Facade

Chapter 14

Edited. 

I look at my mobile screen and wonder if I should open it or not. 

"You coming Bree?" Kayla asks once she notices I'm not walking anymore. 

"Yeah. Just give me a second?" I say as I finally build up the courage to open the text message. I open it to find a picture of Mason and I getting out of a car and going into the airport while leaving our home town. 

"What the hell?" I whisper to myself as Mason heads towards me. 

"Aubrey? Is everything okay?" He asks. 

"Yeah." I say, biting my lip. "Why wouldn't it be?"

He eyes me suspiciously then grabs the mobile phone from my hand. 

"Mas-" I begin to say but I knew he had seen the message.

His eyes widen as his eyes view the photo from last night. 

He looks at me with worry and then hugs me. "Everything is going to be okay. I won't let him hurt you. Okay?" He says. I nod, while smiling and go to my room to find Kayla already lying on my bed. 

"Finally you are here." She said sighing dramatically. 

I laugh then say, "You know you don't have to help me if you don't want to." 

She shrugs and then says, "I want to help. The faster we finish unpacking the faster we can go shopping. I heard people say that the shopping centres here are awesome." I nod in agreement. 

I take out my iPod and play a Lykke Li song on full volume. Halfway through unpacking I look at Kayla who was busy setting my wardrobe and asked, "So what's your story?"

"What?" She says confused. 

"I mean your life before coming to University." I say. 

She looks at me and sighs. Her eyes filled with an unknown emotion. 

"If you don't want to tell me it's okay." I continue carefully. 

She shakes her head and then says, "No. It's fine. It's better to tell someone than keep it all bottled up." 

She takes a shaky breath and then continues, "Before coming to college my life was practically a living hell. It wasn't that we were having financial issues, but still. I was a loner whilst Adam was the star football player; girls would be my friends only to get close to Adam and then would stab me in the back and leave me all alone. Our parents were very rich businessmen which also meant they made a lot of enemies and got a lot of threats. We didn't think anything of it until one night a man broke in and killed them both. Aiden and I had heard voices and hid in his closet. No one knew that my parents were murdered, or rather my aunt told everyone they died in a car accident. We moved in with our aunty later on and the fact that I didn't have any friends or parents hit me quite hard and I turned mute for months. Then one night Aiden came into my room and talked some sense into me. I thought University would be a fresh start for me, right? So I promised myself to only have a few real friends rather than loads of fake ones." 

By the time she finished my face was streaked with stray tears and I hurriedly got up off my bed and tackled her into a tight hug. 

"I am so so sorry." I say. 

She hugs me back and we break apart. She wipes her cheeks and says, "So you heard mine, what's yours?" 

I awkwardly look to the ground and take a deep breath and tell her about Xavier and everything he did to me and the fact that he is probably out there somewhere looking for me. I even showed her the creepy text I received a few hours ago.