The air was thick with a cloud of loose dirt, and the compact bodies of the crowd made the already hot spring evening feel thrice as stuffy.
My body was shaking. My legs and hands and everything in between felt like jelly, making it a fight for my adrenaline to communicate with my limbs and actually get me to move.
I was running, though I had no idea where to. My feet trailed along the only path that seemed to lead to the race track, but it was still unknown whether it actually did. Every part of me felt too weak and unstable to move as fast as I was.
My mind was so focused on my destination that I didn't even realise when I had made it to a gate similar to the one I had entered through, running straight past the man that guarded it.
"Woah, woah, woah." A scream lodged in my throat at the sound of his voice and the pair of hands that gripped onto either side of me.
The more I thrashed about, trying to pry the security man's hands off me, the more his hold seemed to tighten. I winched at the strong, painful feeling of his nails digging into my flesh, holding me back from reaching the entrance to the closed-off trackside.
I wasn't certain if Zoe had followed me, but when I heard her panicked voice from behind me, the red-headed girl rushing down the stone steps, I knew she had. "Let her go! She's Scott's girlfriend."
The Italian man chuckled, still firmly gripping onto me as I continued to put up a fight. "Oh really? I sure haven't heard that one before."
"She's telling the truth." I grunted as his strength overpowered mine. "Let me go! I need to see him."
He dragged my body off to one side, which proved difficult for him when I purposefully dug the heel of my shoes into the ground. The crowd still roared with cheers, unbeknownst to what had happened to the man they were all here to see, since the race track had become one big blur of speeding bikes to be able to keep up with just one if you stopped paying attention.
But I hadn't stopped paying attention. I wasn't interested in anyone here other than Arlo. Thus my distraught when I saw he had fallen from his bike in a split second of my attention being captured elsewhere.
There wasn't much time between me registering what had happened and scrambling away to go and see to it. But what I had seen, was what appeared to be Arlo's large frame laying a few feet beside his bike, which had just seconds before been racing at a high speed along the dirty track.
I was beyond worried. His bike was the fastest of them all, speeding ahead of each of those that seemed to be riding way beyond a hundred miles per hour. I was worried what I may face when the gate was opened, yet I still fought with all that I had to hold onto the possibility that the inevitable wasn't actuality.
With the only guard's attention on me, Zoe jumped at the opportunity to launch towards the gate. I watched her as she attempted to break it open, and mirrored the way her face scrunched up in annoyance when she found that it could only be opened from the opposite side.
My body slumped in defeat, my persistent fight coming to a halt as she shared a look with me. That was our only way in. The only way to know if he was okay, and it was blocked.
Just as I was about to burst into a fit of tears, a face appeared in the small window in the metal gate. It was Tristan, eyes wide with worry as he slid open the tiny window to inspect the commotion.
"Tristan," Zoe rushed over to him, reaching onto her toes to meet his eye, "please tell him she can come through."
Tristan's wide eyes stretched even wider when they landed on me, my body still held upright by the violent hold on my arms that I was certain had begun to make me bleed, or at least noticeably bruise.
Amidst his shock, he nodded. I released a relieved sigh at the very moment the rough security man let me go, pushing me forward a little harshly. I glared at him over my shoulder, wiping off his touch.
The clanking of metal felt like it dragged on for an eternity as Tristan closed the small window and unlocked each of the apparent large collection of bolts and locks.
My pulse could be felt in my ears and my throat as I entered through the gap he made for me. I didn't even pay any attention to what was happening around me, my focus solely on finding Arlo and making sure he was okay.
"Is he okay?" I asked desperately as Tristan led me through the bikers teams lined along the trackside.
He looked over his shoulder, needing to also raise his voice in order for me to hear even a smidgen of the response I urgently needed to hear. "I don't know. They won't let me through."
"They?" I questioned.
"The medical team." He replied. "We have them here every race."
I nodded, and as we neared a commotion of people way beyond the threshold of the track, I knew that Arlo was somewhere within it. There was a barrier blocking anyone from passing through, and I was certain I'd have to put up another fight.
"Do you think they'll let me through?" My voice was a little panicky as we came to a mutual stop a few metres by the front of an unofficial medical van.
Tristan shrugged, gesturing for me to step forward. "You can try, but they're pretty harsh."
I jogged forward, closing the gap between me and a woman who was gathering something from inside the front of the van.
I rounded the open door and spoke pleadingly, "Excuse me. Can I be let through?"
The blonde middle-aged woman with a round face replied bluntly, "No, doll."
I followed her as she closed the door and walked around to the opposite side, walking in front of her as I attempted to reason with her.
"That's my boyfriend back there." She continued to walk with me trailing in front of her. "Please, I just need to know if he's okay."
The small woman stopped, her body weighing down with a sigh that suggested she wasn't up to entertaining my questions. "He got knocked down pretty bad. They're still seeing to him, so we can't let anyone through."
She resumed her walk around the front of the van, picking up miscellaneous objects and I following her every footstep. As she approached the barrier that supposedly only she was allowed to cross, I became increasingly frustrated.
Somehow, she successfully managed to squeeze her way past the barrier without me getting through. A lump formed in my throat as my worry became suffocating, her somber expression only heightening my extreme concern.
My voice rose in despair, "Please, I need to see him!"
