Undone // hemmings

chapter nine

As a nice early morning breeze rolled in from the window, Hayden was woken up by a tapping on her shoulder. "Luke?" She asked, noticing the giant blonde staring down at her from the bedside. "What time is it?"

"It's about 10 a.m., but everyone else is asleep and I wanted to know if you wanted to go get breakfast with me?" He asked. His hair was flat down on his forehead due to it being in the morning, and he was standing there in nothing but boxers.

"Sure, let me just get dressed and I'll be down in a few minutes!"

Hayden rolled out of bed and pulled on some clothes before dragging herself to the bathroom to get ready for the day.

Hayden still had found it so weird that just two weeks ago she was living back in Philadelphia with Joy, Calum, and her siblings. Everything was so peaceful and things had been running so smooth until Calum's dad had to come back into his life after eight years and fuck everything up. He not only fucked up Calum's life once again by murdering his mother, but he also fucked up Hayden's by burning down her house and the majority of her possessions. Thankfully, no one was injured in the fire, though.

Calum's dad had known fires were Hayden's weakness. And, not in the good way that chocolate can be a person's weakness. Fires were where Hayden was at her worst ever since she was seven years old.

Hayden was visiting her grandmother in Pittsburgh along with her pregnant mother, her mother's current boyfriend, and a very young Regan and Hunter. They had stayed at a hotel, considering her grandmother had been ill at the hospital. The second day of the trip in Pittsburgh, there had been a malfunction with the oven in the kitchen of the hotel, which sent the whole hotel up in flames. Hayden had been wandering around with Hunter and when the fire alarm went off, she grabbed her brother and ran. Not knowing the whereabouts of her mom and little sister, she cried her eyes out. She wasn't sure if her mom and Regan were alive.

Calum's dad purposely set the house on fire because he knew Hayden had a past with fires. He wanted to get under her skin.

Even though Hayden lived in a completely different country away from him, she still felt slightly uneasy.

Hayden and Luke arrived at the diner not long after they left home. They seated themselves in a quaint little booth and opened up the menus trying to decide what would be for breakfast.

"I'm thinking about pancakes, what about you?" Luke questioned.

Hayden's eyes scanned over the menu as her hands flipped through the laminated pages. "Maybe a bagel? I don't know, I might just get cereal."

"C'mon Andy, we're out! Just splurge! Get some sort of eggs and bacon and toast breakfast! You can have cereal any day."

Maybe Luke's convincing worked because when the waitress had come, Hayden ordered a large stack of chocolate chip pancakes and a side of bacon. "Sorry I'm such a fatty," she apologized as the waitress took their menus from them.

"You are far from it, babe." Luke spoke. Hayden's insides began to tingle at the sound of Luke calling her babe. She had never been one for terms of endearment but when Luke said it, all was well.

"Why thank you, Hemmings." She blushed as she spoke. "Anyway, I remember you saying something last week about graduating? When's that happening?"

"Friday, actually. Do you want to come? I don't think my brothers will be in town so you can take their tickets and sit with my mom and dad, if that's not too weird for you." He slowly trailed off at the end, noticing that Hayden might get a little awkward with the situation.

"Can I bring Calum so it's not super weird?" She questioned.

"Of course, because neither of my older brothers will be in town so you two can just have both of their tickets!"