Bruised Innocence

Chapter 24

"Hey! Fern! Aa--Arwin. Are you okay? Say something!" I heard a voice as if coming from the other end of a long tunnel.

As I tried to focus on hearing the voice, suddenly it felt as if the tunnel flooded and I found myself gasping from all the water.

It jerked me awake and I sputtered, the world appeared again in front of my eyes.

I was outside, in the parking lot. Water was drippling down my face. I blinked trying to clear my head.

What? Wasn't I just in the cafeteria?

Then I noticed Grant standing in front of me with a bottle of premium sparkling water in his hands, looking at me expectantly.

My eyes moved down to it's cap lying on the ground between us which made me notice that the front of my shirt was wet and I was leaning against this shiny high end SUV I didn't even know the brand of.

I tried to impulsively move away from it. Sometimes, people were really touchy about their cars. I didn't want to be accused of 'sullying' some rich brat's vehicle.

Unfortunately, my feet didn't agree with that particular idea and I found myself falling down before a pair of arms held me up, just about a foot above the ground.

That move unfortunately, ended up splashing the rest of the water from the bottle on my face and I spluttered and gasped again due to it.

"Shit! I am so sorry, Fern! I didn't mean to do that! Are you okay?"

"Ugh! Yeah, I am fine," I said as he pulled me up to stand again. I wiped the water off my face with the sleeve of my shirt. "Just try not to do that again."

That brought an upward curl to the right side of his lips, a wisp of a smile.

"What happened? What are we doing here?" I asked.

Something about him made me feel oddly safe around him. Perhaps it was due to the fact that he punched Rowan for me or maybe it was because of the way he didn't rise up to the those awful insults in the cafeteria---Ohh!!

And I remembered and forcefully suppressed the images and darkness coming to my head.

"You sort of passed out in the cafeteria, I was taking you to the hospital because I don't trust the nurse here but when we reached here, you started mumbling, so I tried to wake you up. I thought--"

"That splashing my face with water might help?" I couldn't help but ask, slightly amused, trying not to think about what made me pass out in the first place.

Grant seemed to be like someone who didn't show emote a lot and it was kinda fun to put him on an edge. Additionally, it helped me to focus on him rather than myself which was a real respite.

"Well, it did, didn't it?" He replied a bit defensively.

"Yeah, thanks a ton! Now, what am I supposed to do with my soaked shirt?" I asked.

The moment I said it, I heard the Sinclair guy's voice in my head saying, 'well, you could always take it off!'

Please don't make a joke about taking it off! I prayed.

I desperately needed new friends and Grant seemed like a really nice person and when he opened his mouth, it proved that.

"How about I drop you home?" He asked.

"What? No," I shook my head. "No! I can't miss any more classes!"

"Too bad! You have already missed half of it."