Take Me Away | ✔️

24. FADES

I HAVEN'T HAVE ANY TIME TO SLEEP but with Travis here, beside me, with his arms around me and legs entangled with mine, it helped keeping the nightmares away. I just wish I could say the same when I'm conscious and living in reality. Truth is, I'm still so afraid of just letting him even when I had already told him the story about Max when I told no one else.

          When I was already awake, my eyes were still closed, the heaviness of them just overpowering me but I was still aware of my surroundings, including the fact that I could feel Travis' staring at me. I couldn't help but force out a little smile. "How long have you been awake?"

          "About an hour before you did," he answered, fingers on my hair trailing down my arms. "I just can't believe that you're here. In bed. With me."

          My eyes fluttered open so I could get a good look at him. It's just like the first time we slept together. Only this time, I found him more handsome than he was, and I found myself filling the void in myself that missed him terribly. "We slept together once."

          He nodded, chuckling. "If you're saying that time that I was sick, it wasn't the first time we slept together."

          "What do you mean?" My brows furrowed, scouring my mind to remember those memories I had with him. Then, my mouth opened into an 'O' shape. "Oh, you were drunk and when I woke up you were gone. I never even got to ask why you got drunk in the first place because I seem to remember that you got sick after that."

          "Yeah, being drunk gets me sick," he shook his head a little bit, that small smile on his face turning to a grin. "I got drunk because I was starting to like you when I shouldn't and you still hated me and wanted to scratch my eyes out that time. And after we fought, Elizabeth called me that night and told me that mom and dad wouldn't be able to go to my graduation. It's funny because they made Elizabeth told me, hoping that the blow would be less if they were the ones who talked to me."

          The thought of the people you love not coming to your own graduation was something I could relate to. Mom was no longer here, so she had no longer the opportunity of seeing me walk up the stage and wave to her, which same goes for Sean but I knew that he had dad. He always did. So, seeing Travis' perspective on his parents using his sister to tell him that they weren't coming was disappointing.

          I mean, the least they could've done was talked to Travis themselves.

          Suddenly, I found myself caressing his cheeks. "You never talked about them. You somehow just mention Elizabeth a few times and Mrs. Aries is there but you never really told me a thing about them."

          "That's because my family is what you call 'dysfunctional' and that's something I don't really tell a lot of people," he stated, shaking his head lightly. "Since I was a kid, I always had Mrs. Aries and Elizabeth there to be with me as I was growing up. You could say that they practically raised me while my parents provided the money for me to afford the things that I could want. When I would be in kindergarten and it was time to bring your parents to school, Mrs. Aries would sit in for them because my parents are always so busy running an empire. They miss most of my birthdays, thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and so on.

          "But once a while when they do come home and stay for a week or two, they make sure to criticize everything that I've done. Especially when I started gaining the reputation of a heartbreaker. I remember mom calling me about it and saying that I was such a disappointment to the family and that I should look to Elizabeth as my example. Don't get me wrong, I love my sister and she always protects me and I do that too but sometimes, it gets so overwhelming when your parents prefer one sibling over the other. You get me?"