Love story

48

I put the phone down. My whole body numb. Melissa's words running round and round in my head.

"She's dead."

I felt as though my legs couldn't support the weight of my body and I sat down on a wooden chair by the kitchen table. I pulled a pen from my handbag and scribbled a note on a piece of paper.

"Gone to Rosewood. It's my mum."

I left it on the table and got into my car. The whole journey there I felt guilty, knowing I shouldn't have left without saying goodbye to Toby, or even poppy who was still at school when I had left.

A couple of hours later I was stood outside my old house, memories swirling around my mind. Good, bad and ugly... and my mum was there through all of it.

And suddenly, she wasn't there at all.

I took a deep breath before opening the door, Melissa, Wren and my dad were dat around the coffee table in silence. Melissa looked up when I came in and it seemed to bring fresh tears to her eyes, wren put his arm around her and nodded at me.
"Hi spencer." He said, pouring me a glass of red wine.

We talked, and drank, for a while in that room until I couldn't take any more. So I just got up and left. I was drunk, it was close to midnight and I grabbed my car keys, got up, and left.

I didn't even realise where I was going until I pulled up in the parking lot, got out of the car and slammed the door. I rested my back against the cool steel of the door. My breath lingered in the cold air in front of me.

"Why'd you come here?" Suddenly a voice brought me crashing back to reality. I looked up, coming out from behind another car was Toby, the blond streaks in his hair illuminated by the street lights above. I simply shrugged in reply, unable to meet his eyes.
"I haven't been here since the day we had our first kiss," he said, I could hear the nostalgia in his voice as he glanced to his right at room '214' where we had spent that night many years ago.

"You regret it don't you?" The words burst out of my, he looked at me quizzically. "You regret meeting me and kissing me and falling for me. I would if I was you. I'm drunk and pregnant and I just drove across rosewood, our baby could have been killed!" I only realised that it was true when I had said the words and my eyes pooled with tears making my vision blurry.

"I was cross with you Spencer. I thought you'd left me... and poppy! I was absolutely furious and so confused." He took a step closer to me, I could see the flecks of gold dancing in his cornflour blue eyes.

"But despite all of that, I don't for one second regret falling in love with you. You're mum died today, Spence you're allowed to grieve." He lifted my chin with his index finger until I was looking into his eyes.

"I didn't fall in love with you Spencer. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing every step along the way. I believe in fate and in destiny, by I also believe that we are only fated to do the things we'd choose anyway. And I choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you, and I'd choose you."

"Now let's go home," he whispered, after pressing a soft kiss against my forehead, I nodded and returned to the warmth of my car. We pulled out of the parking lot where Toby and I shared our first kiss and drove, outside the car the wind lashed against the trees and rain poured over the earth.

But in my heart, I'd never felt more warm, or safe.