broken strings. ➳ payne. [slow updates]

Chapter Seven. - Start All Over Again?

Third Person’s POV

After Liam discovered the location Aurora called home, he was ecstatic. He knew he could come back to it tomorrow and actually talk to Aurora, if she wanted it. Her shocked face was one he could not get out of his head, and prayed it was because she had missed him. Though he presumed it out of anger and disbelief.

He was also confused as to why she was with Austin. Austin was not a guy a girl like Aurora would associate with. Liam could only come to the conclusion that one of the changed and he hoped and prayed that it was Austin. Liam remembered how Aurora was when he was still around; sweet, innocent, caring. He also remembered how Austin was; badass, underachiever, tool.  Austin was someone Aurora tried to stay far away from. Austin had tried to get Aurora to go out with him a couple of times, but each time Liam was there to shelter her from the horny teenage boy.

Liam feared that the shelter he gave Aurora left with him, allowing her to become vulnerable to Austin’s sweet-talking. And when that thought instantly crossed his mind, he knew it happened. It was way easier for Aurora to “go bad” than for Austin to “turn good”. With that newfound conclusion in his head, Liam hoped that Aurora still held onto her innocent ways. He prayed that she just fell into the wrong crowd but did not follow in its footsteps.

Liam understood what he had to do, what he needed to do to get his best friend back. He was going to have to piece together all the broken parts, maybe finding some new ones along the way or take some from himself if needed, and put her back together. The task would not be easy; he was more than prepared for that. But it was the least he could do; knowing he was sole reason behind her undoing, and he would do whatever it took.

While Liam was thinking of the plan, with his trusty band mates by his side, Aurora was living a life no one even dared to think about. The event that happened in apartment 308 that night was just another memory to the poor girl. After the events occurred, and Austin was quietly snoring, Aurora was curled up on the couch; a cup of coffee that no longer had steam rising from it still clutched tightly in her hands. She stared blankly out the window, watching the lights of the building across the street slowly dwindle off.

She couldn’t stop thinking of Liam, the fact that he had actually found her. She tried so hard to stay away from him, never frequenting the places they use to, minus the one café that she couldn’t help but go back to. She never wanted to feel her heart ache the way it did when he left, leaving nothing behind but the dull town. But even with him showing up tonight, and the smile that adorned his face, she couldn’t get him out of her mind.

The smile he had did not change from the one she remembered, beaming and full of life. It made Aurora believe that maybe, just maybe, he actually did care about her and wanted to see her again. She knew it was a long shot, her imagination giving her false hope. But that false hope sparked something in her heart, something she had thought was no longer present.

As one thought connected with another, she soon found herself thinking about Austin. It drifted to the event of the evening, and the nights that she found similar to that one. She thought about that one night that ruined everything she had left. With the past memory fresh in her mind, tears started to well up in her eyes, causing the few lights in the building across the road turn into little gold, yellow, and white circles.

Aurora thought about her mother, and how much she missed her, wishing she would come back to that boring town to make the life Aurora had worth a little something again. She also missed that little boy, she knew he would have taught her so many things. Aurora missed a lot of things from her old life. Well, the old life she had just lost recently. But she also missed something she would never admit out loud; she missed the life she had with Liam.