Unexpected Love ✔️

T W E N T Y S I X

 A R I A N N A

It's going to be okay. You just have to take this one day at a time. Breathe because you got this. I repeat to myself in my head like a damn mantra as I make my way through the house the next morning at eight am because I haven't slept.

I couldn't sleep. No matter how hard I tried.

Images and memories of her kept on flooding my mind on repeat, haunting me until I couldn't take it anymore so I got up and went to the basement to work out. I worked out for an hour, took a nice long hot shower, and tidied my room and it was only eight in the morning.

"Hey," Kayden sends me a small tired smile, glancing up from where he's seated at the breakfast bar with a coffee in front of him, his phone in one hand.

I brush past him, heading straight for a coffee. Screwing my eyes closed, I take a minute before reaching up into the drawers above me for a cup and pouring myself a cup and joining him at the breakfast bar.

Sinking my ass into a stool, I take a sip from the cup I just poured, the scorching liquid burning my throat as it makes its way down my throat, but at least it makes me feel something. It reminds me that I'm alive. 

"Jeez, Louise, Ari," Kade hisses from across the breakfast bar, watching me over the rim of his mug, letting his phone fall from his hands and onto the counter beneath his raised hands with a sigh. He shakes his head, not tearing his eyes away from me. His next words are a low murmur, "It's going to be alright," He tells me with conviction in his voice that I almost believe him.

 Almost

 And who knows? Maybe if I were Amelia or Zaki, I just might've.

But I can't. I don't know how to just blindly trust someone when they say they have my back or that it's going to be alright. "I've been where you are now Arianna." He continues, taking my silence as an answer, not knowing that my thoughts are spiralling. Running wild in that head of mine, as he would say. "And I know that look in your eyes right now because it was the same one that was in mine when they pronounced him dead." 

"Your dad?" That is all I say because I don't know an awful lot about his family, apart from the fact that he grew up in Georgia, with three sisters and a brother, and his parents were divorced. His mum is still somewhere in Georgia. But as much as he doesn't like talking about his family and his life in Georgia, he has never and I mean never mentioned his dad in a conversation.

Kayden clears his throat before nodding his head slowly. "Yeah." He breathes out lifting his head. He scrolls through his phone for a moment, before sliding it across the counter towards me. When I glance down, my heart lurches in my chest. It's an image of a younger-looking version of the man that sits before me today, an older version of the same man with greying hair, and prominent smile lines that take over his features.

"He was my best friend. Taught me everything I know from how to change tires to how to shoot my first hoop." He declares leaning forward, I glance up at him to find a pair of empty brown eyes staring back at me. Lifeless as though life has slowly been sucked out of him. Drained. Tired. Emotionless. Haunted almost.

I want my Kayden Forrester back. Because I'm not sure I like this hurting side of him, that much. 

"Tell me, does the hurt go away?" Because I want, no I need it to stop. I need the tightness in my chest to ease up because right now I feel like I can't breathe. I'm suffocating underneath the weight of it all.

Kayden releases a sigh, "Honestly?" He asks, peering up at me beneath a pair of thick lashes.

I gulp, nodding my head. "Always,"