Rebel Runners: The Beginning of the End | ✔

Part Fifteen

Lifting slightly, I dig out the material underneath me that I know is her pants before I throw them to her.

"Jesse, get dressed."

Instead of listening to her I watch her pull the pants over her legs. The creamy expanse of soft skin disappears under the material. Her nimble fingers pulling the zipper up and pushing the button in.

"Jesse." She groans.

I lift my hands up, sliding off the bed. "Okay. I was just taking a minute."

She watches me closely, her eyes falling to my chest. "Is there any spare skin?" she asks, reaching out to touch me. her fingers are feather light over my ink covered skin.

"Plenty." Lifting her fingers, I guide them over the skin void of any ink. Mostly around my neck and shoulders.

She smiles, pressing her fingers into the sun sitting over my heart. "I like the colours." Her other hand joins the adventure, brushing over my lower stomach dangerously closer to my shorts.

She glides her hand to join the other one near my shorts, her fingers snapping the band against my skin. She's testing my control and strong desire to ignore the outside world. Very easy to do now that she feels like my entire world.

Grabbing both her hands I pull them from my skin, she peers up at me pouting. "We need to go."

Right on cue, Josh bangs on the door. "That's it."

Without any further warning his head appears inside the room, his eyes finding us before he pulls a face. "Seriously, stop trying to start shit, Jesse. You are going to be late."

My mouth falls open ready to argue but he's gone. Cora giggles, pulling her hands from mine. "Yeah, come on, Jesse. We're going to be late."

I give her a warning look before grabbing a clean uniform from my closet. Needing a shower before I leave this place, there is no way I can function for the next eight hours on a night rotation without rubbing one out in the shower.

Not when I'll be spending said hour with her.

*

Cora doesn't even need me here to show her what to do. For the last couple of nights, she's been running the radio reporting to the officers at main square. Watching her work is amazing. She's vibrant, there's a glow about her that I never noticed before.

I thought I'd ruined everything when I woke up that night from drinking. It was a horrible decision to drink that day, on such little sleep. I spiralled hard.

I remember coming home to find Josh getting ready for a workout and he just knew something had happened.

So many dark thoughts swirled in my head, everything rushes back to me in one go. My brain working overtime to overthink everything. Throwing countless what ifs at me.

I kept circulating back to my father's recent meetings, needing meetings with a doctor and then the enhancements he keeps talking about. Pair that with the idea of his perfection and my childhood was a recipe fit to implode my entire life in a second.

Josh helped a lot. He doesn't really know the extent of it, but he's always been there for me.

He knows when to give me drinks, when to cut me off and when to put me back in line. I can only imagine what he thinks my problem, but it can't worse than what the actual problem is. Nowhere near as dark and torturous.

This time got a little out of hand and I think he knew that. In his defence he was trying to get me home. But as fate would have it, we ran into Cora. The last person I wanted to know about the darkness clouding my life.