And With A Twist Of Fate...

Chapter 7

Aiden's POV

They'd been at the bowling alley for a while. Stella mostly did her homework but occasionally bowled. When she did it was utterly terrible. Normally Aiden would laugh if she hadn't put him in such a foul mood. Now he had to sit there with her and watch that damn sleeve move up and down revealing a bandaged wound. One he could have prevented at that.

Stella glanced up, and their eyes met. She'd caught him staring again. He watched as her face heat with anger and her eyes cut into slits. She was very upset with him. She'd told him he was being a big baby and that she'd said she'd apologized.

He didn't really care.

He was angry with her too. Very angry, and he wasn't afraid to let her know it. He HAD been letting her know almost every time she'd glanced his way. But that didn't seem to be doing him much good. He was also kind of hurt.

Hurt because he now knew he wasn't good enough to keep her from hurting. And hurt because she knew he wasn't. She would have never brought that blade to her wrist if in her mind she thought 'oh i can just talk to Aiden about this'

None of this would have ever happened if Aiden would have stopped being such a dick earlier and confessed to her, and himself for that matter, of his feelings. None of it.

Whatever, the past was the past and now he was starting to get distracted by Stella's quivering bottom lip. It'd been trembling for the last hour. Aiden had first noticed it after he hit a 3 strikes in a row and Keith had run u to celebrate. They'd high fived in their special way since grade school and then they'd laughed hysterically.

When Aiden had finally stood up straight after being doubled over he'd looked straight into a smiling Stella's eyes. He couldn't help the sour look that came to his face. It had sprouted there before he could stop it and he had to turn away quickly after seeing the smile fall immediately from her face and her lip tremble a bit.

He'd been glaring at her like that the whole night, but from that point on whenever he did, she had to find it in herself to stay composed. He watched as her bottom lip would move in response to her feelings being hurt and how she would closed her eyes and breath gently until it settled.

It was wonderful and terrible to know he'd caused that.

But now she'd been breathing for a minute and nothing was happening. It was actually beginning to move more and she was trembling slighting. Tremoring if you will.

Taking a deep breath of his own he pushed his anger out his mind and lowered himself in the seat next to her. She didn't seem to notice him next to her, she was too focused on breathing.

Carefully he lowered his hand to her back and started to rub circles. She flinched at first and didn't take a breath for a good 10 seconds. But then the exhaled loudly and sniffled. there was a small hitch.

She opened her eyes and looked at Aiden. Stared really. He just kept his eyes forward and continued to rub circles into her back. He felt her lean into him a bit but she was still staring. Looking so hard, like he had words written across his face.

He slowly turned his head and brought his eyes to meet hers. he almost instantly regretted when he did cause as soon as she saw his eyes she was gone. She basically sprinted from the table. Faster than he'd ever seen her move before. he was taken so off guard, he was hadn't even been fast enough to catch her arm.

Or maybe he'd been afraid he'd hurt it.

"You can't kiss the girl and then stare her down all night." Keith signed exasperated.

Aiden glanced over his shoulder, lots of important questions running through his head but this one being the one that surfaces, "How did you know I kissed her."