Chasing Freedom (Book 2)

Chapter Thirty: Memories (Cole)

Chapter Thirty: Memories (COLE)

I found the library by sorting through Skylar's timid memories while she was sleeping the day before. We had stopped for a break from all the walking and manifested a few hammocks for us to sleep on.

I knew that her birthday was coming up and wanted to plan something that didn't totally suck, but didn't know what to do because I barely knew her at all.

So I pulled a complete dick move and went inside her head, which was so much harder to do while she was awake, but as soon as I figured out what the library looked like inside and out, I left.

I didn't snoop, although I did see the one person that tainted almost every memory of Derek's aunt's library and found it strange that the person wasn't Derek or his aunt.

The guy had dark black hair that sat messily on the top of his head in an I-spent-hours-making-my-hair-look-like-I-didn't-spend-anytime-on-it-at-all kind of way. His eyes were unnaturally blue and he seemed to be the polar opposite of how Skylar explained Derek, which led me to wonder who he was, and more importantly, if Derek liked him, although I couldn't seem them getting along very well.

There was something about the black haired boy that caught me off guard; something about the flippant, easy confidence that followed him everywhere he went, that made me freeze, and I lost my hold on Skylar's memories.

I wondered for a long time who he is, since I couldn't remember Skylar ever talking about him before, but then again, she probably did and I wasn't listening.

I don't tell her any of this or ask about him. I don't think she'd appreciate me telling her that I invaded the one place that no one else could get to without asking.

So instead, I casually take another drag of the cigarette hanging limply in my hand and try not to cough as the smoke fills my lungs, smirking widely and responding to her question, "magick princess."

She doesn't press it anymore, I think she was too shell-shocked for an interrogation, instead, she wipes the remainder of tears from her eyes, simultaneously forgetting the reason they were there to begin with and walks up the steps of the huge library with shaky legs.

She lightly pushes the door open once she gets to the top, peeking in cautiously and motions for me to follow her.

I do as she says, not because I necessarily wanted to, but because it was her birthday and she deserved at least something that reminded her of why she was here and why she should still keep fighting.

I had found a huge chunk of her past packed away tightly in the back corner of her mind, and brought it into the present, knowing that the only way to let something go wasn't to not think about it but to face it head on.

"Ta-da," I say quite lamely, once the big arched doors pull to a shut behind us.

Skylar shakes her head, a hint of a sad smile playing on her face, "I hate ta-da's."

I snort, "why doesn't that surprise me?"

"Because I'm so much more like you than you thought," she replies, her voice quiet, not knowing the huge amount of truth in her words.

She takes a few steps deeper into the room and although her face lights up in a way I've never seen before, I don't see anything particularly special about the place.

It was a library. It had thousands of shelves that held thousands of books, it had tables and chairs and a second floor with even more books and tables and chairs. It didn't look much different than the one hidden away in Katherine's old estate, or the small corner-store bookshop I'd walked by millions of times back when I lived in London.