forty || he's right behind me, isn't he?

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the song for this chapter is "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'," by Nancy Sinatra :)





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Harry








The next morning I woke up in one of my least favorite ways possible: by a phone call from Leonardo.

He had a special ringtone on my phone, per his request so that I would always know when it was him who was calling, and it was just as annoying and aggravating as him.

I groaned as my hand reached over to the bedside table, fumbling around and nearly knocking the lamp to the ground until I finally managed to grab ahold of the incessantly ringing phone.

I slid my thumb across the screen an embarrassing amount of times before I finally managed to actually answer the call, lifting the phone to my ear, my mind still in a foggy haze while my brain struggled to jolt itself into full consciousness.

"Hello?" I mumbled into the phone, my voice dry and scratchy as I spoke, my eyes stinging under the impact of the harsh sunlight streaming in through the windows.

I really gotta get better at remembering to close the blinds before I go to bed.

"Rise and shine, princess! I have a job for you to do!" Leonardo spoke in an irritating sing-song tone, his voice unnecessarily loud, just as it always was whenever he spoke on the phone.

"What do you want?" I groaned, rubbing at my tired eyes with my hand.

"You know, you have some attitude problems. You do realize I could kill you at any moment, right?" he spoke, the claim instantly causing me to laugh.

"Well, you haven't killed me yet. Clearly I'm just too valuable," I replied smugly.

"Mhmm. Anyways, I need you to pick up a car and take it to the track where we had that race about three weeks ago, okay?" He quipped, my brows furrowing at his request.

"A car? What car?" I muttered out.

"Finley's car, you ditz. She's supposed to take it for a test drive today at two," he replied, my mind and body now fully awake from his words.

I felt my pulse quicken and my muscles involuntarily begin to tense even with the relaxing environment my bed provided. I quickly lowered my phone from my ear in order to check the time, wincing almost instantly as I saw the little numbers at the top of my screen. It was eleven-thirty in the morning.

I was first of all rather impressed that I had managed to sleep this late, especially with the strong rays of sun beaming down on my face that I am sure had been beckoning me to wake up for the last few hours.

I was second of all made acutely aware of the fact that by the time I got up and got dressed, picked up the car, and made it to the track, it would be almost two on the dot. Meaning that more likely than not, I would be seeing Finley today.

I hadn't seen Finley since yesterday, and when I did, it was in a very vulnerable moment that I wished I could have kept hidden for myself and Caspian's knowledge alone. She saw me, covered in paint. Covered in the signs of a hobby I had chosen to keep private from everyone in my life but Caspian.

No, I know what you're thinking, "aw, how cute, he paints."

No. Not cute. It's not like I had the secret urge to be the next Van Gogh or Monet or anything like that. I didn't have a private passion for art that I was forced to keep hidden in order to maintain my tough and unbreakable image.

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