I ran most of the way back from work and ended up sweating like an absolute pig. Which is funny because pigs don't sweat. I wonder if Oliver knows that. I had a bit of a panic mode while taking a shower because I thought I had forgotten to lock the door, luckily there's a double bolt, so I made sure that it was secure. I ended up emptying my entire suitcase onto my spare bed just to try and find something decent to wear for tonight. Somehow I had completely forgotten that I had packed a pair of pleather pants, but that didn't mean I had much of a party top to go with them. I'm surprised to hear a knock on my door, and it opens before I respond.
"Hi, you decent?" Hendrik snorts,
"Well, if I wasn't too late now." I smile. "Are you all back already?"
"Technically, my brothers and I didn't go with everybody else. We went to a different area. But they wanted to catch up with the others, except I was kind of already buggered. So I decided to come home. What are you doing?"
"I got invited to a party tonight and the best I could find is these pants to wear with something nice, but I don't think I have anything good." He comes over to me and picks up the pants that I was pointing at.
"I mean, these are pretty decent. I'm sure you look great in them. What about pairing them with that top?" He points over towards one of my regular shirts, which is just a daggy button up checkered piece of clothing.
"What? That doesn't look right."
"No, no, watch this." He goes and picks up the shirt and gets me to put it on, on top of my singlet. Instead of buttoning everything up, he just wraps the middle in a bit of a knot. "If you just wear a decent bra without the singlet, I reckon you could pull that off. Although maybe you should switch to a pair of skinny jeans instead." I'm impressed, I hadn't actually thought of that.
"Wow, you're really good at this." He steps back as if I had just stepped on his tail.
"Oh yeah, well, we actually do have a sister back at home." That seems totally made up, but I'll bite.
"Cute how old is she?"
"Um, eight?"
"You're not sure how old she is?"
"You know, I'm just a brother like, I don't pay that much attention."
"And yet you pay attention to clothing a teenage girl should wear?"
"Well, of course I mean I look at girls a lot."
"I'm getting the feeling that you don't look at girls for the same reasons that your brothers do." He looks down at the floor and shoves his hands into his jean pockets, his hair flopping forward as if it was completely untamed. Just like the cat inside him, his hair is patched with different colors.
"Can you not tell anyone, please? It's a house full of guys. I don't want them to get the wrong idea." Every part of my body just wanted to reach out and hold him. So that's exactly what I do. Holding him tightly around the shoulders, I realized that he's actually a lot smaller than his brothers, even though they're supposed to be exactly the same. I can't imagine what a burden it must be to pretend to be like his brothers just to agree with them all the time.
"I will keep it a secret for as long as you do. I won't tell anyone. But I really think you should tell someone."
"Yeah, I've just told you."
"You're gonna feel really sad and alone when I'm gone though. Won't your brothers understand?"
"They probably would, but I'm a little bit scared."
"You say that so confidently and yet you're scared to tell them?"
"It's okay to be afraid of things sometimes that you don't understand the reason behind. I mean, you're afraid of vampires, and yet you're hanging around Oliver, but at the same time, you really don't want to. Is it really so different than me just behaving normally around my brothers?"
"It's not normal to hide your feelings."
"Actually, I think that's the most normal thing everybody does." He has me there.
Luckily, the party ended up only being about five blocks away. Which is very convenient. It means I should be able to make my way there and back tonight without any extra assistance. I'm still annoyed at Oliver for even suggesting that I needed help. I mean, I get why he would think that I might need help given that I'm living in a house full of demons, but I'm pretty sure I should be more scared of them than I am going to a frat party. As I come closer to the house, I can already hear the loud music. The cars are piling up on the street, and there are more people outside as there are inside, I'm sure.
I get a few whistles and hoots as I enter the doorway. Maybe I shouldn't have put my hair up in a ponytail. I try to navigate my way through the bustling crowd, but it's getting really hard to do that. I can't see anybody that I recognize. Well, I mean, I do recognize people, but I don't know any of them, not even by name.
"Amelia!" I hear someone called my name and I turned to see Nikki. I can't believe she would even consider speaking to me after I know what she did to my guitar. "I heard that you settled yourself into a frat house. Are you hiding some balls between those legs?" I'm not surprised to see at least two of the other sorority girls standing behind her. That being said, no matter how hard I try, I can't remember what their names are.
