To Be Loved (A Jasper Hale Romance)

First Day

“Steve, watch out!” I screamed. I was running as fast as I could, but even that wasn’t fast enough.

“Dominique, take care of yourself and always remember I love you.” Steve whispered. I watched all the hope drain from his eyes as the bullet came speeding towards him. I sped up if that was even possible and ran towards Steve’s body.

“Steve! Steve, please wake up! Don’t leave me!” I screamed. I couldn’t lose him; he was my brother, the only person that really knew me. As I reached his body, I flopped down onto the ground and cried into his chest. I looked into his now lifeless eyes and screamed my heart out. He was gone.

“Niki, time to wake up, you have school in an hour.” My mom said, “Oh honey, did you have another nightmare?” I was sweating through my night clothes and crying my eyes out into my pillow. I’ve had this ‘nightmare’ for the past three years every night. But the sad thing was, it wasn’t even a nightmare, it was a memory, but I couldn’t tell my mom that.

Three years ago, my little half brother and I were outside in his dad’s backyard. My mom and one of her boyfriends had a kid, Steve, and the boyfriend wanted to have full custody of him. Both of them agreed to let us visit each other during the summer. Steve knew I was a gargoyle and he was the only one who didn’t look at me different from it. He was only a year younger than me, but he always acted so much older. Said he needed to protect me from the big bad teenage guys. Well one night we decided to go out into the woods behind their backyard.

“Come on Niki, we won’t get hurt and dad won’t be able to see us so we won’t get into trouble either. It’ll be fun, I promise.” Steve looked at me with those big blue eyes. How could I say no?

“Alright little brother, but I get to say when we come back alright?” I said. Steve was a little too adventures. I loved him, but one day he was going to get himself killed if he wasn’t careful.

“Yes sir!” He joked. I laughed and followed him into the dark woods.

“Alright, I saw this path the other day that I wanted to follow so stick close Niki.” He said, and then he was off. He was extremely tall and took large steps. I was literally running just to keep up with him. I looked down for a second to see my shoe untied and yelled out for him to stop. I got down and started to tie my shoe when I heard a twig break behind me.

“You’re not going to scare me Steve.” I said. I heard a low laugh and realized that it wasn’t Steve that was behind me. I shot up just in time to hear a gunshot and watch it slowly go past my ear. I knew I had to do something before I was killed. So I ran. I ran towards the deeper part of the forest and ran as fast as I could.

“Niki, where are you?!” I heard Steve yell.

“Steve! I don’t know!” I ran towards his voice and stopped in a clearing that looked to be about the size of a large football field. Steve was on the opposite side of me. We both stared at each other for a long moment and then heard that snapping of twigs all around us.

“Well what do we have here? It looks like a little boy and his girlfriend, don’t you think?” A sick voice said from behind me. I turned around and started to back away from the voice.

“Looks like we’ll just have to kill them, won’t we John?” Another said from the right of me.

“Yeah, looks like we will.” I heard a gunshot before I saw the gun and ran as fast as I could towards Steve.

After Steve got shot, everyone around us left. I remember Steve’s dad’s face when he found me in the morning with bloodshot eyes, rocking myself back and forth next to Steve’s lifeless body. He never asked me what happened, probably because he was too scared to have me lose it. For a year after I was a shell. Never talked to anybody or cared about anything. I was just an empty body. My mom didn’t ask me what happened and for that I was grateful. I didn’t think I would be able to tell her that it was my fault Steve was dead. I was afraid she would hate me.

“Dominique, don’t let that nightmare get to you. It’s not real, and besides, you have bigger things to worry about. What are you going to wear to school?” My mom never really confronted her feelings about Steve. So whenever I had a ‘nightmare’, she would always switch the subject. I understood why she would, but sometimes I just wanted somebody to tell me that it wasn’t my fault and that I shouldn’t let it affect me like it does.

“Your right mom, I’m just going to go take a shower.” I stood up and ran into the bathroom. This was going to be a long day, I just knew it.

After I was done and dressed in my usual clothes that consisted of a long sleeved white shirt with a black vest top over it and black skinny jeans with my favorite black and white striped converse, I went downstairs. I put some blueberry pop tarts into the toaster and sat down at the kitchen table. My mom had left about ten minutes ago to go to work and left me directions to get to school. As I looked at the directions I got confused.

It was a good twenty minute drive from our house to the school, so that meant an even longer walk. I reread the note again and saw at the bottom that it said to go into the garage. I sighed and stood up; wondering what could be out there. I walked into our garage and saw a black Ducati Diavel. My mom had told me she was going to buy me one, but I didn’t know that it would be so soon. This was going to be sweet!

I ran back inside and grabbed my backpack that had a couple notebooks and some pens, and ran back into the garage. I hopped on the bike, the keys were already in the ignition, and started my drive to school. While I was driving down the back road, I spotted a silver Volvo driving along the same road about three hundred feet in front of me. I was going about twenty over the speed limit and the Volvo was doing the same. I followed the Volvo until it came to the turn I was supposed to make, and then sped up. I wanted to get to school fast, before there were a lot of people who saw me on my bike. My original thought of being inconspicuous was flown out the window with this bike.

As I sped into the parking lot I pulled into a spot near the back and turned the bike off. Everyone in the lot was staring at me. I still hadn’t pulled my helmet off. Right before I was going to pull my helmet off, the same Volvo that had been on that back road came speeding into the lot and pulled into a parking space a few down from me. I glanced at the car and saw five pairs of golden eyes staring at me. I knew that normal people wouldn’t be able to see through their heavily tinted windows, but I didn’t care. I looked back in front of me and pulled my helmet off, loving the way the wind cooled my head down. Everyone in the lot watched me as I stood up from my bike and walked slowly towards the building with “Office” on the front of it.

Oh yeah, this is going to be a good day.