I filed into the kitchen shortly after Luke, watching his back distance itself from me as he pursued down the corridor, presumably to my father's office.
Slumping down onto one of the seats at the breakfast bar, I fell contently into silence, being grateful to have some time to simply think through what had just happened. The fact that Luke had always been more than just a guard was evident; it had been evident in the way he would smile unnecessarily, in the way he would take my hand as if he physically needed to and not just because his job depended on my safety or the way he would check up on me, even when he wasn't on duty. All along I'd been giving these things a blind eye in the hope that any stirring feelings for him would dissipate, but instead they thrived.
With the vast amount of time that we had spent together over the past few months, I was certain that it was going to end in both of us getting sick of one another, but instead I had found the complete opposite to have happened. It was impossible for me to point exactly what it was about Luke that had been so infatuating. I found myself reflecting on how far we had actually come, from the moment in which I first caught sight of him and considered him an ignorant jerk, to the blanket of safety he provided during the pure horror of the raid, to the comfort he effortlessly provided following any single one of my haunting night terrors. He'd always cared about me, I'd just been too naive to see it until now.
Luke made me happy, that's all there was to it. Our situation was far from normal, but his presence alone brought the familiarity that I had been longing for since I had left the hospital. I was more than aware that my time with him could be limited, with his work being his priority; it was uncertain as to where he could be taken off to next. I knew for sure that he would want to be there for me whenever I needed someone, but both he and I knew that wasn't possible. He wasn't going to be able to drop everything just to take me out for dinner when he felt that we needed a break, he wasn't going to be able to sit with me at midnight, talking nonsense until sunrise and he wasn't going to be able to let whatever this was between us be known.
This evidently wasn't the only problem within our newly found relationship either, with the issue of Bennett still heavily haunting my mind. I felt beyond selfish for my actions, my want to be with Luke had discarded any feelings of remorse toward Bennett.
I was also fully aware that whatever was to follow between Luke and I would happen nevertheless, whether that was with or without our consent.
"Adelaide?" My attention was flung from my cloud of thoughts and toward my mother, who steadied herself hesitantly at the door, "Can we talk?" she requested.
"Yeah," I responded, motioning for her to join me at the table. She made her way over to me, an unsteady rhythm to her feet being a clear indication for her scepticism. "As long as you promise to not apologise. You haven't done anything wrong."
"It was my fault though, nothing would have happened if I hadn't of questioned Luke's whereabouts," she argued.
"Mum, just please don't."
"No Adelaide," she demanded, taking a seat opposite me. "Let me, please, because someone needs to start taking responsibility around here. I'm sick and tired of you and your father being at each other's throats all the god damn time."
"I don't like arguing with him," I defended. "But I'm not going to sit there and agree with him while he's bad mouthing about Luke."
"He took it too far last night Adelaide, I can completely understand where your coming from, but he never intended for it to effect you in the way it did Adelaide."
"I still don't know what came over me," I admitted. "I think everything's just been building up, and I snapped. I'm sorry."
"You don't have a reason to apologise. That sight made me physically sick though, I honestly thought that you weren't going to stop. I was screaming, Adelaide, we all were."
"Everyone but Luke," I mumbled with a small smile.
"I have to admit it, he doesn't half have some wits about him. Trust him to know what to say in a situation like that, though as you can imagine, your father wasn't anywhere near impressed."
"Didn't expect him to be," I rolled my eyes. "If he's got it in for him so bad then why does he keep Luke on?"
My mother shrugged, "He's the best agent we've got and a ticket to keeping you safe so your father doesn't really have a choice. On the subject of Luke. You would tell me if anything was going on wouldn't you Adelaide?"
"Going on?" I repeated, trying to determine what she was implying, though that was blatantly obvious.
"You know exactly what I mean Adelaide."
"There isn't anything going on," I told her.
"Give over," she ridiculed in response. "Well if there isn't then someone needs to get his act together."
"Mum, like I said, nothing is going on," I emphasised, leaning back slightly in my chair.
"Okay, okay," she said, holding her hands up in defence but her demeanour shifted and she soon grew quiet. "I just wanted to-"
"Wanted to what?"
"Nothing Adelaide, it isn't important right now."
"Mum? What aren't you telling me?"
"Look, I just wanted to warn you," she stumbled, somewhat wincing. "Well not necessarily warn you, I just want you to know that Luke isn't all sunshine and flowers. His job Adelaide, it requires him to be a certain type of person, one that may not be very clear to you at the moment. His environment, it's dangerous. He's dangerous for you to be around. And the last thing I want here is for you to take that the wrong way-"
"It's pretty hard to take that as a compliment," I remarked.