"Just a temporary situation till I find a location to stay."
"Well, you are technically still a member of our sorority, so you do always have a bed with us instead of hanging around a bunch of smelly boys."
"I wouldn't want my plane smell to get on you." I can already tell that shouting all night is going to do my head in, but I don't have a choice with the music. As another sorority sister joins her, I finally recognize somebody. She's the girl from the drama club that was annoyed that I got the Snow White role. Amanda, I think her name is.
"Don't be such a scank. You can't just spread your legs and hope that all the guys in that house will be happy to have you around all the time."
"I do nothing of the sort."
"Oh please, I'd hate to imagine how many trains have traveled through your tunnel."
"None, if you must know!" I'm so mad, I feel like I could punch her right now, but I also don't wanna get kicked out of the house.
"Amelia!" Another voice calls behind me and it's Tyson.
"Oh, another one?" Nikki comments, "So tired of the frat guys that you've decided to go ahead and bang the entire football team too?"
"Come on Nikki, be nice." Tyson says to her. She shoots us both an evil grin and turns around with her posse right behind her.
"Thank you, I'm sorry you had to hear that." I say to Tyson.
"That's perfectly alright. She and the other sorority girls can be a bit of a handful sometimes. It's better just to take it with a grain of salt." I'm pretty sure the term is a pinch of salt, but I'll let it slide.
"Well, thank you for the rescue anyway."
"Absolutely a pleasure. Would you like anything to drink?"
"Pass me anything that's non-alcoholic."
"One soda, coming up." I end up finding a quiet spot near a corner wall while he disappears into the crowd. I can't believe someone's allowed to have so many people in a house. If someone were to shut the doors and close the windows, I'm sure we'd all fall into anarchy just from the smell. Another moment later, Tyson brings me back a drink.
"Thank you." I say to him taking a sip.
"There's two other lounges upstairs on the second floor. I think they're a little bit quieter than down here, shall we?" I can see from up the stairwell that there is actually a lot of people upstairs, so I assume he's telling the truth. Nodding, he grabs my hand to guide me up the stairs. There seems to still be just as many people around here as they were downstairs. He keeps me close by his side as we find our way to what we assume was going to be spare seats, but ended up being taken quite quickly. "Follow me." He then says guiding me down a hallway. We laugh a couple of times as we attempt to dodge people coming in and out of doors and bathrooms, but my laughter stop says he pulls me into a door and shuts it behind me quickly. "Busy out there." He comments. In the room there are two other guys, did we walk in on something we weren't supposed to? They were both sitting on the bed pretty close to each other.
"Sorry, didn't mean to bother you." I say instinctually.
"No bother, we were waiting for you." One of them says to me. My brows furrow, why would they be waiting for me? Despite the loud noise that's coming from outside of the door, I can hear it click when Tyson locks it.
"What are you doing?"
"Just making sure we're not disturbed." He smirks. His voice sounds a little bit distant away, although I'm not really sure why, I mean he's standing right next to me? As I try to concentrate, I can feel him pushing my shoulders backwards so that I fall back towards the bed. "Just take another sip, you'll be fine." I looked down at the drink in front of me. I know what he's done now. Dropping the drink I try to get out quickly and push my way towards the door, but it's impossible with both him and two other guys pulling me back down onto the bed. I don't have any other choice, so I scream for help, but one of the hands finds my face and muffles me quickly.
"If you don't scream, it won't hurt." One of them says. I try my best to struggle, and I even try to bite the hand that's over my face, but I'm not succeeding. I keep waving my hands around but it only seems to deter them very marginally. I don't stop. I still try to scream, but I can't. I just want to scream. Why is this happening to me? What did I do? Tyson is trying very hard to keep my legs under control as he attempts to remove my pants. I hear my shirt tear as one of the guys pulls on the shoulder area roughly, but it's followed by him screaming out. My legs are released, and I feel like I can finally move them. The last pair of hands that were holding down my shoulders are removed, and I try to stand up, but it doesn't work and I fall to the ground. I'm still really dizzy, and I don't understand what's happening. I try to look around at the blurred faces and figures moving around the room. If my counting is correct, and I'm hoping that it is, there's four people in the room now, not just three. Did someone come to help me? I try to get up and head to the door, but I fall down once again. Why can't I concentrate? Why won't my legs move? I use a nearby nightstand to level myself off as I stand up while I hear a whole bunch of other guys swearing and screaming at each other. As my eyes slowly start to focus, I can see that the three guys are pounding on one particular guy, but he's putting up quite a fight. As he kicks one off, they go flying into the other end of the room and I am in a state of shock. I don't know what he put in my drink, but that just surely cannot happen. Another guy gets pushed into a nearby wall and the other sucker punched, right in the face, which I think was Tyson. The fourth figure comes towards me and all I see are bright green eyes. He grabs my arm and I try to scream again, but I stop when he says my name.
