True Identities - (ON HOLD)

Chapter 17: Goodbye

Chapter 17:

I woke up in a dark room. I rubbed my eyes to see what surrounded me but it was complete darkness. I ran my hands through whatever I was sitting on and concluded that I was in a bed. A large and soft bed with a few blankets covering me from the waist down. 

I didn't know how I got here; I slowly turned myself towards the end of the bed and gently stretched my legs out to the floor until something hit me under my feet.

"Ow!" A voice snapped. And I jerkered my foot up and let out a quick scream while I held my hand to my heart. I could have sworn I just experienced a heart attack.

It took me a while to realize, but when I did, I realized that Harry was laying on the ground.

"What the hell, Harry?!" I said inching my hand towards the nighstand next to the bed trying to find the switch to the lamp.

I eventually find a small knob at the back of the object of what I assumed to be a lamp and twisted it.

The room filled up with a faint color, but it was enough to realize that I was in Harry's room.

I look down beside me again, the light shining on Harry's face showing his shocked facial expression.

I made a face.

"What?" He asked. "You scared me too"

I roll my eyes. 

"Okay, what are you doing?" I say.

"You immideatly fell asleep in the car so I carried you up here" he says, and I blush. "Did you know you snore?"

I scoff, and throw a pillow at him. 

"What time is it?" I ask.

"10:30 PM" 

Just 90 minutes until my mom gets here.... until I leave Penn state.

I throw myself at the bed, my head landing right where the pillows were and held my hands to my temples in frustration. 

Harry notices my frustration and climbs up to the bed to sit on the end. "You okay?" he asks.

I nod my head no. 

"I don't want to leave" I say "I wish I could stay here longer"

Harry reclines himself next to me. Heat starts building up in my body knowing that we were lying on the same bed together. I turn myself away from him so that my back was facing him. 

Harry doesn't do anything. He simply takes his hand and squeezes it through the space under my arm and wraps it around my waist. 

"Me too" he whispers, while planting a soft kiss on my cheeck.

And we lay like this for the next hour.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zzz My cell phone starts to vibrate.

I immideatly get up from the bed to answer the phone.

"Hello?" I say, waking Harry up who was now slowly blinking his eyes open.

"Mom?" I say again. I was silently praying that it wouldn't be my mom calling to let me know she's here to take me away.

"We're almost there. Tell your aunt that you'll just wait outside the door so I could pick you up" she said.

Shit! 

I was supposed to be at my aunt's house. Mom's going to ground me for life once she found out that I pretty much stayed home alone all night. Obviously there was no way I was going to tell her that I stayed with a guy for the night - in that case, she wouldn't ground me. She'd kill me.

"I.. uh" I struggle to say "I'm actually at dad's" 

Expecting to hear a scream through the phone, I was shocked when my mom just let out a sigh

"It's okay" she said "You shouldn't have done that but at least you're safe. Stay there, we're on our way" she says, and I hang up the phone.

"I-I got to go" I say while turning to Harry. Pain struck through my heart when I said those words out loud.

Harry didn't say anything. He simply nodded and stood up while offering me a hand to get up to my feet. "I'll walk you there" he says.

----

"So this is it..." I say breaking the silence that filled the dark streets that lie ahead of us. "Just fifteen more minutes"

Harry nods his head. "I know" He finally speaks after a long time of not saying anything. "You don't have to keep reminding me, Hope" he says with a weak smile.

We slow our pace down to almost not moving at all. The sloppy and slow way that I walked reflected my depressing mood. It was one after the other; my father's death and now this.

And by the time I get home, I'll have the Amanda drama waiting for me... Along with my mom's court case which I haven't told anyone about yet.

It was strange how just one weekend changed me so dramatically. I won't have those constant thoughts and questions about my father anymore. I'll probably be more hesitant to go on Gmail again once Harry knew who I really was.

 "You okay?" Harry asks, waking me up from my thoughts.

I hadn't noticed but hot tears were rolling down my cheek. I've never felt so vunerable, so weak. I was never a crier, I was always so strong. But that changed up until now. 

Harry pulled me towards him for a comforting hug. He wiped the tears away from my eyes. 

Soon, a car's headlights filled up the dark road. Harry noticed it too and looked towards that direction. He saw that a car was pulled up in front of my dad's house that stood a block from us. 

He looked into my eyes urgently while he stopped stroking his thumb against my wet cheeck. 

Then, I heard something I thought I would never hear. Especially from him.

"I love you, Hope" 

Before I had time to respond, Harry crashed his lips into mine. I took a deep breath in while trying to defreeze my body from the shock. Eventually, I let my hand slide to the back of his neck, burying into his hair. The kiss became more urgent and desperate. I kissed him, forgetting about all the crap in my life, forgetting about my dad's death, and even forgetting that my mom was in the car just 50 meters away from me.

"I-I got to go" I pulled away from the kiss.

Harry nods. 

But before I leave, I wanted to ask him something. Something I've been wanting to ask since Day 1 of meeting him.

"Does this mean you forgive me?" I ask. I've brought it up before, but I never got an actual answer.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: **PLEASE READ**

So I've been getting questions on how this story was inspired since when I first started writing this book. Was it by experience? Maybe. Did this actually happen to me? Possibly.

There's a whole story behind this, a pretty deep one that I'm extremely sensitive about sharing. It's a long story too. 

I've decided that I will share it with you guys, but only as a chapter that is available to me and my followers since it's a pretty deep inspiration behind it and I'm not comfortable sharing it out to the public. I'll be writing and publishing that on this book as an "exclusive" chapter to only exclusive people; my fellow followers :) very soon. So stay tuned for that! And as always, thanks for reading!

-Anya