Beautifully Broken

Chapter 9

School gets out after a LONG day. I walk outside and text Holden. "Where's your house?"

"Don't go to my house just yet. Just come to your dad's bakery and meet me there." he says. I'm wondering why he would be there but I just go with it. My dad's bakery is about 4 blocks from school so I just walk. I get there in about 15 minutes and I see Holden talking to Dad. He turns around and looks at me. He looks much more cleaned up since this morning. "Hey Aub." he says hugging me. I hug him back.

"What are we doing here?" I ask

"I just came to talk to your dad for a few minutes." he tells me. My dad looks happier than he did about seeing Holden last night, so he must have told him something, or asked him something, to change his mind.

"Alright." I say. My dad's bakery gets pretty busy so I exit out the front door with Holden. I take him around back and go into the kitchen, which is empty at the moment. "Are you hungry?" I ask

He nods. I go through the kitchen and found some fresh cupcakes my dad made. I pull them out of the pan, which happens to be by a bag of flour. I put icing on the two cupcakes slowly, like my dad taught me. I felt Holden come up behind me and hug me from behind. I liked when he hugged me from behind, but just to have a little fun, I threw flour at him. He is completely shocked by what I did and throws some back at me. We keep fighting with the flour until we are both covered in white.

"What the heck Aubrey?" my dad says coming in.

"I was just putting icing on the cupcakes and --"

"I don't wanna hear it," he says. "Clean this mess up and then go home to clean up."

Holden and I sweep up the mess and then we go and hop into his truck.

"That was awesome!" Holden says smiling

"I guess it was." I smile back

We ride to Holden's house and go out back to rinse off. He takes his shirt off and sprays the hose on himself. I'm just kinda staring, but he caught me staring. "What are you looking at?" he smirks.

"Nothing." I blush. I undo my hair from its bun and Holden sprays me with the hose.

We finish getting cleaned up and walk inside. "Where's your dad?" I ask

"He probably went hunting or to catch up with up your mom." he says

We enter his room and I completely forgot. I don't have anything to wear. "Do you possibly have anything I could wear maybe?" I say hesitantly.

He nodded. "Yea, sure." he smiled. "I could've gone by your house ya know.." he says

"It's fine." I say. He chuckles and hands me some sweatpants, a tshirt, and a big hoodie. I go to the bathroom and change, coming back out in Holden's clothes that smell just like him. He doesn't have a shirt on, which is perfectly fine with me.

"Can you braid hair?" I ask, playing around.

Surprisingly, he nods. "My mom taught me once." he smiled.

"Want to braid mine?" I ask him

He nods and I sit on the floor while he braids. His gentle touch feels nice on my scalp.

"Your hair is insanely beautiful." he smiles. I blush as he ties off the braid. I turn around and he smiles back. We lay on his bed, which is actually insanely comfortable. We share funny pictures of things and I show him ugly derp pictures of Fin. I eventually grow tired, and cuddle up against Holden. As I am on the verge of falling asleep, and I hear Holden whisper," I love you Aubrey." and he kisses my forehead.

I wake up and it's dark out. I hear footsteps coming up towards Holden's room. Holden is fast asleep, which is actually very attractive. I shake him to wake him up. "Holden! Someone's coming!" I whisper. He pops up

and I see a figure at the door.