"I told you I—"
My shaky breaths hitched at the sound of my name being called. The deep, bellowing voice sounding from several metres away, but I was too short to be able to see where it was coming from.
But I didn't need to see who it was that was calling me. Because I knew instantly.
It was Arlo's voice. Strong enough to echo through the thickness of the crowd.
The abrupt calling of my name faltered the woman's attention from me long enough to be able to push right past her. I successfully dodged her and many other's attempts to pull me back as I pushed my way through the crowd in my way.
Then, I spotted him. Sitting on the metal railings that ran around the entire circuit, his appearance disheveled and his face and hands covered in scratches.
My heart sunk, yet it skipped a beat, all at once. He looked hopeful, likely from hearing my desperate calls that led him to shout out for me, and when his dark eyes landed on me, his tough expression faded to the red skies above.
I wasted no time in running to him, colliding with him as he wrapped his arms around me and pulled my shaking frame firmly to his. A sob escaped me as I clung onto him as though he was going to vanish if I let go.
With him sitting and I standing, there really wasn't much difference with our heights at all. He was able to clutch onto my body without needing to lean up drastically, nor did I to be able to wrap my arms around his shoulders.
We remained like that for quite some time, the sound of bikes and cheers and everything else become a distant murmur as our bodies remained wound in one another's holds.
He was first to break the firm contact, pulling my face from his neck and holding my head in his hands. The brown eyes examined my features as I cried, his brows pulled together as though he could not believe I was back in his arms.
"You're here." He whispered, but I heard it clearly.
I nodded, my words a sobbing mess as I asked accusingly, "What happened?"
Wiping my tears with his thumbs, he replied with a hint of disbelief, "Tristan told me you hadn't showed up. He told me right before the race started and I...I couldn't think of anything else."
My tears never stopped. They just kept on coming as my panic and worry and everything else crashed down on me. "But I am. I am here. And now you're hurt, and I...I—"
"Shh, baby." The gentle voice calmed me, stroking my wild strand of hair away from my face. "It's okay."
My chest rose with sobs and frantic breaths. It felt like a panic attack, but I knew it could not be. I was just so relieved yet equally mad at myself for almost not showing in time, and for being the reason he was so distracted he almost crashed.
I moved my hands from his shoulders and up to his hands, which held onto my face and ensured our foreheads were rested together. I held onto those hands with all my might, my eyes pinching shut and my stream of tears never-ending.
He made sure I matched his calm breaths until I too was calm. It took a minute or two, but it didn't seem to matter. We were secluded behind the van, hidden away from the rest of the world just like it had always been.
"Arlo I'm scared." My voice was hoarse, so quiet that only we could hear.
He squeezed my hands and rubbed his thumbs across my skin. "Of what, Rory?"
"Of...Of you. Of us."
The gentle expression fell and was replaced with a vulnerable, hurt look. He pulled back from me, his eyes panicked and his hold on my hands loosening. He cleared his throat, his tone completely distraught as he stuttered, "W-Why?"
"I'm scared that I'll loose you." I cried. "That you'll leave me just like everyone else has left. Putting up with my family leaving was hard, but I do not think I could survive you leaving."
His hold on my hands grew firmer, and his faltered appearance was replaced with something much more serious. "Rory, look at me."
I tore my gaze away from the ground and back up to him, my vision becoming blurred again the moment my eyes met his. I blinked away my tears but only ended up pushing them over the edge, and my hold on his hands became so tight my knuckles were creaking with pain.
"Listen to me, okay?" The gravelly voice demanded, staring right into my soul. "Aurora I would never leave you. You would have to kill me yourself to get me to leave you. You're going to be my wife. You are going to have my children and you are going to be my equal until the day we are forced to leave this life and enter the next with each other."
If I thought I was crying before, then that had nothing on what his words brought out of me. I fell back into his embrace and cried into his shoulder in not only relief, but the feeling of my years of pent-up worry leaving my body. He scooped my body into his lap and cradled me in his strong arms whilst barking out orders for the medical team to leave.
"I love you." I declared softly, pulling my head away from his shoulder.
He kissed me, his lips moulding to mine perfectly as he kissed me so deeply that I saw stars. I held onto the back of his neck for support as his tongue wrapped around mine, my body relaxing as he kissed me so wonderfully.
As we parted, he whispered into my lips, "I love you, my perfect girl."
I smiled, pecking the corner of his mouth before asking, "Would you really have let me go. If I hadn't of liked what went on here, if I didn't want to be involved in all of this, would you have let me go?"
He mirrored my smile, but not for the same reasons. His seemed to be a knowing one, almost to himself, in a way. "Of course not. I would have quit and I would have begged for you to take me back. But never would I have let you go. It's going to take more than that for you to get rid of me, my love."
My lips met his once again, reminding me of the only thing that mattered to me. As long as I was in his arms, nothing could ever begin to hurt me. Our connection was so intertwined that not even the strongest of forces could part us.
The fairytales my sister and I would read each night to whisk us off to sleep had nothing on what Arlo and I had. Our story may not have been perfect, it may have had some imperfections here and there, but it was our story.
And our story was my favourite story.
❤︎︎ ❤︎︎ ❤︎︎
a/n - my babies have finally made up!! I really have no idea how I'm going to be able to say goodbye to these two </3
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love ya!