. She glanced over at me and flashed me a weak smile before looking down at the earth beneath her feet. She was trying to hide it, that much was plain to see; in the moonlight, her eyes were dulled from blue to gray and bags had settled underneath them. Her cheeks were flushed with a red tint, and her lips here a muted purple tone. She was just as broken as I was, but even more so. I had been hurt once by the once I loved; still loved, hopelessly. But she, she had been tragically let down not once, but twice by the same man who had claimed to love her. My so- called best friend. Her so-called best friend.

We had been betrayed collectively, me and her. And now, she was my only solace in this tired moonlight.

We teetered in silence, saying everything and saying nothing all at once. I was glad I wasn't alone in that moment, under those stars that we had each explored with them, before all this. Now, the stars felt sour, spoiled; as if the pure thought of them had tainted these dainty orbs plucked from the heavens by God himself. I would never feel the same when I gazed up at the night sky; something in me would always feel hollow, empty, begging to be filled but doomed to never be.

I was a shell now, and so was she. And as we dangled there in the black and grey of night, I realized we were all each other really had now. Cal and Ash would never understand. Czara and Michael would never be pardoned.

It was just us, alone in the night.

But we were alone together.