~ Chapter Five –
T
he following morning and I was surprised when I saw a bright, shining black Bugatti Veyron pulling up in front of my house. I rolled out of bed, rubbing my head as my head throbbed painfully. I raised my hand to place it on the side of my head and walked over to the window on the other side of the hall and looked out. I gasped when I saw Darcy get out of the driver’s side of the car. I heard my phone vibrating on my bedside table and I walked back in, but not as fast as what I normally would have done because of the throbbing headache that I had. I picked it up and blinked a few times before opening it up and read the message.
Hey. You up? It was from Darcy.
I am now. Did you feed from me last night? Because my head is throbbing like no tomorrow, I said to her. I looked down as she walked up to the front door and I saw her gasp.
What are you talking about?! Someone fed from you and you don’t remember it?! She said and I heard the front door practically slam open before my mother could actually open the door and I felt her beside me a few short seconds later.
“How could you not remember it?!” she nearly yelled at me and I took a step back from her.
“I don’t know, Darcy! Now don’t yell at me damn it! Mum doesn’t know that Aldwyn bit me that first time,” I said ignoring the twinge in my heart when I said his name.
She scowled at me and I scowled back, refusing to look away when her fangs were suddenly beared to me. I placed a hand cautiously on her shoulder. She turned her gaze away from me and looked down at my neck where she raised a hand to my neck. I looked at her curiously before she looked up and met my gaze for a second.
“Let me see your neck,” she said and I tilted my head to the side, exposing my neck to her.
She raised her finger to the tender flesh where my neck joined with my shoulder and lightly ran her finger over it. I shivered slightly as her fingers ran over two slight bumps in my flesh. I heard her swear and I looked at her.
“What?” I asked her as she moved her hand away and it flew to grab her phone.
Her fingers flashed across the keypad of her phone and she pressed the call button. Whoever she was calling answered their phone after the first ring.
“What the hell were you thinking?!” Darcy demanded as she walked out of my room and into the guest room beside mine. I went to follow her but she held up her hand and I stopped following her and stayed where I was until she spoke to me.
“You’d best get ready for school, Asha,” she said to me before shutting the door, leaving me with a confused look on my face as I stared at the closed door in front of me.
I shook my head at her before going back into my room and went sifting through my wardrobe. When I couldn’t find anything that I wanted to wear I just grabbed a towel from the linen press and headed for the shower. I let the water run over my tensed up muscles and sighed as the water ran over my skin. When the hot water finally died out, I got out of the shower and got dressed back into my pyjamas. I heard Darcy open the spare bedroom door and she looked at me as she walked over and into my bedroom. I followed her and gasped when I saw her throw a dark brown turtle neck jumper and a pair of jeans at me.
“What-” I began but she spoke over the top of me.
“Just trust me today, okay? After today you can sack me from my daily job of dressing you properly,” she said and I scowled at her as I walked back into the bathroom and got dressed.
I left the bathroom and Darcy met me just outside my room, my bag in hand as well as my phone. I gave her a curious look before following her down the stairs and towards her car. I sighed slightly when I saw the car sitting in my drive way before I spoke up about it.
“When did you get this?” I asked her as we got into the car. She looked at me with a slightly worried expression.
“I . . . um . . .” she said before sighing. “Aldwyn gave it to me to make sure that you stayed with me throughout the entire day and didn’t wander anywhere,” she said and I gaped at her.
She looked at me, waiting to see my reaction but I just stared at her, wondering why the hell my heart began to swell when she had said that he had asked her to keep an eye on me today. In the end, I just shrugged my shoulder and grabbed my hair brush and brushed my hair as quickly as I could so that we could get to school before the bell went. She drove us towards school and we were there within five minutes.
When we pulled up at school every single head in the entire parking lot turned in our direction as we got out of the car. I felt myself beginning to blush and I turned my head away from all of the prying eyes. Darcy came to my side of the car and stood beside me, her arm wrapping around my shoulders as we headed towards our lockers, mine first. She kept her arm around my shoulders until we reached my locker which was when she dropped it and I didn’t feel as protected as I had when she had had her arm around me.
“I’ll be right over here, okay Ash?” she said as she walked over to the other side of the corridor where the others were. I nodded my head and she walked over to the others.
I opened my locker as quickly as I could and was putting my bag into my locker when a hand came down on my shoulder and I turned around, a scream building its way up in my throat. A hand clamped down on my mouth and I felt a familiar electricity pulse through me. I was pushed into the lockers roughly and I looked up into a familiar set of green eyes as they looked down at me and locked on my own purple ones. The scream froze in my throat and I felt him stiffen in front of me. His hand slowly fell from around my mouth and I scowled at him. I looked away from him and saw that the corridor had suddenly emptied and another scowl came to my face. I felt a pair of hands reach up and lightly rub against my forehead as if to rub away the creases that were there and I pushed at Aldwyn’s chest, causing him to take a few steps back.
