"Thank you," I whisper against Ben's chest. His arms still snake around my body and I realize how much I've missed him.
"For what?" He asks, breathing in the scent of my hair that I imagine smells like my shampoo.
"This," I say simply.
He pulls away and looks down at me with a smile. "I'll let you get back to your friends. Call me when you have some time and we'll get together, yeah?" He asks.
"Of course," I say with a nod and he walks to an exit.
Whatever just happened was nice, but weird. He seemed to be acting too nice and I can't tell if it's a good or bad thing. I shake myself from the thoughts and lightly jog back over to my group of friends. Luke is waiting for me with a smile plastered on his face, and he takes my hand in his once again when I reach him. I get the same rush that I always get when we make contact and I can't help but smile to myself as we begin walking.
I pull my large suitcase behind me as everyone else does the same. We go through the first set of doors that lead to another set that is down a long hallway. My friends all talk amongst themselves, happy to be on ground again. I look around at them and feel overjoyed at their happiness. It was a great feeling to have all of your friends together and smiling. I was so blessed.
When Michael pushes the doors open, we are all taken by surprise when too many lights blind us. I throw my hand over my eyes and try to shield them from the brightness as I attempt to see what is going on. When the shock wears down, I can hear the many voices and know exactly what is happening.
"Come on babe," Luke yells and pulls me with him through too many people to count. It didn't help that I could barely see anything from all of the flashing lights. I block out the screaming voices coming from people I can't even see. They yell for us to look their way as they continue to blind us, but I keep my eyes forward and my hand over my face.
"Who's the girl Luke?" Many of them ask. I'm sure they are asking Michael and Calum the same thing, but I try to ignore the question that we've been avoiding.
After what seems like 10 minutes of pushing our way through bodies, we finally reach the cars. We pile into one car and our drivers hurriedly pack our bags into the other car before speeding off.
"What the hell was that?" Linley asks when we all catch our breath and become aware of the situation.
"That was your first paparazzi encounter," our driver says from the front seat.
"That was awful!" Michael shouts from the back. We all nod our heads in agreement.
"Get used to it kid, that's just the beginning," the driver says again. I didn't recognize him. Usually we had the same driver that travelled with us wherever we went, but not this time.
As Luke's hand tightens around mine, I am hit with the sudden realization.
All of those cameras just got pictures of Luke and I together, better yet holding hands. It was going to be everywhere now, there is no more hiding us.
Worry takes over my body as I sigh and begin to shake slightly even though I wasn't cold at all. Why was I so scared? It's not like celebrities can't date people. But I wasn't ready for the amount of hate I was going to get. Even worse, I wasn't ready to sit back and watch as millions of girls hated on my perfect boy.
They will put him down for dating someone else besides them. They will bash him and call him names and blame him for stuff that will never even be true, and there's nothing that I will be able to do about it. I just hope it doesn't bother him too much, I won't be able to stand to see him upset. I don't want him to feel like he has let anyone down when in reality he brightens my whole world. I will spend the rest of my life proving that to him, no matter how hard this gets.
I lean over and plant a kiss on his cheek to let him know I'm here. He turns to me and smiles before resting his head on my shoulder.
"It's going to be okay," he whispers.
"I know," I whisper back.
Luckily the arrival at the hotel is a different story. The boys must not be at the point yet to where people search for what hotel they will be staying at. I was happy about this, not wanting to deal with pushing through more people while being blinded by too many flashing lights.
"I wonder how they found us," Ashton says as we step inside the lobby. "That's never happened before."
"Who knows. Maybe because One Direction was probably there too?" Calum suggests.
"Yeah but they got there a long time ago," Linley says and we all nod.
"I mean nobody else knew that we were coming I don't think..." Michael trails off.
We all shrug and check in at the front desk. After getting our keys, we travel up the elevator to the 8th floor where all of our rooms are.
"Wanna meet up and get dinner and stuff later?" Ashton asks us all before we enter our rooms.
We all nod in agreement and decide to meet up in an hour and a half, leaving us all plenty of time to get settled in and cleaned up. I definitely needed to shower. I don't know about anybody else, but all those people made me nervous enough to sweat profusely.
Luke and I step into our room and I fall onto the bed. He drops his bags on the ground and walks towards the bed before falling on it and hovering over me. He kisses my forehead and rests his head against mine.
"I love you, did you know that?" He asks.
"Did you know that I love you more?" I ask.
He can't help but smile and his blue eyes give me butterflies as they stare into me. He leans down and plants a kiss on my lips before getting up and pulling me with him.
"I'm glad we don't have a show tonight. I just wanna spend all evening with you," he says with a smile and twirls me around. "Let's go shower."
