Song Dedication: unanswered by Hanniou
"What if we'd met somewhere else? Different time and circumstance. Do you think that we'd be alright?"
I grumbled under my breath as I tried to shove the book I'd checked out of the library into my bag but it. Just. Wouldn't. Budge. With a huff and another aggravated shove, I finally managed to nestle it between my notebook and my small pouch of stationaries.
Finally.
Satisfied, I slung my bag behind my back, and I looked up, but when I did, my foot nearly stumbled over air.
A group of students crowded around me in a semi-circle, all with their phones out and their faces practically dripping with eagerness- and not the good kind. The sinister kind. Like when a salesmen stalked you around the store and made you uncomfortable enough to buy the first thing you could see.
This felt exactly like that.
I plastered on a polite smile and tried a step forward in the off chances they'd make way. They did no such thing. They just stared, bordering creepy until one of them, a girl who was all teeth and dimples, basically leaped the five steps between us, phone in hand and leaned a little too close for my liking.
"Hi! I'm Miranda."
"Uhm, hi?"
She laughed and I cringed at the shrill sound. I didn't even say anything funny.
"It's so great to meet you! These are some of my friends." She gestured to the eerily still people behind her. "We saw you studying in the library and thought we'd say hi."
Like that's not creepy at all.
"Oh, I was just leaving," I said but it came out more of a question than anything.
I was almost tempted to call Bryan out of the shadows but since I wasn't in any sort of physical danger, it was unwarranted. Discomfort was part of the Crown. I just never got used to it.
"We're about to get some lunch. Do you want to join us?"
Miranda was bouncing on her toes at this point, her eyes round and her lips widened to limits I didn't think was possible. My eyes jumped around the secluded hallway, and I didn't really know what I was looking for, but I knew I needed to get away from these borderline stalkers.
I looked to her again when I came up empty. I was pretty hungry but there was no way I was eating with a bunch of strangers.
"Oh, that's okay. I'm not hungry at the moment. I was actually on my way out."
"Oh, where are you going?"
"Uhh," I scrambled for literally anything. "The quad. Yeah. I need to catch up on some reading."
Her eyes glinted and as if she were the termites in your walls you could never really get rid of unless you called in an exterminator, she said, "We can join you! We always have lunch on the quad."
I had to bite the inside of my cheek to stifle a groan. Thankfully though, a discordance of footsteps from the other end of the hall saved me from coming up with a friendly, but not so subtle excuse to let her down but when I saw who it was, I was suddenly not so grateful anymore.
Good Lord, could a girl ever catch a break?
Edrian and a handful of his hockey friends paused at the ten or so people hogging the library entrance. His eyes found mine almost instantly and he must've read the uneasiness on my expression, because his face hardened.
I recognised a few of the guys from afar: Ivan, Josh and Luke. They scanned their gaze over the hallway that might as well have been a mouse trap for me and donned varying expressions of confusion, irritation and exasperation.
My heart picked up pace as they got closer, and I unknowingly hugged my laptop closer to my chest. Edrian muttered something to Ivan I couldn't hear and then he parted the crowd like the Red Sea to get to me. A lump of emotion lodged in my throat and a fierce longing throbbed through my veins, taking up every available space in my body.
He didn't say anything. He just reached into his bag and handed me a red daylily and a cup with the campus cafe logo on it. I didn't take it. Edrian's nostrils flared but he gently wrapped his fingers around my wrist to push the cup and flower into my hand. Tingles danced across my skin.
I watched him stare at me a little longer, as if he were burning every inch of my face into memory before he stepped back and walked into the library. My eyes followed him through the doors and down the aisle until he vanished around the corner. Luke offered me a small smile, and Josh a wink as they moved past to trail Edrian.
I loosed a small breath and faced the onlookers again. Their phone cameras greeted me, and I knew that small interaction would be all over the internet within the next hour.
Ivan lumbered over to me then and slung an arm over my shoulder.
"Hey, Grey. I thought you were going to the lab with me today? You know, for that extra credit thing I need."
He gave me a purposeful look. I gave him a grateful one in return.
"Oh yeah. I totally forgot about that."
Miranda watched us with narrowed eyes but when Ivan flashed her a charming grin, she melted into a puddle of goo.
"Sorry, folks. Her Royal Highness has plans with me. Maybe you can catch her another time," he paused and then with a turbulence that turned the words into a demand, he said, "Or never."
My lips pursed to contain a smile and when Ivan steered me through the slim gap between two wide-eyed girls, they didn't try to stop him. We walked a little ways further down the hall, their eyes following us until we reached a hidden cleft that diverged into an alcove. It was secluded enough that if they were to walk past, they wouldn't see us.
"Thank you," I said once we stopped walking. "I thought I was going to have to pretend to read a bunch of gibberish while they stared at me for two hours."
He chuckled and dropped his arm back to his side.
"Are you kidding? They looked like they were ready to eat you."
"I'm pretty sure they were."
I sat down on one end of the wooden bench pushed against the wall while Ivan kept an eye out at the edge of the alcove. My fingers twiddled with the daylily stem. It was bare. There were no thorns and I leaned down to bury my nose into the petals.
The lovely, fresh and floral musk of the flower permeated my senses. I smiled softly.
"He misses you, you know."
I looked up and saw Ivan watching me with a knowing expression. I looked away.
"I miss him, too," I murmured. It was the first time I admitted it out loud. "But...I don't know. I guess I just don't feel ready yet. We...said some things and I don't know if I can move past it."
Ivan nodded and leaned against the molding of the alcove.
"If it makes you feel any better, he beats himself up pretty bad about it every day. I've never seen him this distracted during practice in years." Ivan paused thoughtfully. "Actually, he's never distracted during practice, but he can't even tell his left from his right nowadays."
