Forever Luminescent

Chapter 20

Her eyes looked around at the darkness, inspecting every inch. A tiny green light blinked in a corner. A second later, it blinked again, red. It stayed on for a prolonged amount of time before it shut down, then it came back on in green.

"Is that the camera?"

"Yes, it's recording when it's green." They stayed frozen, him hovering above her until the light turned red. "Come on, hurry!"

He pulled her up, and she yelped as they flew to the other side of the lobby. She hissed when she accidentally rammed into the edge of the cold, white front desk she recalled from the time they came asking to adopt a child. Ronan didn't give her time to inspect her arm, pushing her to the floor once again, underneath the desk, away from the camera's view.

"Do you remember the way to the file room?" Gwenn asked. Her eyes strained, trying to locate Ronan. His tight grip on her arm reminded her how close he was.

"I have an idea," he murmured.

Gwenn grasped onto his closest body part with her free hand. Her fingers clenched around a built bicep. "I remember clearly," she confessed. "Take a left on this small hall, third door on the left, right after the restrooms."

Silence followed for half a minute. "Have I ever mentioned how much I love your brain?"

She giggled. "No, but I figured since it's helping you pass abnormal psych."

"Touché, honey, touché," he said. She felt him shift forward, and imagined him peeking from their hiding spot to check the camera's status. "It's red now. Let's move."

She allowed him to drag her out, taking to the walls. They stumbled into the halls, where a skylight sucked the faint moonlight from outside and illuminated the inside of the adoption center enough for her to see Ronan.

"There's a camera up ahead," he announced. Just as she looked up to verify his statement as fact, he pulled her into the nearest door.

They stumbled inside a darkened office. It took her a second to realize that was where they had met Stephanie Xu the first time, where they agreed to research more on the adoption center before they took such a big step in their fake marriage.

Ronan kept his arms around her, one hand still holding the doorknob to the office.

"This is going to take eons to get to the file room," she said, clutching onto his hoodie. He looked down, his glittering eyes shining brighter in the dark.

"We can do it."

They spent the next excruciating minutes dodging the filming camera. Not once did Gwenn escape Ronan's clutches. The second she tried to step away from his warm body, he pulled her flush against him, then told her they worked better like that in case something happened. Her heart sped up at that, but she knew his logic was right. If they stuck together, it was less likely they'd get caught as they ran down the halls when the light was red.

After what felt like hours, they stumbled into the file room, panting and hyped up on adrenaline. This time Ronan didn't fight when she untangled herself from his side. She checked the ceiling, nervous to find another camera recording their every move, but found that they were safe.

Ronan switched on the flashlight from his phone, and strode to an archive. Gwenn followed him, biting her lip as he opened the blue-gray drawer by the metal handle. A row of files was exposed, and she held her breath as he started sifting through. She almost blanked when he handed her a file in less than thirty seconds.

"This is your parent's file," he started. "We can compare the non-identifying information of your bio mom to her file, if we find it."

She decided to ignore the last bit of his sentence. They were inside the file room at A Chosen Bond, they would find the file they needed. There had to be a file with the last name Woods that matched the information of her biological mother. Blonde, blue eyes, five foot two, unemployed.