Green Light ✓ || Ashton X Reader

Chapter 1

Los Angeles, California
January 2014

He's not here.

He's not on this bus anywhere. You've checked every seat multiple times. You've even checked the passenger list with the driver...twice. The driver is kind of annoyed at you now. In fact, everybody on this bus is probably annoyed at you. He's clearly not here. What will it take to convince you of that?

You sit back down in your assigned seat and huff. There are sixty three seats full on this sixty four seat bus, and you have an aisle seat. You feel completely surrounded by strangers, and it's suffocating. You wonder if you'll ever be able to take a clean breath of fresh air again. So you hold your breath, and you dig your new phone out of your backpack.

You were always an iPhone user, but he knew exactly how to get in, so you switched to Android before you left. It's still awkward, but it's a relief to look down at your messages app and see nothing waiting for you. Your number has been changed. He cannot find you now.

You open the browser, trying to give yourself something to do for the rest of this long bus ride. Wikipedia pops up, along with the last thing you searched for.

[The Ocean Front Magnificat Complex, often just called the Magnificat, is a retail and entertainment complex off the Ocean Front Walk in Venice, near Los Angeles, California. The ten story indoor/outdoor mall has over 500 retail stores and several entertainment options. The first five floors are open to the public; the top five floors are private studios jointly owned by Sony, BMI, and YG Entertainment. The Magnificat is managed by LaPostale Tech Industries' Entertainment Division; Emmaline Wheaton, COO, is the building's manager. LaPostale handled the financing of the project, which was opened on January 20, 2013.]

You flip over to your email, scrolling down a few pages before finding the one you're looking for. You open it again. You need any sort of distraction to keep you from thinking about him.

On behalf of the Ocean Front Magnificat Complex, I would like to welcome you to the Magnificat Hospitality Team! We are so excited to welcome you to our office. Your official start date is January 13, 2014. Please report to the Hospitality Center on the eighth floor at 8:00 AM PDT to get started. Please come dressed in a whtie t-shirt, blue jeans, and comfortable sneakers. Be sure to bring your identification, and expect to spend the morning signing your life away. After your paperwork is completed, you will report to your first assignment on the 14th.

Nobody knew that you were moving to Los Angeles. Not your parents. Not the rest of your family. And certainly not him.

You had left your old hometown in the dead of night. You had woken up at three in the morning, just to use the restroom. He was asleep next to you and woke up immediately, as he always did, when he felt you stir. You told him you would be just a moment, you ate something funny and you needed the bathroom. It would buy you the fifteen minutes needed to escape.

While he had been at work the previous day, you had packed up your car with everything that was too precious for him to destroy. He had already torn apart your high school yearbooks, and your childhood stuffed animals were permanently gone in the trash. But you still had the flute you played in band, as well as your official documents, birth certificate, and a few pictures. You didn't pack a lot of clothes. You would be wearing a uniform at the Magnificat, anyway, and once you had more money, you could buy new clothes that he would never see you in.

You knew that if you exited the bathroom, he would still be awake and would pull you back to bed. So you left out the bathroom window. Your car was parked right next to his, but you lived in a very busy apartment complex. You had never felt safe there, especially not with him. So you knew you could drive away, and it could be any car in the parking lot driving away. He wouldn't catch you at that point.

But you had to get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible.

The car, sadly, was in his name. You had thought it so romantic at first, but now you know it was just another way of him taking control of you. So you drove to the bus station, took your bags with you, and left the car behind. The driver scanned your one way ticket to L.A. and let you on. At least the Magnificat had on-site dorms, so you didn't need to find an apartment. The mall also had 24 hour security. He could follow you into the mall itself, but not upstairs.

You just had to get there first.

At some point, you doze off. It's not fully sleep, because someone three seats down is blasting some K-Pop band in their headphones and someone else is having a very loud phone conversation a few seats back. But you settle into this, and you wake up to tall buildings all around you, dotted with palm trees and an impossibly blue sky.

You feel your heart thumping in your head. You're here. But you're not safe yet.

The bus stops downtown, at a massive Greyhound station. Even though you're not seated by the window, your eyes are scanning outside, looking for a man about your height, white, with broad shoulders and bleached blonde hair. You look for him, even though he shouldn't be here, because he is everywhere, and he always finds you.

So you make the phone call while you wait for the others to leave the bus, and when you disembark, you see the blue taxi in the parking lot. You sprint to it like your life depends on it. The driver is a black lady with a warm smile, thank God. When you mention you're going to the Magnificat, she talks about all the fun things to do on the Ocean Front Walk, and you're glad she doesn't ask any more questions. Besides, while you'd love to go to the beach, he will find you there, so that's never happening. You didn't come here for fun. You came here to escape.

You ride in the taxi to west L.A., and there are planes over your head as you approach the ocean and the boardwalk that lines it. A world away, he has woken up to your old iPhone sitting in the bathroom. And he will be furious, and he will throw it against the wall, and he will look everywhere for you. But hopefully you stayed anonymous enough at the bus station. Hopefully you got enough of a head start.

Hopefully he will never find you.

Even though he always finds you.

The taxi driver parks, and you pay her, and then you realize you're too nervous to get out of the car. You're in the parking lot, but you still have to walk inside. And she smiles, and she senses how nervous you are. She grabs your duffel bag, and the two of you walk together to the Magnificat back door. You walk in together, into the mall's food court, and then she hands you your duffel and you are on your own.

Everything looks as huge as it did in the pictures online. Music plays over the loudspeaker. People are all around you, so you look straight ahead and walk straight for the elevator. It takes you to the fifth floor, where there are still shops but way less people. An open, bright store with the sign "Service Desk" beckons to you. It's there that you check in with the front desk, and receive your dorm key. "You will have tonight to get all settled, and then tomorrow, you will have your orientation," the Asian man behind the counter says with a smile. "Welcome to the Magnificat!"

You nod and take your new key card with you. It unlocks the upper floors on a secret elevator that takes you to floor 7. This hallway feels more like a hotel, and is thankfully empty. You walk right up to room 741 and scan it. And that's when you realize you've been holding your breath this entire time. Because you know, you just know, that he's going to be standing behind that door with a bouquet of flowers. And he will be smiling, but you will have nowhere to run.

You push the door open. There's nobody here. Just a window that faces another building, and a twin size bed and a desk, and a small closet. The bathrooms and kitchenette are down the hall.

You shut the door behind you, and you make sure it's locked. You put your bags down, and put your new Android phone on the desk. Then, you sit on the bed, take your shoes off, and lay down. And it's now that you finally start crying.