She's Mine to Protect(Lucas Baker Fanfic)(A Baker's Flower Series #1)

The Beginning

    Lucas sat at the kitchen table in his parents' house, with them beside him, with a notepad in front of him and a red pen in his hand. Each of them had a mug of coffee in front of them and Jack was reading the newspaper from the day before. The pen in Lucas' hand was being drummed on the paper out of frustration and hopelessness for the task at hand; for a moment, Jack and Marguerite exchanged looks of worry for their son's attitude and were wracking their brains for ideas to help him, Marguerite more than Jack. Finally not being able to continue any longer, Lucas threw his hands up in the air, flinging the pen across the room in the process.

    "How am I supposed to plan a surprise party for Chrys?!" He yelled to no one in particular.

    "Honey, relax, it'll be fine; she'll enjoy whatever you put together." His mother encouraged with a nod of agreement from Jack, without looking up from the paper. Lucas got up from the wooden chair, walked over to the wall beside the window and proceeded to bang his head against it.

    "I. Can't. Do. It." He spoke with each word in between a hit, both his speech and banging getting louder as he continued.

    "Lucas stop that! You're beating yourself up for nothing." Marguerite scolded.

    "I just want this party to be perfect, it needs to be perfect." He moaned as he returned to his chair, "it's the least I can do for her. She deserves only the best from me."

    "I think you may be putting too much weight and thought into this." Jack commented, finally putting down the newspaper and glancing over at his son. "Chrys won't care what you do; she isn't even expecting a party for Christ's sake!" 

    "Which is exactly why it needs to be perfect!" His son argued back.

    "Your present should be enough." Marguerite interjected. Lucas' hand automatically shot to the pocket of his hoodie to check that the small box was still there. The past week he had nightmares every night of losing it and having to face both the wrath of his mother and also Chrys. Eventually he decided to keep it on him at all times to avoid the risk of it getting misplaced or his girlfriend finding it before the party.

    "What if she doesn't want it?" Lucas whispered under his breath. While Marguerite was breathing in a breath of sadness, Jack slammed his hand down on the table.

    "Dammit Lucas, she's gonna want it! How many times do I have to tell you that? You're over-thinking this and, to be honest, it's getting to be annoying."

    "That's easy for you to say, you've already done all this! Y'all just don't understand!" He screamed at his parents before grabbing his notepad and leaving the kitchen, slamming the door behind him.

    "What are we gonna do with him?" Marguerite pondered out loud for what was probably the hundredth time in her adult life.

    "He'll be her problem soon enough." Jack answered before taking a sip of his coffee and returning to reading his paper.

A few days later

    After putting a blindfold on her eyes, Lucas guided Chrys through the barn and to his updated party room, which in reality was multiple rooms that he just labelled as one. Bringing her to the puzzle room was not only Lucas' special way of giving her her present, it was also a distraction from the arrival of guests, like her parents and friends from home, that would be coming for the surprise birthday party. Of course, he had modified the room to eliminate anything that could harm her, unlike previous victims of the room. Where there had once been a clown animatronic sitting at the entrance, there now was only the table he used to sit at with a piece of paper with a clue written on it. Most of the other sections of the party room remained the same, some with slight modifications: a room full of balloons, which one contained a code for a lock; the kitchen with a stove that took an extreme amount of patience to light; and finally the last room with a cake that would explode, although with a different and less dangerous outcome as before, when a lit candle was placed in it and a sprinkler to put out the flame on the candle whenever you entered the room. Once on the other side of the door, Lucas untied the blindfold and pulled it off her eyes.