Capture My Heart (BK3: Niall Horan)

-Ch 49: Unprofessional.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE: Unprofessional.

Ashley Dawson:

I’d kept on looking out the window on our way there. I couldn’t stop thinking about how different streets that I had seen so many times before looked from inside a police car. It was as if my mind-set had changed in the last few hours, and I saw the inky darkness of night-time as something more sinister than it really was. It’s a little ironic how many stories and myths we can extract with the absence of the sun, the diversity is so different when you’re using something manmade to be able to see.

I’d always imagined that if I ever got arrested, then I would probably be too scared to continue through with it in a manageable and dignified way, that the fear would sprint past the desire to sort it out properly. I couldn’t seem to acknowledge or feel anything about it though as the process progressed, it had grown cold and with that so had myself. One of my hands sat between my thighs and the other on my cheek acting as support for my titled face towards the tinted windows. I could imagine the headlines tomorrow, the face of my Father so disappointed later, and the smugness of my sister, her proof that maybe she had turned out better than I had. I wasn’t sure how Valerie would react, and I was a little past caring enough to do something about it.

I hadn’t thought of an excuse yet, a story that would pass this off as an excusable misunderstanding between us and the authorities, and time was passing quickly as each house we passed blurred by. It had been around twenty minutes and my mind was growing tired along with my body, so I decided that I was either going to be brutally honest or silent. I was prepared for probable embarrassment, but that was really not my main concern in the current situation.

I kind of wanted somebody to give me a bit of comfort, to let someone know how much I didn’t know what to do right now. But then it struck me that I didn’t really have anyone anymore, anybody that I was close enough with and on good terms to be able to relay my problems onto. So there I sat still, now an intense feeling of loneliness accompanying a broad lack of intelligence that was ceasing to bring me a way out of this.

My gaze then travelled to the younger officer that was sat in the passenger seat of the car. I didn’t think he could be any more than five years older than me, which was really the line of appropriate behaviour. I was pretty sure that the vast majority of people would deem him to be attractive, although I could not make a personal judgement accurately because of how misty it was upstairs for me. I had noticed that he was tall, with a large build in general and I was sure there was brown hair peeking out of the rim of his hat.

Mallory shot me a look when she noticed I was watching him, I simply looked away, reverting my gaze back to the window. I had wished they would put the radio on or something because this painstaking silence seemed to be proving it’s flexibility as it continued to stretch over the duration of the journey.

I was sick of thinking now so I closed my eyes and waited for something to change, it was a while before something did.

“I need to know your full name, don’t mess me about missy, what is it?” The young officer that I had gathered was known as “PC Smith” to his colleagues asked me. I had thought that was a very common name and fell unimpressed, I was expecting him to have a bit more colour to his whole persona.

“I would never mess you about, I told you, it’s Ashley.”

He raised his eyebrows, he had taken his hat off and now he kept smoothing his hair over with his palm. I had my suspicions that he was pretty new to the job, the formalities did not come quickly to him and he seemed shifty and had too much of a guard up. He was the one with the authority, but he was acting more defensively than I was.