Saving Athena ✓

49) Milkyway

Athena

Who would've thought that the man who hated me when I first met him has been begging me to come over all morning.

I knock on Ace's Apartment door, I knock until he opens it. His eyes lighting up immediately as he sees me. "Told you I would come," I smile, cheekily.

He smiles widely and pulls me into him for a tight bear hug. We stay like that for a minute or too, just appreciating the feeling of eachother.

"Hi," he smirks as he pecks my forehead. "I missed you." He pulls me even closer and I nuzzle up to his chest, looking up at him.

"You just saw me yesterday," I murmur.

"Why do you always kill the mood?" He grumbles and I laugh as I peck his forehead and sit down on the couch.

"Get up," he says and I raise an eyebrow, tilting my head and he throws his sweater at me. I smile and wrap it around me, pulling it down my head and relishing in the feeling of it. "I'm taking you somewhere," I smile, getting up and following him. We walk down the stairs, me accidentally pulling down the back of his shoes.

"Seriously?" He groans. "That's the second time you've done that."

"Sorry" I whisper, a slight smirk tainting my face. He drives, his hand finding mine as he pulls it onto the armrest. I smile to myself. He drives until he stops in front of a gigantic building. "Is this . . ." I trail off as I peek up from the car window.

"Westfield space museum?" Ace answers proudly. "Why yes, yes it is."

"Oh my God," I jump out of the car, running to the front door. Once Ace catches up, he leads me Inside as he passes his phone to the Register, scanning our tickets as he places a white band on our wrists.

Ace looks down at me. "Ready?" He asks and I nod, as vigorously as I can. I told him about this the first week of knowing him, he showed no interest, but to know that he remembers makes my heart thump throughout my chest.

"Lead the way," Ace ushers. "God knows what I know about space." I take his hand in mine as I take him throughout the whole museum, telling him about the spaceships, the stars, the cosmos, and everything wonderful in between them.

I had started to like stars when I was around eight years old, I was watching the sky turn dark, wondering what those things were that would appear in the sky when the moon came out. After asking Dad, he explained that they were stars.

I started doing my own research, I immediately became entranced with the knowledge that there was a whole other world beneath our fingertips. I always would sneak out and go onto the roof, I would stargaze until I heard Dad's truck pull up, and I was forced to go inside.

I never had a normal childhood, thinking about it. I was forced to grow up quickly. Learn how to fend for myself. I always had a sense of fear towards my father, he would randomly lash out here and there and it terrified me.

It terrified me how I could be the reasoning behind it.

It turns out I was, I was the motive behind him getting violently drunk and leaving me lifeless on the glass-ridden floor. And when I thought he would stop, maybe he would see any remorse in himself, in seeing that he beat his daughter up to the point where she couldn't move. But he didn't.

He didn't realize that what he was doing was wrong. Mom didn't either, I'll never realize what it was that truly made her leave. What would push you to leave your daughter devised me wondering for years, what could I have done to make her leave?

I'll never know.

It took me nineteen years to realize that I had no control over her, it still hasn't sunk in my head that I had no part in her leaving. When she left me again, all those emotions came back. The waterfall of pitiful and unbelievably saddening emotions.