Something churned inside me.
"I know he regrets it, and I wish I didn't feel like this," I said, "I want to be able to move on. I really do, and if I'm being honest, I don't really know why I feel this way but I just can't...right now."
I pressed my thumb into the velvety caress of the petal.
"He freaked out, didn't he?"
I looked up to Ivan. "What?"
"You know, when he found out about..." He made a circle with his hands and brought it over his head like a crown.
"I wouldn't say he freaked..."
"But he didn't react the way you hoped he would."
I nodded. "I guess you could say that."
He twisted to peer around the alcove wall for a second before he turned back to me.
"Honestly, if I found out my girlfriend's a runaway princess - which is totally badass, by the way - I'd pretty much lose my shit, too, and I'm not saying this to back him up or anything. If he hurt you then fuck him, you know? But-" He shrugged. "I think it's pretty wild and sometimes, us dudes are too dumb to think before we react."
A chuckle sounded past my throat.
"I don't know. I think I just need more time to..." My brows notched as I studied the petals. "To deal with whatever this is."
Ivan hummed thoughtfully, before he leaned his shoulder against the alcove wall and said, "He threatened me after I talked to you for the first time, you know?"
"What?"
He chuckled. "Yeah, in Salmah's. Said he'd bench me the entire season if I tried anything on you. The whole team heard- well, besides Nate- and he practically put a Hands Off rule on you."
My stomach dropped into the pit that seemed to grow deeper and deeper the longer I tried to keep my distance from Edrian.
An amused smile cut through the weighted air and Ivan gestured to me. "Looks like Mr. Lover liked you even before he really realised it."
"That's..." I trailed off, unsure what to say in the wake of his revelation. Somehow, I wasn't sure if that was supposed to make me feel any better or if it only made me feel worse. "Something."
Ivan, probably noticing, suddenly let a cheeky grin split his face in half, swapping the melancholic air for something lighter - mischievous -faster than I could blink. I pinched my gaze.
"What?"
He laughed and shook his head.
"Nothing. Just wondering what kind of benefits I can get from being friends with royalty."
He waggled his eyebrows playfully and I snorted.
"Please. You're better off sucking up to Nate than to me."
Ivan arched a brow.
"You're kidding, right? The guy that has a stick up his ass like half the time, which pretty much means all the time? I think it would be easier to rob a bank than to ask the guy for a favour."
I laughed before I said, "You'll just have to wait and see then. Maybe I'll get you a free trip to Ibiza-" His eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. "Or maybe, I'll get you a keychain that says I love Asrea."
His face dropped and I laughed again. The flat line of his lips upturned into a grin a moment later.
"Well, whatever it is, I like the colour red. Makes me feel like I'm in the hunger games."
"I'll keep that in mind," I said in between laughs.
Ivan chuckled before he pushed himself off the wall.
"The coast is clear, now, so, I should probably go before Mr. Lover sends Luke to make sure I'm not making a move on you-"
Just as he said it, Luke appeared in the alcove opening. Our eyes shot from him to each other, then back to him, then back to each other before we both burst into a fit of laughter. Luke stared at us weirdly.
I stood then, with the cup and daylily in one hand, and my laptop cradled in the other.
"Thanks, Ivan," I said and patted his shoulder as I brushed past. "I'll see you guys around."
"Wait. Grey."
I turned.
He grinned - a genuine one.
"You're a badass. You know, with the whole Apple and hitman, shit? Own it."
The stretch of my lips mirrored his before I twisted back down the hallway.
They didn't even wait until I was out of earshot.
"What the fuck took you so long? I nearly lost my damn ears because you took more than five minutes to get rid of them."
"Get rid of them? He told me to distract them."
I heard a resounding thump. "It's the same thing, dipshit."
I could practically hear Ivan roll his eyes.
"Whatever, dude. It's not like I'm trying to feel up his girl."
"He doesn't think so."
"Yeah, cause I'd like to get my face caved in. I like my face, thank you very much."
I snorted and turned down the corner, their voices fading the further I walked. It wasn't until I lifted the cafe cup to take a sip though, did I notice the rolled up sticky note taped to the flower stem, a tiny, blue bow on top. My heart tumbled into a somersault.
I tried shifting things around in my arms to free my fingers but to no avail.
My steps quickened their pace to the black SUV parked up front and now that the army of bodyguards no longer had to camouflage into a bunch of random places, they stood like an intimidating wall of scowls and scary faces.
Bryan materialised from the shadows.
"Next time you get cornered like that, I'll handle it."
"No. I already told you I don't want that." Sam opened the door for me. I smiled in thanks, but I didn't get in yet as I said, "I'm trying to fit in as much as I possibly can, Bryan, and I can't do that if you scare every person away from me."
He scowled. "That's my job."
"Well, I don't want you to do it here. Anywhere else, fine, but not here."
His disapproving glance spoke volumes, but I didn't let him argue with me as I slid into the seat. Sam closed the door and they filed into the second, identical SUV parked behind this one.
Bryan hopped into the passenger seat and the car lurched forward as we left the campus grounds. It was only after we passed the intersection did I set the cup into the holder and unrolled the note.
A pleasurable flush stole over my face. Heat spread from the top of my head to the tips of my toes in a shower of tingles, because sprawled in Edrian's endearing handwriting was a dad joke.
Have you heard about the chocolate record player? It sounds pretty sweet.
The thought of him searching up and reading through a bunch of dad jokes warmed my heart. It acted as a piece of tape over the cracked pieces and it wasn't much on the bigger scale of things, but it was a start.
When I flipped the note over though, something caught in my chest, and I forgot how to breathe for a moment.
I'm sorry. I trust you. I miss you. And I see you.
I love you.
♡♡♡