“What do you want Aldwyn?” I demanded through clenched teeth as I turned away from him and back to my locker, which was now shut and locked again.
I swore under my breath and began twirling my combination back into my lock to open it. A hand slammed down on mine just as I was about to pull on the lock to open it and I swore colourfully when it clenched into a fist around mine, causing the metal of the lock to dig into my sensitive flesh. I winced as the hand clenched down harder and I turned around to look at the person, silently cursing when I look up into his piercing green eyes and feeling as though they are staring right into my soul.
“I . . . I . . .” Aldwyn began as he held onto my hand. I jerked it out of his grip with surprising strength and glared at him.
“Spit it out already, Aldwyn,” I said and he cleared his throat.
“I was wondering if you . . . uh . . . If you wanted to come and stay with me over the holidays?” he asked, his voice getting quieter and quieter as he said each word.
I looked at him suspiciously as opened my lock quickly and grabbed everything that I needed for my first class of the day. I held it in my arms, clutching them to my chest tightly as I shut my locker and locked it before turning to face Aldwyn.
“I’ll think about it,” was all I said before turning around and walking away from him, fighting back tears as I left him standing where he was.
***
The rest of the day it seemed that Aldwyn didn’t want to leave me alone. He appeared everywhere I went and by the time the bell went for the end of school, I was seriously considering walking up to him and hitting him in the face as hard as I could with whatever strength I had or whatever power I conjured up at the time.
I let out a sigh when I got home and found no one there. A note was on the fridge saying that Mum and Dad had gone to stay with a friend for the time in which I was on holidays and that I was to be careful. Mum had felt something different about me when I left this morning and she wasn’t sure what it had been. She left the number of the people they were staying with drawn on the fridge with a whiteboard marker, but it looked older than a few hours. I shrugged as I wrote it down on a piece of paper and rubbed it off of the fridge. I stuffed the piece of paper into my pocket and headed upstairs, desperate to have a shower and to forget about everything that had happened in the past few days.
There was a knock at the front door and I grumbled in annoyance as I dried myself off and pulled on a pair of tracksuit pants and a singlet over my underwear and bra, not bothering to check to see if my singlet actually fit properly or if it had holes in it as I wandered downstairs, tying my hair up into a rather messy ponytail at the top of my head. Once it was finished I reached for the handle and turned it, gasping when I opened the door and saw Aldwyn standing on my doorstep. I was just about to shut the door in his face when his hand snapped up and closed around my wrist, preventing me from shutting the door.
“Asha?” he asked in a quiet voice as I looked down at the floor.
I could feel his eyes on me and I knew they were travelling up and down my body because I felt my blush rising up to my cheeks. I didn’t look up at him as I took a small step away from him and he stood completely still in the doorway, framed beautifully with the setting sun.
“Asha,” he said again, this time his voice sounding sad as I heard his take a step towards me.
I flinched away from him and he reached forward suddenly, grasping hold of my arm firmly and stopping me. He pulled me to him and I felt his breath blowing across the back of my neck, it being exposed because I had tied it up in a ponytail before coming downstairs. I was soon pressed against his chest, but I didn’t look up at him when he pressed a finger lightly against my chin in an attempt to get my face looking at him. He pressed me closer to his chest and I felt my heart give a slight twinge as his hand wandered down to my waist. Raised a hand and pressed it lightly against his chest, pushing him away slightly and ignoring the pang in my stomach when I did and he let go of me a little bit.
“I . . . We can’t, Aldwyn. I need space and I definitely can’t get that when I’m with you,” I said in a quiet voice and I felt his arms tighten around me.
But then the next thing I knew, he pulled away and was pretty much out the door before I could even get a breath out. I grabbed hold of the door handle to support myself as he swept past me and I fought back tears when I saw him pulling out opf my drive way. I closed the door and practically ran upstairs, trying to get rid of the picture of him with his phone pressed to his ear as he drove away out of my head as I fell down face first onto my bed, allowing the tears to flow freely down my cheeks.
My phone rang an hour later and I reached across to my bedside table and picked it up. My screen was flashing brightly as my ring tone sang out through the speaker and I answered my phone, not even bothering to look at the caller I.D.
“Hello?” I said, trying to keep the fact that I had been crying out of my voice.
“Asha? It’s Darcy. Listen, I . . . uh . . . I just got a call from Aldwyn and he asked me something about you and the holidays,” she said but I was barely listening to her.
“Mmm. What about it?” I said to her as I flopped back down onto my bed and sighed.
“I said that we would come with him to his place over the holidays,” she said and it took a few moments for what she had said to prosess in my mind. I sat up suddenly.
“What?!” I demanded as the sky outside rumbled and crackled, matching my sudden change in mood.