"Amelia, let's go!" Oliver? What was he doing here? I don't resist as he drags me along through the house. I hear people shouting to us as we push through them and out towards the backyard where it's actually quite empty. Although I'm a little groggy, at least I'm now on my feet, but Oliver holding on to me is helping quite a bit. I think there are people shouting after us, so he drags me over to what looks like a garden shed. He pushes me in and closes the door behind us. From the outside, it looks like there would be enough room for both of us standing here, but there really wasn't. It was actually quite packed with a lot of things and a lot of items that were made for the garden. Standing there chest touching chest, I realized that this must be the worst possible situation for him to be in right now. I look up and see the pain in his eyes that he's suffering from, but this isn't exactly a good situation for me either.
"What are you thinking about right now?" I ask him. He looks down at me and swallows, using his hands to pick up what's remaining of my shirt and trying to put it back on me properly. I think he's undoing the knot on my shirt and buttoning it up as it is intended to be worn.
"You." He states. "I'm just thinking about you." I feel very dizzy. I also must be hallucinating because I know he didn't just say he was thinking about me. My heart's racing, but at least at the moment, with everything that's going on inside of my head at the moment, I don't feel as afraid of him anymore.
"What are you doing here?" I ask him grabbing onto my head with this little room as I have to move my arm.
"I've known Tyson for a little while. I know the type of guy he is and when I heard you were going to a frat party, I got worried. Things tend to happen to girls at those parties, and they can't seem to say anything about them afterwards. Looking at the state of you, I assume that was because of drugs."
"I barely had two sips of that drink."
"I guess it doesn't take much, but you're still with me at the moment. I assume much more would have knocked you out." I want to cry. I can't believe I fell for it. I can't believe I always got tricked into being...used. I feel sick to my stomach, but I've also got to remember that there's someone else here with me, someone who is probably struggling a lot being this close to me.
"Thank you." I say to him. I know we're in here because someone was looking for us, but I'm hoping that we can get out of here soon.
"Oliver? Amelia?" I hear voices calling our names, but they definitely don't seem hostile. They seem more familiar than that. Oliver goes to push on the door and we end up falling out a little bit, but still catching ourselves before we fall down completely. Then I realized that somebody else had caught me from falling, it's Niles.
"Are you guys okay?" Hendrik asks, fear plastered all over his face.
"We're fine. Mostly." Oliver responds, looking over to me. "She had something in her drink though, so don't let her stand by herself." As I look up and concentrate I can also see that Nolan and Richard are here too.
"Are you fucking insane?" Nolan shouts at Oliver. "You know we shouldn't be going out on our own and you decide to leave us a note saying you're headed to a frat party?"
"I only came to get Amelia. None of you were home yet."
"So? How did you guys even end up locking yourself in a garden shed anyway? How long have you even been in there?"
"Just a few minutes." I comment, hiccoughing along the way.
"You guys were stuck in that tiny shed for a few minutes and Oliver didn't have you for a snack?" Richard questions looking over at me and around my neck. "I mean, look at your clothes and you seem really groggy. Did you actually bite her dude?" He turns to Oliver who shoots him a wicked glare.
"I didn't bite her."
"You want us to believe you are comfortable enough with being pressed up against her for a few minutes inside of a garden shed and you didn't proceed to bite her?" Niles questions.
I interject, "He really didn't bite me. Give him some credit guys. He kind of saved me up there."
