Her Return

CHAPTER 13| Overdue encounter.

AZALEA'S POV:

ALL MY limbs have gone limp. My body's tense, breathing is heavy and self unmoving. I think someone put super glue on my chair.

Giovanni is the first one to spot me. He stills, eyes widened as he takes in the fact that his 'dead' sister is very much alive after 3 long years. It reminds me of the first time we'd ever seen eachother, except this time he looks so much more.. different. Different in a bad way.

Then, following closely after, Nicholas stumbles back slightly after bashing his nose into Giovanni's back. He curses lightly under his breath, follows Giovanni's gaze until his eyes fixates on me. With widened eyes, he stumbles back some more into Aidan who groans when his phone falls out his hands.

He says something to Nicholas to which Nicholas ignores, so of course, Aidan sees what- who he's looking at and sees me. Immediately, tears start running down his face. He holds his elbow to his mouth and starts sobbing.

Elijah was the second person to see me. Emotions swarm in his eyes as he looks at me, shook. He's still, unmoving, maybe even unbreathing.

"That hot, huh?" Juliette playfully nudges me, and in this moment I wish she could stop being so fucking clueless and read the damn room.

I close my eyes, squeeze them shut tightly for a moment and blink back the tears and emotion. Then, I turn around on the bar chair, snatch Juliette's shots, down them with a slight flinch, grab my beer, take 3 large gulps and then decide that we're leaving. Right, this, instance.

"Woah, what's happening, Azalea?" She questions, watching me slowly loose my mind in confusion.

"We're leaving," I declare with finality, not bothering to look up as I gather my stuff. I can only hope she doesn't argue with me on it.

But.. of course, in this situation of all, she pops her infamous question. "What, why?"

"Please, just trust me on this one," I plead, begging with my eyes. Right now, in my head, I'm visualising two massing hands with their fingers crossed so tightly it wouldn't make a difference if they were super glued together.

Juliette doesn't back down. With a huff, she nods towards the bar. "You stole my drink," then, with finality she tells me she isn't leaving without a drink.

I love her, really. But can she not be so fucking.. challenging sometimes? It's clearly not the right timing.

"We'll get your fucking drink at a different club, Juliette, but we need to leave, now," My tone is calm but I don't leave room for argument. As I've finished grabbing my own stuff and Juliette is being overly slow with taking her stuff, I snatch them from her grasp and start heading towards the door.

Closing my eyes, taking a deep breath, I decide to be mature about this and conclude I simply won't spare them a glance. Easily, simple and effective. There's not a lot that could go wrong.

It's only now that I realize how long my strides are, so I slow down for poor Juliette who's basically jogging to catch up since she'd barely processed the information.

"Okay, listen," I say in a hushed tone. "we're going to walk out those doors quickly without batting that group an eye, okay? I'm being serious, please, J."

"Az, who are they? Is it to do with Paris? I'm so confused- I haven't seen you this worried or confused, ever over these past three years," she whispers, worried, intertwining her hand with mine.

"Hm, you can say something like that," I flash her a quick smile before turning my head to face in front of me again.

Finally, after what feels like years of repeatedly moving my legs, we're basically at the door. With a deep breath, I quicken up my pace, and so does Juliette who's squeezing onto my hand like her life depends on it. We're basically at the door when I feel hands on my fucking shoulders.