Undercover

15. This Hurts More

About a month later, I woke up and decided to wear the dress I had worn for the day of the wedding. I was not getting married by any means, but I wanted to wear it again. I only had a little bit of time before school would start. I wasn't a certified teacher yet, but I was getting close. This might have been the only chance I could get to myself before all of the five year olds were let loose.

"Where are you going?" Cayden asked me when he saw me grab my bag and a light cardigan.

"I think I'm going to go to the store to buy a few things." I said to him.

"Do you want me to take you?"

"No, you're good. Thank you. I can do this on my own."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm positive, Cay. Just going downtown to buy a few things. It won't take long."

"Okay. Well, just make sure that you have your phone with you and call me in case anything happens. Do you understand me?"

"Yes. I do. Don't worry."

I grabbed the keys of the car that Ingrid had left on the counter and made my way to the car. Ever since I had woken up, I had this funny feeling in my stomach. I know what you're thinking. And no, I didn't need to go use the bathroom. I couldn't shake it and it was starting to freak me out a little bit.

As I started making my way downtown, I made sure that I was being careful. I mean, at least as careful as I could be. Because nowadays the only way that you could stay alive when driving is if you assumed that everyone on the road was completely stupid and that it was their first time ever driving a car. So when I saw someone that was speeding up trying to beat me, I would just slow down. I didn't understand how some people would give zero shits about the lives of other people. They had lives too. They had families, friends. Everyone had someone to go home to.

My stomach started growling at this point and it had hit me that I had forgotten to eat breakfast. Sometimes, I would save time by skipping breakfast. It was happening more often than not now, and I needed to change that. Cayden always got on my case whenever he realized that I hadn't eaten anything until dinner. He'd go on and on about how I was engaging in self-destructive behavior and if I didn't stop on my own, he would make me stop. I'm not exactly sure what he meant by that but I felt that sometimes he was trying too hard to protect me. I told him that it was a thing that would happen sometimes but that it wasn't a regular thing. I get that he worried about me but sometimes it felt like they wanted to protect me from the world. For them to not be worried about me, I would basically have to be inside a bubble. But that wasn't how life worked. We each had to live our own lives and even though I loved my siblings to death, sometimes it felt like they were suffocating me.

So what I did, since it was still early and there was plenty of light out, was that I stopped at a breakfast place. It was Denny's. I got the normal thing that I usually get. I forget the name but I know that it comes with waffles, scrambled eggs and sausage links. It was my regular meal and might as well get it now since I had the chance to. While I waited for my meal, I looked around the restaurant. In many of the tables, there was more than one person seated. It was either a man and a woman or two women or two men. It made me a little bit jealous, since I was here all alone but I kind of preferred it this way. At least I didn't have someone that could stare at me while I was stuffing my face with food. There were literally pros and cons to every scenario that you could think of, including the ones that were happening in real life at this very moment.

I looked outside and at the exact moment that I had, two police officers went by the window. I didn't think that they had come in, though since I would have seen them eventually. There had been many tables that were still open around me, so they were bound to find a place regardless of where the table was. I had a good view of all of the tables that were open, so there was a high chance that I would see them eventually.