I'm In Love With...? {Completed}

Surprise!

Skyla’s P.O.V

Sitting in the middle of the courtyard on a white marble bench next to Griffin, I pressed my lips into fine line. I was waiting for him to speak up and say something, but he looked utterly confused as to why he was here. With a sigh, I realized I haven’t even told him why I asked him to meet me here. “Griffin ... I’m -- well, honestly, I’m not sure what I am relationship wise with Sebastian Crow ... but we are close ... and you know when people are close to each other they ... they become protective.” Placing my right hand on my forehead, I gave a chuckle that was directed at myself. “I’m making no sense ... what I’m trying to say is Sebastian did a background check on you. Found out that you don’t exist...”

Gulping, Griffin sighed. “You want me to explain...” He stated under his breath.

“That would be nice ... but before you tell me something that may or may not be true ... just know that I’ve had everyone and their mom lie to me, or at least that is how it feels. I want honesty. Please, give me a slice of cold honesty ... please,” I pleaded.

Griffin looked me square in the eye and nodded. “I wasn’t going to lie to you. As for why your ‘friend’ Mr. Crow couldn’t find any records of me, it’s a simple answer really ... Okay, that is a lie. It is complicated, but I will explain it.

“My parents got married young,” Griffin started, “younger than they should have because my mom got pregnant with me. Well, after they had me, my mom informed my father that she wanted to start skating again. He didn’t like that idea, thought she should stay home and raise me, basically be a stay at home mom.

“My mother, well,” he continued, “she bit her tongue and ended up staying with him up until I was thirteen. That is when she had her breaking point and one night, while my father was passed out on the sofa, my mom came in my room. She packed my things, told me we were going to live with my uncle a couple states over for a while.

“Mom started back up skating professionally,” he added. “She began getting noticed once more … three weeks before she was going to go on some big tour, which had potential to put her in the upcoming winter Olympics, Mom found out she had cancer. It was a rapid growing cancer; doctors gave her a life expectancy of a month or two.

“She dropped out of the tour and spent every moment she had the chance to with me. My mom lived for two years … they all said it was undocumented that she lived that long with the cancer she had…” Griffin stated. “I took it hard – her death. Got involved with the wrong crowd and took anything and everything that would make me forget about her ... Got arrest more times than I like to admit.

“Point is,” he proclaimed, “I landed on the front page of some local newspaper here because  there was a huge drug bust at my friend -- or now shall I say, my ex-friend’s house a few cities over. Anyways, the newspaper had taken a picture of me in handcuffs and put me on the first page and my father saw it. He came up to the jail-house, bailed me out and gave me a choice. Either I come back to a school he was running and have a completely fresh start ... or he’d give me five hundred dollars as long as I legally change my last name and if anyone asks, deny that he is my father-”

I cut of Griffin. “Why would he want to you to change your last name?”

“Like I said, he was running a school -- Harvey Academy. If the school board found out that his son was involved with a drug bust and a current junkie, my father feared they would fire him and pull away his retirement fund.

“So,” Griffin said, “I took the first opinion. Father got me in a rehab; I sobered up and came here. At his request, I took my middle name and for the time being, I used my mother’s maiden last name as my last name. He is still paranoid that people will notice me and connect the dots if I use his last name while I am here ... that is why your friend Sebastian can’t find anything about me. There is no Griffin Finn.”