It's Not A Game Of Chance When It Comes To Love

Chapter 57

Chapter Fifty-Seven…

Looking up at the familiar building now, it seemed as though I hadn’t been here since forever.

My house had always been a safe place for me, it had always been the place I went home to, where I could escape the trouble I was having at school, the relationship issues that I suffered with Zack, but now, it seemed nearly unrecognisable to me.

Despite it looking exactly the same, I couldn’t quite bring myself to view it as a place of refuge anymore. It seemed identical, but there was something different, which was at least obvious to me. The knowledge that my parents had been thrown out of there, been caught doing drugs in there, even if I’d already known that, but just refused to pay as much attention to it before, made it a place I didn’t want to associate myself with anymore. Not unless I had to, anyway.

Besides, there was somewhere else I considered home now. Jord’s house was somewhere I really did feel loved, where he was always there for me, unlike my parents, who picked a life of drugs over caring for their daughter.

Jord wrapped an arm around my shoulder from behind me and I leaned into his side automatically. “You do have your key with you, don’t you?” He checked.

I nodded, still managing to roll my eyes at his stupid question despite my thoughts being elsewhere. “Yeah,” I muttered distractedly, still scanning the outside of the building, seeing if there were any telltale signs of the neglect it had suffered the last couple of weeks.

I’d been given the all clear by the police to go in and fetch any more of the stuff I had left behind yesterday and so I’d given it a days consideration before asking Jord to help me fetch all the stuff I’d need. Even if I did get granted the emancipation, like Anna had said was likely, I wouldn’t be moving back here. It wasn’t somewhere I’d feel comfortable living anymore.

Anna had said I might have to put in some appearances there, however, so that if social services decided to keep an eye on me they wouldn’t become overly suspicious. Even as a legal adult, if they thought I was living at my teacher’s apartment they wouldn’t be too impressed. I wasn’t entirely sure what would be happening to my parents yet either thought, and this was definitely the only place they had left to go to.

“Let’s go in.” I decided, making my way up the empty drive and groping around in my pocket to find the key I’d just told Jord I had. I fumbled around in the lock and opened the door, half expecting there to be police tape littering the ground and walls, or the remains of the drugs to still be strewn across every available surface.

It was nothing like that, though, and it was just like I’d remembered it from the years of living here. Every surface was clean, there was nothing out of place, and it was like we’d gone on holiday and just come back again. There was no smell of cannabis like the last time I’d braved the building and only the smell of the air freshener, which someone had been kind enough to put on the table, was filling my nostrils.

Of course, if you looked closer, that was when you could see the abuse.

On the table, there were burn marks from where the burning substances had been thrown down in a panic at seeing the police car down the drive. The slight indents the table had were also containing a few miniscule grains of powder that couldn’t have been removed without sawing the wood in half. And then there was the empty feeling. It was as though you could tell no one had been living here. It wasn’t the same as it had been and that filled me with sadness.

Even though it hadn’t been perfect, I still missed just living at home with my parents, without the complications of police investigations and where I was living, even without the stress of dating my teacher.