The Troubled Ones | ✔

Chapter 14. The Compass

[a/n]: i dont know if i said the parents' names yet, but if i have, i forgot what they were, so don't be too confused if they end up having new names.

Chapter 14. The Compass

                The sun's rays shine through the window pane and onto my face, irritating me to the point where I can't hide away from the day anymore. With a stretch of the arms and legs, I open my eyes groggily and have a small heart attack when I notice that I'm not in my bedroom; in fact, I'm not even in my house.

I sit up straight in shock.

Peering to the figure beside me, I notice that I'm next to Jasper on top of his bed. No, we aren't in his bed; don't get the wrong idea. Memories from last night flood my mind as I replay the previous events.

After having a mental breakdown, Jasper hugged me and whispered some encouraging things to me. I told him I was sorry for bringing this onto him suddenly, but he insisted it was perfectly okay. We talked all night until I fell asleep on his bed, and I guess he fell asleep as well.

His sleeping figure is adorable, to say the least. He sleeps on his stomach and his back is slowly rising and falling as he breathes in and out while his face is facing to the left, where I am seated. His dark hair is morphed to the side of his head from the way he slept with his head dug into his pillow during the night, so as soon as he wakes up and sits up, his hair will be swooshed to the side of his head. His right arm is under his pillow, and his left hand is gently and weakly holding my left forearm.

My heart warms for some reason at the sight of this.

"Jasper?" I whisper, leaning towards him more.

He doesn't respond.

"Jasper, wake up." I say a little louder.

No response.

I tap him on the shoulder and he shifts in his sleep. My gaze lands on his right arm and I debate whether or not to check for his tattoo I happened to notice a day ago. Ever so slowly, I reach over him and gently grab his arm, pulling it out from under his pillow and slowly turn his arm over to see what his tattoo appears to be.

Then, all of a sudden, he flinches and flips over to his back, grabbing me my the arms and hauling me over him and rolling us over to where he is hovering over me, ever so closely. Alert fills his deep blue eyes and I feel my heart slowly regain its normal beat rhythm once I know I am okay.

"Aria?" he speaks aloud in his raspy morning voice.

I bite down on my cheek to stop from giggling at his hair that is, just as I predicted, flopped over to the side of his head, sticking up in different directions only on one side of his head.

"Sorry," he murmurs and gets off of me, plopping down beside me.

"It's fine; I woke you up and gave you a fright, which was my bad." I say, still rather shocked.

"Reflexes, I guess.." he mutters again, referring to when he just flipped me over him.

"What were you doing, anyway?" he adds.

"Oh, um.." I trail off, feeling myself turn red. "I was seeing what your tattoo was."

He glances down to his right arm and then back to me. Then, surprisingly, he raises his right arm up and pulls his T-shirt sleeve down a small bit, revealing his tattoo which is a small compass with two arrows crossed over each other and the words "I will never stray away" written under it with the most beautiful cursive I have seen in my life.