Do I know you?

Chapter sixteen

Valerias sight
TW: trauma, sexual assault

Here I am, back at sitting in the chair in my hotel room and staring out the window. All the books I took with me are read and I forgot my e reader. I take out my beads for some new keychains and sit down at my chair again. After two hours I decide to braid my hair into a Dutch braid. Due to me being not concentrated and tired as hell it takes me about an hour to get the braid done. I decide to go down to the beach and just lay in the sun. When I go back up to my room there are only a few minutes left until the race starts. I set up my tablet and sit down at my bed. I hope he is having a better race than the quali.

After the race I walk back down to the beach and decide to take a walk along the water line. After half an hour I reach a part of the beach where there is a volleyball field and a lot of sea shells are laying around. Suddenly I get a flashback of this place and realise that I know this place from somewhere. I notice how I stopped in the middle of the beach and just stand between the people who are laying there. Out of nowhere there is a man coming up to me and I panic. I start running as fast as I can. I don't look back. Too afraid to see that the man is following me and he will kidnap me. I see a boy walking along the beach. When I get near him I see it is Lando and he is stepping in my way. I change my route and run around him. He yells after me but I don't stop. If I stop he is getting nearer and then I don't have a chance anymore. I can already see the hotel and let out a sigh. I run over the street and out of nowhere I stumble. I find myself laying on the floor in front of the hotel.  The next second I feel how I get pulled into a pair of arms. I recognise the smell immediately. Lando. He tells me „Hey, Hey, everything is alright. I am here." and I calm down a bit but the crying doesn't stop. He pulls me in a little bit more and mumbles into my hair „I will not let you go in the nearest future." I cuddle deeper into his hug. He picks me up and carries me up to his hotel room. In front of it he searches his pockets for his keycard. As he finds it he opens the door and lays me down on his bed. He takes off my shoes and I curl myself up. He takes a while to sit beside me but when he does he pulls me up to him and beds my head on his chest. I fall into a trance and when I wake up again I flinch because I don't know where I am and fight against Landos arms. He holds me tight and stops me from fighting. After a while I give up and lay my head back on his chest. I keep crying for a long time but after a while I fall asleep.

I don't know how long I have slept but when I wake up again it is dark outside. I am still laying on the chest of Lando but I now have his hoodie on. „Hey you, everything alright?" he asks me. I nod and cuddle back into his chest. „Do you maybe want to tell me what was going on these last days? If not I am telling you what was going on in my life in these past days." I don't say anything and just listen to his voice. „Well, I don't know if you have seen but I fucked up today. I qualified on ninth and ended the race on eighth, so nothing too special there. We already flew here on Monday morning at three am. Can you believe it? Carlos forced me to get up at two am to fly to Barcelona and after we landed he didn't even gave me the chance to sleep. He took me on a run up on a cliff. Even though I was tired it was worth it. The place is just beautiful and peaceful as well. Nobody up there and only you and the ocean. Maybe I can show you the place someday. We had a fun day at the beach with his sisters. The night instead was horrible. I woke up at four am and had no chance of sleeping again so I took a run to the cliff. I can tell you, the sunrises are awesome. I checked in here at Tuesday to give Carlos some time with his family. Barcelona really is a beautiful city. Since the moment you ran into me I was always looking for you but it was like you disappeared but it doesn't matter anymore. You're here now." he tells me his story and I smile throughout his telling. I love how he is always hugging me a little tighter every once on a while. It lets me know he is there and that is exactly what I need right now. We keep laying there in silence. After a while I take my courage and say „I'm sorry." „What?" is everything he says. „I am sorry for all of this." I have the feeling that I was the reason for his bad results this weekend. I think I scared him. At least it sounded like it when he picked me off the floor. He says „No don't do that. Stop doing that. You have done nothing. Everything is totally okay." I don't want him to play it all down so I say „ Nothing is alright. You did bad because of me and only because I wasn't watching where I was walking. Everything is so fucked up at the moment."  I look up at him and I see how his eyes widen. „What do you mean? You mean this race weekend? This definitely wasn't your fault. All my fault. I wasn't concentrated before the weekend so I also wasn't throughout the sessions."I sigh and lay my head back down.  „I owe you an explanation huh?" I think I should try opening up. What more could I loose. „Only if you want to." I look at him and smile. „You are way too kind." and then I hear his beautiful laugh. The sound I missed the most these last few weeks.

I sit back up and Lando does as well. He pulls me to his side and holds me tight. I take a deep breath before I start telling the story from the very beginning. „I need to start telling from the very beginning. I can't remember much from my first four years of my life but what I remember isn't the greatest story. I don't even know any names. I was living in a house near to the beach and had a brother and two sisters. As far as I know my brother  and I were inseparable and he was protecting me from everything. One day I wanted to go at the beach with my him. I used to love searching seashells so I told him I wanted to go to the beach. We went down and played a little bit beach tennis somehow, and that's were I lost some of my memories I was alone and was searching for seashells. The only thing I know after that is that somebody took me with them and that I woke up in an dark room with a lot of other girls. There was a man who kidnapped all of us. I was four, I didn't know what was happening there. There were girls from four to eight years old and most of them looked very tired and sick. We barely got anything to eat and when he took one of the girls out of the room she came back with a lot of bruises and crying. One day it was me he took out of the room. He brought into another room and threw me onto a bed. He hit me and raped me. Afterwards he brought me back down to the room. I don't know how long we lived there but someday the police came and brought all of us into an orphanage. He brought us far away from the places we were originally from, that's why I also didn't really know where I was from. I got adopted by my parents a few moths after and they brought me to England. They were very kind and gave me all the time I needed. When I landed here in Barcelona everything was still fine and I enjoyed my days but after two days I struggled with sleeping. Many nightmares and the fear of what might show up when I was sleeping. Then I ran into you and after that nothing was like before. Somehow I was scared to run into again because I was too embarrassed to let you see me like this and also because this city was giving me flashbacks in every corner. I believe that this might be the city I was born in and that I lived here. Today after your race I went down to the beach and walked along with the water line. After about an hour I came to a part of the beach where there were volleyball fields and a lot of seashells. I stopped because I remembered that place and suddenly a man came up to me. I panicked and ran as fast as I can and then you were there. After that you know everything." I look up at him and see how his eyes are a little bit more red than before. He looks shocked and I feel very vulnerable right now. He gently brushes trough my hair and says „I am here, I will be here and I will never leave you alone anymore." I huff. „Hey, believe me." He says offended. „I already heard that a long time ago from this boy and where is he now? He left or didn't mind searching for me after I got kidnapped." I feel how tears are coming  up again but I try to hold them back. He is staying silent for a little while and then starts talking.

A/N
Hey guys,
I would like to add some songs to the chapters. Maybe you could write some songs into the comments taht you think would fit to the different chapters. Thankss