Fears To Face

∞ Chapter 17 ∞

~ Rayne ~

After my morning shift of work I drove to Kayley’s school, relieved I was only little time away from holding her again. Work had been frustrating. Since I had pulled Zoey out of the way and that man had shot our windows down, my colleagues had only taken more distance from me than they already did before. I assumed Liam, no I knew Liam was reason for that. He glared at me since that evening, like I was someone no one could trust, a freak, and paid attention whether I did something off limits. Or he ignored me when I asked him something, that happened a lot. The others did the same thing, influenced by Liam, with the exception of Zoey, who stood up for me quietly by always smiling at me very pleasantly. Like she wanted to say, “Ignore the rest, they’re not worth the bother.” She was the only one who made my job still worth going for at the moment. I had always liked my job, but since last week I was definitely considering to search for a different one. Not that I cared about the other employees, but even Owen looked differently at me this morning and if my own boss didn’t trust me anymore, why would I still torture myself by going back there?  

I arrived into the parking lot from Kayley’s school at twelve Tuesday, parking my car next to hers, since it happened to be free and because she had assured me no one would notice me showing up here, so there was no need to hide under the trees.

From the moment Kayley had made my dream come true, I had felt like I was in heaven. It might sound worn-out and cheesy, but she had done it. She had put an end to the silent, dull life I had been living the last two and a half years and accompany me with her amazing presence. Just like I had hoped she would since the second I saw her. For the first time in years I felt alive again, like there was something worth living for and I wasn’t just here, existing.

First, when we came back from Ava I thought it might have been the tensions of the whole afternoon that made her turn to me, open up, but Sunday morning she was so sweet; the way she’d soothed and reassured me, how she tried to make me feel better, more at ease. When I saw how she took care of me then, I knew it hadn’t been an impulse to kiss me, I knew in that moment that she truly had wanted it. It did more with my heart than I could explain in words.

The sensation of her lips on my skin was so amazing. It was something that kept chasing me, in the best possible way. Being kissed by her was something I would probably never get used to. It made me forget about all the problems in the world for a few moments. I didn’t think there had been a moment in my life I had been so blissful.

Like it couldn’t get better, yesterday she had flown into my arms at the moment she saw me. Like two people who are madly in love with each other would do when they hadn’t seen each other for weeks. With us it had just been one day, and although I was madly in love with her, I couldn’t ask her to feel the same. I knew she liked me and that was good enough for me. I knew why she was so happy to see me, though. Our phone call from the previous day after she told her mother about me, about what I am, had struck deep inside her.

Although I felt sorry for her and I had been more than willing to come to her house, I couldn’t help but love the fact that she had missed me so much in just one day. Just think about it. Someone had missed me. That thought alone made me feel better than I had felt in months, if not years.

When the bell rang, I was snapped out of my thoughts and saw Kayley come out of the door, flanked by two other girls. The one on her left was taller, had long, brown curly hair that hung loose on her shoulders. She walked with a steady pace, looking confident with a content smile on her tanned face. On the other side a smaller girl, with half-long light blond hair, laughing with Kayley and the other girl, but looking uncertain too.

Kayley and the girls were walking into my direction, babbling. The closer they came, the harder it became for Kayley to hide her enormous grin for her friends and every time she met my eyes, they started glowing. I had to struggle to keep the smirk from my face.