Forbidden || completed ||

Chapter Twenty-Two: Homeward Bound

One Year Later

Hearing the familiar sound of my grandmother's voice made my eyes snap open. I was greeted by the picture of my mother, father and myself when I was a baby that had been sitting on the bedside table since I had arrived at my grandma's house. I smile to myself before lifting my head from my pillow and grab my phone, scanning my eyes through the abundance of notifications. I open up my text messages and look at all of the unanswered ones.

From; Dad: Hey princess, just checking that your flight gets in tomorrow evening... right? I can't wait to see you, I love you x

The feeling of butterflies erupting in my stomach hits me and I take a deep breath

To; Dad: Hey, yeah it does :) I can't wait to see you either, love you too! Xo

"Aria honey, are you awake?" My grandma calls as she opens the door to my room.

I offer her a small smile as she comes in and takes a seat on the bed beside me, I see her looking at the photo frame and she lifts it before sighing

"I love that photo," I say quietly "There are so many pictures in our house of me and mom but rarely any of us all together."

Dad looks almost the same apart from having longer and messier hair in the photo than he does now. Mom looks stunning, her hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail and she's wearing one of dad's jumpers whilst gazing down at me. They both looked so young and so happy.

"I love this photo too." Grandma says "It's one of the very few where my Dani looks so happy." I lean my head down on Grandma's shoulder "But you should take it home with you." My eyes widen

"What? Why?"

"Because you love it so much honey." Grandma smiles "Remember when you first came to stay and you saw it? You looked so happy too, you look just like her."

"But-"

"But nothing Aria, you can take it home with you." I nod, letting her hand it to me and I place it back on the table.

"I'm going to miss you when you leave." Grandma says

"But you're coming over with me..."

"Yes but only for a couple of days, I'm going to miss you when I come back over here and there's no longer anyone to watch that Kardashian program with. You know how much your grandpa complains about it." She laughs and I laugh too

"I know."

"Okay well, I'm just going to go get ready for the day, you should too, family are coming over before we have to leave this evening." I nod as grandma gets up and leaves my room before standing up and stretching.

I walk to the window and draw the shades, looking out into the dull English weather. When I first arrived the sky had been dark grey like the heavens were threatening to open at any minute. I had hated it. At home stormy weather had made me feel on edge. It would remind me of the first time anything with Luke happened. Living here however had taught me that this was typical and I was going to have to get used to it. Very rarely did it storm like it did back home which made me feel a little better but I had also been making new memories.

My mother had two younger brothers and I rarely got to see them ever since they moved from Australia to England with my grandma and grandpa after my mother's death but now I was in England with family members I had maybe only seen pictures of. My uncle Jay was around twenty-eight. He had married a beautiful woman called Grace a couple of years ago and they both had two children- my younger cousins, Jack and Holly who were seven and four. I had never met Grace, Jack or Holly, only ever hearing my grandma talk about them on the very few phone calls we had a year until I had come to visit. My Uncle Jake was only three years older than me making it feel weird to even call him my uncle, not to mention the fact that I had never properly met him before. He and I got along great, he introduced me to his friends from University and now they were like my friends too.