After the whole fight happened with Luke, Percy came back with the lightning bolt and Annabeth and his mom walked over to him. "We have to get to Olympus, come on." Percy said before they all ran towards the elevator.
"Are you not coming?" Annabeth asked.
"No, I'd rather just stay here. Now hurry up, you've got to go." I replied, knowing fine well that I wasn't going to stay here. I had to find Luke to make sure that he was okay, even if he had just tried to cause a war with the Gods.
Without a second thought, they all ran towards the elevator and headed up towards Olympus. I, however, waited for the next elevator and headed down towards the old, worn down, car that Luke and I had used to get around the country for the past few days. I had forgotten about the fact that the car was locked and when the door didn't open, I sat down, leaning against the car, and cried. I cried out of frustration, I cried because of the pain that was in my leg, but most of all, I cried because I felt like I had been used. I knew that it wasn't my fault, but I still felt stupid for not figuring it out sooner.
Hours had passed and I was still sat next to the car. I couldn't stop beating myself up over what had happened. Percy, Annabeth, and Percy's mom were all probably either back at home, or on their way back to camp (I was hoping so anyways) and I was sat in the middle of a parking lot by myself. It was pretty cold but all of my stuff was inside the car and I wasn't going to put myself in more pain by trying to get to my bag. I just wrapped my jacket tighter around my body and began to try to pick the lock once again.
"Need any help." A lump in my throat immediately appeared as soon as I heard that voice.
"I'm fine Luke, now leave me alone." I replied, not bothering to turn around and look at him. I just continued to try to pick the lock.
"Now, I think we both know that isn't true." He replied, making me roll my eyes as I tried to stop myself from crying once again - I had cried too much for one night.
"Really? I wonder why that is." Sarcasm was clear in my voice. "What do you want, Luke?" I added without any tone in my voice. My face lit up slightly as I realised that I had successfully picked the lock and I opened the door. I climbed into the car and sat down in the passenger seat.
"I wanted to apologise - for everything."
"Luke I don't think-"
"I'm going to apologise anyways." He interrupted. "I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about what was happening. I wanted to tell you, but I love you and I didn't want what was happening to make you want to leave. I didn't want to hurt you, I just wanted to be with you and if I could do this over again, I would have told you about it and let you decide whether you wanted to stay with me or go back to camp. I'm sorry Taylor." Luke said, his voice filled with sincerity.
"Luke... you tried to start a war with the Gods and you think that apologising will make everything okay?"
"I was afraid that you would say that. But after a few months, you can come with me. You can leave camp again and just stay with me. No more lies." He replied. "But for now, I can get you back to camp. I don't want you to stay out here in the middle of New York by yourself." By this time, Luke was sat next to me in the car. He pulled his bag onto his knee and pulled out about 20 drachma. "This should be enough." He mumbled before handing it to me.
"Are you sure? Will you not need this?" I asked as he put the drachma into my hand.
He shook his head. "No, you keep it. You won't even have to pay me back."
I smiled slightly at him and mumbled a thank you. "Again, I'm sorry, Taylor. I love you." Luke replied before kissing me on the cheek. He got out of the car and began to walk away to wherever he was wanting to go after this.
"Wait." I got out of the car and made my way over to Luke, still limping slightly. He turned to look at me and seconds later, I was kissing him. It was probably a stupid thing to do considering what had happened hours before - but it was something that I had been waiting to do since our last kiss. It took a few seconds for him to comprehend what was happening, but then he started to kiss me back. I smiled slightly as his hands made their way down to my hips and my fingers wrapped themselves around his damp hair (it wasn't fully dry from when he was thrown into the river).
The kiss didn't last very long, but it lasted long enough. We pulled away and we both smiled at each other. "Be safe, okay?"
"Okay." Luke replied before giving me another quick kiss. He then called the Fates taxi. I got into the unfamiliar car, told them that I was going to Camp Half Blood and without another word, I was gone.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I will be trying to write a sequel for this, but I don't know when that will be because I am currently doing my A-levels. I will try to update as much as possible though - I know that I'm bad at updating so it will probably have slow updates and I'm sorry about that. But yeah, thank you to everyone that's been reading this, I love you all :P