"Saved you?" Nolan asks, "Never mind, let's just get back to the house and quickly." As we went their way back to the front of the house, I can see people are starting to panic about something that's happening inside the house. I can only assure him that because of Oliver's strength, that perhaps when he beat up the guys upstairs, they were in pretty bad shape when we left. We're better off escaping from the aftermath than sticking around.
The next morning I wake up in my bed. My clothes aren't changed, but I do have another blanket thrown on top of me. I don't remember how we actually got home. Did we walk? Did someone drive their car? I shake my head and change my clothes immediately. I definitely don't want to be in these still. As I open my bedroom door, I can already hear that there's arguing downstairs. I guess going to the party has thrown everybody out of loop. I didn't intend for anyone else to get thrown under the bus just because I wanted to have a bit of fun.
When I head downstairs, I can see that they are having a bit of a debate around the kitchen island. I go in full preparation to apologize, but that's when I hear something I didn't want to.
"He's dead, Oliver." Nolan's voice rings in my ear like an echo. Who's dead?
"I'd fucking hit him again." Oliver retorts, a vicious tone in his voice.
"That's not good enough. Oliver, why did you do it? Because he got in your way? He ticked you off? What?" I can't take this. I know who Oliver hit, and why.
"Because he tried to rape me." I say, entering the kitchen. The room goes dead quiet and I take a moment to realize who's in there. Aside from Nolan and Oliver, the triplets and Hugh were all standing around the kitchen island.
"I was keeping that part to myself." Oliver comments.
"Thank you, but you don't have to. I haven't heard the whole conversation, someone died?"
Nolan looks at me and then back at Oliver again. "Three guys ended up in the hospital last night and one of them passed away this morning from a blood clot. It occurred when he hit his head on a wall." That's when he takes a step back and a breather. "But I didn't really consider there was a good reason behind the incident."
"If you want to berate anyone you should berate me. I went to a party that I shouldn't have, accepted a drink that I shouldn't have and ended up in a room with three men who wanted to do who knows what with me. The fact that Oliver was there means I'll never have to find out what that was. The only reason Oliver went out was because I was there. So the only one to blame is me. Not him."
"Now that I know the reason, neither of you are to blame. The fact that somebody wanted to take advantage of you is not okay with any of us. But that means we still got a lot to work out."
"What do you mean?"
"If anyone comes along asking questions, we need to get our story straight. Otherwise Oliver is going to be the one up for manslaughter. The best thing we can do is talk to Mr. Pierce and get Oliver transferred out of here." My heart sunk. There is no reason that Oliver should have to pay for me doing something stupid. I have an idea though.
"The story is simple. Oliver was never in that room and neither was I. If the other two who survived, say anything about it, then they're basically admitting to premeditated rape, which means they won't say anything. If the police were to come asking, then the only thing we have to say is that Oliver and I were outside making out in the garden shed and there were witnesses to that."
"There are witnesses to you two making out?" Hendrik snickers.
"No. But there were plenty of people that saw us run outside basically holding hands."
"That could work." Nolan comments, "But that's only if somebody asks. Until then, we say nothing."
Hugh folds his arms, "Do you think we should tell Mr. Pierce, give him a heads up?"
"I'd rather get done for manslaughter." Oliver responds.
"No one is getting done for manslaughter." Nolan sighs. "Just go about your days and we'll figure this all out as it comes to us." I look at the clock and see that I have two hours before I have to get ready for my shift. I think I'm feeling okay, but I'll go take a shower first to make sure. Going up the stairs and making my way to the bathroom with a change of clothes, Oliver stops me near the door.
"Hey," He starts, ", I just wanted to say thank you."
"The only person who should be grateful and thankful around here is me. I'm so sorry I put you in that position. Nolan's told me about all the incidents that have happened around here, but he never mentioned that you ever did anything to anybody. It's my fault. The only person who is to blame is me, and if anything ever happens because of this incident, I'm never going to forgive myself. Whatever you need from me, I'm going to be there for you." It was a bold statement, I know, but there was no way I was ever going to leave Oliver in the lurch now. He smiles at me, but this time it's way more genuine.
"Well, then you're welcome. But I must say thank you for tolerating me. If we hadn't spent time together earlier yesterday, I don't think I could have been locked in that shed with you and not hurt you. So thank you for trusting me." As he steps and walks away, back up to his room, I contemplate what his words meant. Can I really trust a vampire? Can I really trust him?