It was like I had woken up at the hospital all over again. I was laid in my bed, my mother next to me, only this time Casper was also there, sat right beside me.
My mum had found me under the bushes, cold and damp from the night. Apparently she had a feeling something bad had happened to me, and just somehow knew where to look. Maybe it was a mother's instinct.
"I'm okay mum, you don't have to sit next to me all day." I gently smile at her.
"I know I don't, Leah, but I'm just so worried about you. It's not like you to drink, or to pass out, especially when you go alone to parties."
"I know, and I told you, I hadn't eaten beforehand as I thought food would be there, but when there wasn't, I was already too tipsy to care. I was stupid and reckless, and I'm sorry."
"I'm not mad at you, I'm just scared. With your accident only a few days ago, I couldn't bare it if anything else happened to you."
"I know," I smile at her and hold her hand for a moment. "But mum, I'm okay now, I'm not going anywhere, you can go downstairs to do some work." She starts to shake her head so I quickly speak up again, "I'll stay in bed all day and get lots of rest, I'll be fine mum."
She seems to hesitate for a moment before saying, "okay, but if you need anything, just shout me. Do you want anything to eat?" She asks, slowly rising from her seat.
"No thanks, I'm not hungry."
She nods.
Walking to the door, she stops, "what about a drink?"
"I still have my glass of water."
She nods again, "how about I run you a bath? Warm you up a bit."
"Mum," I say gently, "I'm okay."
She takes a deep breath but nods once more before stepping out the door.
I turn to Casper, who seems to not want to look me in the eye. "Hey you," I say, smiling at him.
"Hey," he smiles back, but then his eyes fall back to his hands in his lap.
"Thank you."
"For what?" He asks, still not looking at me.
"What do you think? If it wasn't for you-"
"I hardly did anything, I couldn't do anything."
"Casper, look at me." His head rises, his blue eyes meet mine. "If it wasn't for you, those guys would have got me. If it wasn't for you looking out for me and showing me the way to get out and where to hide, I don't even want to think about what could have happened."
"I swear, if those mongrels touched you-"
"But they didn't, because of you." I sit up, moving closer to him.
"I couldn't have done anything anyway," he says sourly, moving closer to me. "I can't touch anything, I can't touch you." His hand moves to my face, putting his hand against my cheek.
Although I can't feel his touch, I can feel him, his presence, I can feel his almost touch.
I tilt my head into his hand more, knowing my head will not meet a hand, just air. He removes his hand, his eyes sad.
"You did do something, I bet my mum finding me wasn't a coincidence."
His lips lift at the corners slightly, "You caught that, huh?"
I give him a knowing look.
"I may have told her where you were, and I may have repeated it a few hundred times until somehow, she heard me, or subconsciously at least."
"Thank you for doing that."
"There's no point thanking me," his slight smile vanishes entirely. "I still couldn't help you, I couldn't carry you to safety myself, I couldn't touch you."
"I don't need your touch, just you here is enough." I say, climbing out the covers to sit even closer to him.
"But I do, I want to be able to touch you, I wanted to grab you at the party, push you behind me to protect you, carry you outside, punch those guys. I want to be able to hold you, to comfort you when you're sad, I want to-" He leans closer to me, his eyes on my lips. "I want to be able to kiss you."
I take a sharp breath as if there was no more air in the room. I hesitantly look at him. I feel my body leaning in to him, our attraction so evident now.
Soon our faces were inches apart, his eyes searching my face, my neck, my body, my lips.
My body radiates heat, our foreheads almost touching. My ears have a rushing sound, deafening the sound of my sharp breathing.
His hand crept to be next to my bare leg, his other, brought up next to my cheek, as if he was stroking it.
My breathing quickens, my eyes wide. He leans in more, moving his head towards my neck. I stretch my neck out, allowing him to almost nuzzle it, just as though he was placing tiny kisses up to my jaw.
My body trembles for his touch. His lips travel closer and closer to mine, and I was surprised to realise my lips were already parted. My heart flutters as his eyes look into mine, now a dark blue full of lust and desire, no doubt mine the same.
"I wish I could touch you," he whispers, his lips almost on my own.
A blush sears my cheeks, almost as if my face was on fire.
He slowly draws back, giving a slight cough to clear his throat. His eyes fall to the bed beneath us.
I suddenly feel awkward and coy. I take a sharp breath and look around the room, as if to distract myself from him, to engage in something else that would end the awkwardness that has now spread between us.
My legs are pressed together, my arms have goosebumps and I have no idea what to say to him.
"I shouldn't have done that, I'm sorry." His voice sounds gruff.
I swallow and clear my throat, "it's fine."
We don't look at each other, and I bring my knees up under my chin, wrapping my arms around them. I feel cold now that the heat from my body has gone, but I daren't move to pull the surrounding covers around me.
"Obviously we both want something we can't have."
"Obviously," I say, giving a short forced laugh.
"I don't think we should let it get like that between us again, it's too-"
"Painful? Hard? Heartbreaking..." I trail off, my voice breaking.
"Leah," he breathes, sighing.
"It's okay Casper, I know." I pause and finally look into his beautiful eyes, "I know."
He smiles, "now get back under those covers, you're freezing."
I give him a slight grin back before quickly shoving myself under the covers, immediately warming up.
The awkwardness lifts, and Casper crawls over to lie next to me. But he leaves a distance between us. I open my laptop and put on Netflix. We lay there like that for a few movies, just as if we were friends who'd known each other for years.
