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34. Rules

"What did I just do?"

I don't know. I had no idea how to answer her.

"How's Diane?" I spoke to try and distract her from her thoughts. I found myself squatting down to sit on the stair beside her.

"She just left a few minutes ago," Paige whispered, her eyes looking around the destroyed foyer.

"Let's go home," I placed my arm lightly on her shoulders and tried to scoot her closer to me.

"I'm going to go grab some things from my room," Paige shrugged her shoulders slightly so that my arm fell and I watched her walk up the few remaining stairs.

Never have I thought that I would be pulling Paige off of her father, to save him. I did not doubt for one moment that Paige wouldn't kill him if I had let her continue hitting him.

A banging against a door came from behind me and I quickly stood and jogged down the hall to her bedroom. The door was shut in front of me and I knocked harshly.

The knob turned under my hand as I pushed the door open and Paige was sat in the seat in her window with her back turned towards me.

When I sat down beside her, she instantly spun around and wrapped her arms around me. Her head was wedged between my neck and shoulder and I could feel the tears falling from her cheeks and onto my shirt.

"Shhh, you're okay," I methodically rubbed her back like she did to me once. My other hand ran along her head to pat her hair and I pulled her legs over mine.

With one arm under her knees and the other behind her back as she kept her arms around my neck, I stood from the mattress and walked slowly out of her bedroom.

Making it down the stairs proved to be harder than I anticipated but once I reached the bottom one, I loosened my grip on the railing and started towards the front door.

"Landon, can you put me down please?" Paige whispered into my ear and I quickly released her from my grip slowly.

"Thank you," she spoke again after her feet touched the ground.

I stared down at her tear stained cheeks and watery blue eyes, still convinced that she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen.

"Paige, you don't-"

"No, Landon. I mean it, thank you. I don't know how that would've ended if you weren't there," Paige interrupted me with a stern look on her face.

Paige's POV

I had never been in a physical fight like that before. Never. I had never felt myself lose control so easily.

"I do love nothing in the world so well as you- is not that strange?" Landon breathed out quietly.

He was quoting Shakespeare. How ironic.

"For which of my bad parts did thou first fall in love with me?" I replied, a smile growing slowly on my face.

"You have no bad parts, Paige Moore," Landon wrapped an arm around me and pulled me into him.

"That is so not true," I rolled my eyes and laughed. Did he not just see that I was fighting my father?

"Oh yes, it's true. You're great at everything," Landon spoke again and I watched him lower his face to mine, my eyes shut slowly as I felt his breath against my lips.

But his mouth never met mine, I felt an emptiness around me and I opened my eyes to find my father pinning Landon against the front door with his arm wedged under his chin.