The Forced Marriage

Chapter 25: Goodbye

Hal's POV

Have you ever had this vibe that something bad was going to happen? Like when your heart starts to beat faster than it normally does, you feel a stirring in your stomach, and you get this premonition of something bad happening? Well, this vibe I was feeling slowly woke me up, and once I opened my eyes, Alana was no longer beside me. Now this had me fully awake.

I frantically looked around the room, seeing nothing has changed but our scattered clothes on the floor. What I did notice though, was my shirt drawer open and the bathroom door open. A semi-dried up towel was neatly hung over my desk chair near the bed with the fresh smell of strawberries and passion fruit.

Alana's smell.

Suddenly, I started to panic. Why? It's obvious enough, she's going to find out. I should have made a better decision to get my butt off this bed and look for her, but I remained seated on the bed, panicking like a child who got caught sneaking food in the middle of the night. I should've known better that this curious kitty would venture off. Just seeing her curiously trying to open the door to my childhood room this afternoon should have rung some bells, but then again...

I was more focused on what we were going to do a few hours ago.

Sighing, I eventually got up and threw on a pair of boxers, not bothering to find a shirt.

Walking out of my room, my heart started to pump harder as I caught Alana entering my room. She quietly shut the door and that's when I proceeded to the room that lead to my oblivion. I placed my ear against the door, listening closely. Alana's soft feet padded against the wooden floor, her footsteps becoming slower and slower until they came to a stop. I breathed in nervously, questions running through my head like:

Would she be mad?

Will she hate me?

Or most importantly,

Will she lose feelings for me?

That question scared me the most. I knew that I should have told her I was Haley. What was the big deal? The big deal was that I was scared that Alana wouldn't love me. I was scared that after I kissed her, she probably thought of me as some disgusting player. I was scared that if I was the fool I was years ago, she wouldn't have shown this much affection to me now. I was a mess, I fell for girls easily, a player, but once I saw Alana in that late afternoon school parking lot, I couldn't take my eyes off her. She was fairly young back then, not really stunningly beautiful but pretty. She looked plain and simple, but that's what I liked about her.

Alana was unexplainable. Her beauty was natural, and it gave off this good vibe where you'd want to spend every second of your day with her. I knew that she was bullied back then, I knew a lot of things about her. I knew her father, who was very fond of me. He knew my father, my REAL father. They were close until he passed away from a heart disease before graduation. I was left with a depressed mother, a young Athos who sobbed for days, and myself. I decided not to go to graduation because my father had always been there for me instead of my gold digging mother who rarely supported me. Going there alone would just make me feel even lonelier.

The name Haley was a thing of the past once my father was buried in Memorial Cemetery. My name was also buried with him. No one ever dared to call me Haley after that. I lost contact with everyone I knew except for Antoinette of course. She helped me through a lot of things. She helped me change in to the person I was now.

After I took my graduation certificate in the mail, 2 years later my mom remarried and that's how I met Sophia and Blake. My step father was just a man I knew had authority over me, but he supported me in football and college, treated me like his own kid, and made me CEO of Brougham Corporations because he felt that I needed to lead. He saw me as a leader and that made me respect the man even more.