* * *
In the light, the road looked just like any other, but I knew that just a few nights ago, my wrecked car was crumpled on this road, the moonlight giving the place an eery feel.
"I think I recognise this road," Casper says standing next to me as we examine it.
We needed to know more about our pasts, so I decided we should go back to where it all began, the party.
On our way towards Anna's house, where the party was the night of my accident, we decided to pull over. We stopped a few meters behind where the accident happened. I knew this because we could see the skid marks all over this part of the road.
"You do?" I ask, not quite sure how to respond.
"Yeah, I feel like I traveled this road a lot, maybe I used to live nearby? Or maybe there's a school somewhere?"
"There's no school near this road, but there is a village at the end of it, where the party was. Maybe you used to live in that village?"
"Maybe," he says. "What about you, feel anything, remember anything?"
"Panic, but it's subtle. The road in my nightmares is dark and scary, this just looks like any other road."
He nods and we turn back to the car, climbing in to set off again towards Anna's house.
Anna's house is at the end of the street, the biggest house on the street. We walk up to the front door, readying to knock on it.
"What do I even say?" I ask, turning to Casper. "Hi, I almost died on my way home from one of your parties and now have amnesia, can I come and look in your house? Oh, and you probably don't remember me as we only went to primary school together, and secondary, and we used to be friends. But thanks for not seeing me at the hospital."
He tries to hide a smirk, but I already glimpsed at it. "Yeah, say that."
"Shut up," I say and then proceed to knock on the door.
"Hi, Anna?" A dark red-headed girl opens the door, her green eyes look the same as they did before, but they just had more makeup around them now.
"Yeah?" She looks confused for a second, until it dawns on her, "oh my God, Leah?"
I give her a small wave.
"How are you? I heard about your accident. You weren't drinking and driving were you? My dad would kill me if he found out I let people drive home drunk."
"No, I didn't drink, but the guy who hit me did. He was a drunk driver."
"Oh you poor thing, I'm so glad you're alright. You are alright though, right?" She asks, peering around me, wondering why I was at her house.
"Actually, I have amnesia, and I'm trying to get my memories back. Would I be okay coming in, try to re-jog it?"
"Sure, come on it." She opens the door wider for me.
I peer around the hallway, nothing sticking out at me.
"Can I ask a question?"
"Sure," Anna says who still stood in the door, watching me.
"There's this guy I remember, but I don't know his name. If I described him to you, could you see if you knew him, or of him?"
"Sure," she says again, confusion in her voice.
"Okay, great." Casper is giving me a 'what are you doing' look, I move closer to him to get a better look of him, even though I could describe him with my eyes shut.
"He's tall, and skinny with a bit of muscle, he has blue eyes. His hair is a dark brown, almost black, and it's very curly." I stare at his face, trying to find the words to describe it. "He has a sharp jaw bone, but not too sharp and his head is squarish. He's also ghostly pale." I give him a little smirk, like it was an inside joke of ours.
"I thought you said you remembered him, like only met him once or something, sounds like you still see him."
"I do, but I don't know his name."
"Well, there's loads of guys like that, it sounds like you've just described every girls dream boy. I can't narrow it down, sorry."
"Please try," I almost beg.
"Fine, there's a guy who sounds a bit like your guy, but I haven't seen him about for ages. He lives at the house opposite the pond with the bench. But I have no idea if that's the guy you're on about."
"Thank you."
She pushes her lips together and nods her head, I take it as a get out kind of look.
"We should head off now, again, thank you."
"No problem."
"Do you really think it could be my house?" Casper asks once we get back in the car.
"Well it would explain why you recognised the road, right?"
"I guess."
Once again, I stood at a door, and even though Casper was next to me, I still felt so nervous.
I give the door three rapid taps, holding my breath the entire time until a woman answers the door. I let go of the air I had been holding and take a deep inhale before speaking.
"Hi there, I was wondering if I could ask you a question about a boy who may live here?"
"And who are you?" The woman asks, looking down at me from what are probably normally classed as kind eyes.
"Oh, sorry, I'm Leah. I think I knew they boy who used to live here?" I give her a smile, but it feels so tight and fake. I'm so afraid of what her answer may be, what she might tell me, or can't tell me. And from the looks of things, Casper is scared too.
"So? What do you want?"
"I heard he may have passed away recently, and I was just hoping to have things clarified a bit as he means- meant a lot to me."
Her face pulls in confusion, and quickly flashes to anger.
"The boy that lived here is not dead, he's still alive and will be for a long time. Now get off my property."
"I'm sorry if I offended you in some way, I just wanted to find out the truth about what happened to him." I try to reassure her, but her anger is evident on her face.
"Get off. Now."
Without any hesitation, I nod my head quickly and return to my car, leaving the village behind and all my unanswered questions.
"That went to plan," I say sarcastically to Casper, who was uncharacteristically quiet next to me. He doesn't answer my remark so I turn to catch his eye, but he's distracted looking out the window, obviously not listening to me.
"Casper?" He turns to me, a grave look on his face. "What? What is it?"
"I'm pretty sure I knew that woman." He says, looking straight into my eyes. I try to concentrate on the road ahead, but his gaze has somehow locked me in place.
"What do you mean Casper?"
"I think that woman was my mother."
_____________________
Looks like Casper remembered something, finally...
Hopefully things will start to clear up soon, and Casper will finally know who his family are.
If you enjoyed this chapter, please like and comment, it would mean so much to me :)
Until the next chapter my lovelies.