Crossed Paths // Ross Lynch

one

Chloe woke up sleepily, her hair falling into her eyes and lines from rolling around in her sleep crossing her cheeks. She sat up groggily and rubbed her eyes, trying to wake herself up in fear of falling back into her warm duvet and drifting back into her dreams.

The covers around her were so warm around her and the pillow wasn't too puffed up, just the right amount of comfortableness for her so that she didn't have to roll her head around until it felt comfy. She wanted to fall back back into the coziness of her bed for at least another half an hour before having to get up and face the day ahead of her. But she fought the urge to close her eyes and fall asleep, rubbing them again until she ended up squinting through the bright sunlight that shone through her curtains, her big brown eyes shining as she woke up.

She quickly glanced up at the calendar above her bed, smiling. It was the seventeenth of August, a bright sunny morning but also one of Chloe's all time favourite dates ever - it was her eighteenth birthday. Long years ago she had been born to loving parents who gave her everything she could have ever imagined and more. She lived a happy, peaceful life where she felt comfortable and safe, but then tragedy struck.

She was convinced that she couldn't be happy forever and she even admitted she wouldn't have minded something slightly less disastrous to cross her path. But no. The day before her eighth birthday, she faced something she never thought she would ever have to witness - death. A fire had somehow started in her house, which had destroyed everything she loved. Every single toy had been melted to a colourful, slightly charred pulp, and every photograph and memory of her house was taken from her. But not only that, but the two people she loved more than anything had been killed in the fire - her parents. 

The firemen had told her that they suspected it was arson as there wasn't any evidence of electrical faults or dangers that could have caused it. That was what had scared Chloe the most - someone had deliberately set fire to their house and destroyed everything they knew and loved around them in the one place that they all felt safe and at ease.

What if someone had wanted them dead? Had it been a criminal act of violence, an attempt at revenge or did someone simply want the Brown family to die? Chloe never found out and that was what scared her most because she sometimes wondered if someone was watching her, tracking her every little movement and would attempt to kill her once again.

Since her parents had died, Chloe was shipped off to her aunt, far away from the comfortable surroundings of Leeds that she knew and loved. She was sent down to Devon and lived in a large house on top of one of the many cliffs that overlooked the bright blue sea and crashing white waves. She overlooked the countless cottages where people lived normal lives.

They went to the local market to buy food and all sorts of little trinkets and delicacies, they ran around on beaches with their siblings and their dogs, they experienced normal family things that Chloe never did. Chloe was instead locked up in the house, never really knowing what to do or how to interact. She was treated like royalty, as her aunt was of a very rich family. 

But Chloe hated it. She didn't enjoy going to her aunt's parties that she hosted, large social dinner and dances where she would wear awful dresses and have to make polite small-talk with people she barely knew. There was never anyone her age there either. It was either small children who ran around in another room and played imaginary games, or older adults who spoke about things that she barely understood or wasn't interested in at all.

She was dreading the idea that her aunt might organize something like that for the day ahead of her. She didn't want to be the centre of attention with everyone singing 'Happy Birthday' to her, she didn't want to have the conversations with people on what she had decided to do as her career and if she had a boyfriend or not and how tall she had grown since the last time everyone had seen her.