"Be careful Adelaide, that's all that I'm trying to say. I'm all for you two being close, he's a good kid and he understands what most of us don't. Luke's everything that anyone could want, he'd put anyone's life before his own, but at the same time he wouldn't think twice about taking one if they threatened something close to his heart."
"An angel with a shotgun," I concluded, more so to myself as my mother nodded.
"Do you want a tea-"
"Julie," my mother's question had been cut off by a childish, singsong voice sounding from the hallway. She tilted her head toward the door in time to see Luke enter, smiling innocently at the two of us.
He made his way over to me, stilling just before he reached my chair."Could I possibly borrow your daughter for the afternoon?"
My mother sent a discrete wink my way, "I suppose you can," she said, mimicking his tone.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"The town," he replied. "I need to pick up some files from an office that your dad's got down there, so it'll give you a chance to get out of the house or whatever."
"That'd be lovely," my mother interjected, not giving me a choice.
Luke grinned at her, before averting his attention to me and taking a step backward. "I'll meet you out in ten, I need to quickly do the rounds first."
Frost taunted the landscape, an ivory dust scattering the inclines of grass. The sun was now at its peak in the sky, though this was shrouded by the low hanging clouds, suffocating the panorama with an unwanted, grey hue. Snow iced the channel of mountains visible to the right of me, the animals that once occupied the area now out of sight, leaving simply the remnants of vegetation to battle for survival against the winter months as they seeped upon us.
The road ahead of us was heavily prolonged, the meandering road never ceasing to stop in my eye range, yet I found myself grateful for just being with Luke, without him having to disappear off to another reminder of the turmoil we had been submitted under.
I cast a glance to the side, smiling uncontrollably as I noticed the mellow pink caressing the tip of his nose due to the icy air that was unavoidable despite the heater in the car. His eyes were fixated upon the road, but the slight uplift of his lips told me that he was aware I was watching him.
"What's playing with your mind Adelaide?" he said.
"My mum asked about us," I responded simply.
"She did?"
"Yeah, she wanted to know if anything was going on. I told her that there wasn't, but I can't help but feel like she knows. You don't think she saw us do you?"
Luke laughed quietly to himself, "Trust me Adelaide, you'd know about it if she had."
I shot him a puzzled glance, though he simply dismissed it by raising the palm of his hand. "I'm not trying to stop you from telling her, it's just, well it's more your father. He really isn't in the best place right now Adelaide and this certainly wouldn't help in any case."
"I know what you mean," I retorted with the roll of my eyes. "Considering that we're not even on speaking terms at the moment, I doubt that now is the right time for him to find out about this."
Luke mumbled in agreement, averting his attention back onto the road in front of him. My fingers played absentmindedly amongst one another as I watched the scene around us morph into a more urban-induced setting, with the vast areas of grassland being distorted by the distant view of industrial buildings.
"I know that you're holding back on something Adelaide," Luke said, rather suddenly after an extended period of silence.
"What?"
"I can read you like a book," he laughed lightly. "You do that whole I'm going to hope that you won't notice my sudden urge to avoid eye contact, or my furiously fidgeting hands." I went to object and tell him that I hadn't been keeping anything in, though it soon dawned on me that he knew myself better than I did. "I'd never try and force something out of you, but please just know that you can trust me."
I smiled thankfully, "I wasn't necessarily holding it back, well I didn't consciously think to do so, I just didn't want to..."
"Didn't want to what?" Luke asked, growing hesitant.
I sighed, speaking sheepishly, "Upset you."
Luke sent a comforting smile my way, "Adelaide, I'm a big guy, I can take it, I can promise you that."
A small laugh escaped my lips, grateful for Luke's brighter tone. "It was just my mother, after asking about the two of us, well as she phrased it, warned me about you."
"Warned you in what sense?"
"About the dangers of getting to close to you," I admitted, feeling guilty for labelling Luke as dangerous, despite the fact that I was far from the opinion of him being so. "With your job and everything going on, she's concerned that I'm going to get hurt."
Luke attempted to conceal what appeared to be a pained demeanour, his gaze refusing to leave the road in front of us. He sighed quietly, responding shortly after, "In all honesty, she has every right to be worried Adelaide," he admitted sorrowfully.
"It would be impossible to ever define this situation alone as dangerous, never mind the fact that we're actually together now. You being linked to me in that way makes this so much worse. But I was too selfish to admit that to you because I knew that voicing it would only add to the list of reasons for this not to work. The people that are after you Adelaide, they'll use this against us to get what they want, which is why I can understand what your mother is saying one hundred percent. But please know that I'm going to do everything in my power to keep you safe whether we're together or not."