Into You

Chapter 24

"I have a stop to make first, Miss Cabello," she said shortly. "If that's ok with you?"

"It's fine. Christ, Lauren, will you stop it? I'm sorry, ok? I was fucking worried about you and I wanted to make sure you were all right. That's all it was, I swear. I'm sorry I followed you but I wasn't spying on you."

She ignored her, focusing on the road ahead, breathing carefully to calm her racing heart.

"Lauren?"


"Yes, Miss Cabello?"


"I said I was sorry."

"Yes, Miss Cabello."

"I meant it you know," she told her as she continued to concentrate on her driving, "I was worried about you."

"You put yourself at risk, and that's unacceptable. If this is what you do when we become 'close to friends', then I'm sorry I allowed myself to slip. I'm not prepared to allow you to get hurt for any reason, that's not in my job description."

"I didn't put myself at risk for Christ sake, Simon was with me..."

"Only because he decided not to let you leave on your own, though." She returned interrupting her, pressing her own point home. "You were planning to follow me without him."

Her brunette head disappeared from the mirror and she heard her slump back into her seat. "You're right," she said quietly, "I was going to follow you with or without him. I care about you, Lauren, you're my friend."

She drove to the storage place without replying. She was angry, annoyed, frustrated, pissed off. She was every fucking emotion under the sun with Camila Cabello and that annoyed her even more.

Mostly, though, she was proud. She called her her friend and that made her happy in amongst the rest of the emotions. Being told that she worries about her and that she considers her a friend was special but it reinforced her belief that she needed to pull back. The weekend was a mistake and it couldn't be allowed to continue. She can't be her friend. She gets her friends killed. She likes her too much to have that happen.

Camila followed her in silence as she walked into the office to get her key from the guy that ran the storage place. All it took was a quick check on her paperwork and a swipe of her credit card to pay off the rest of her agreement and she was through. Key in hand, she approached her lock up and opened the door.

She could feel Camila's eyes on her as she walked into the unit and switched on the lone bulb that served as illumination. It wasn't much, little more than a large metal box; but it contained everything she had left of her old life, the pieces that she'd kept anyway. She'd took out the long term storage deal just before she joined the army, putting everything that she hadn't sold or scrapped in here and hoping that one day, she'd have somewhere to put it all.

She didn't enjoy coming here. There were too many memories on display. She usually only came to drop stuff off. Her last visit had been to put away the few items that she now wanted back in her life, some photos and some keepsakes.

"Can I come in?" she heard a tentative voice behind her say.

"Yeah," she replied, "just be careful, ok? Nearly everything in here is precious to me and I don't want anything damaging accidentally."

'That includes you, so don't hurt yourself on any of this junk.'

"I'll be careful," she said stepping into the unit and looking around. Lauren pretty much ignored her as she rummaged in the boxes bringing out the items she wanted and placing them onto a sad, battered-looking yellow four-seater table.