Rebellious Aurora | ✓

thirty-seven | bucket list

Dakota would never experience a life with a loved one, one she was going to marry and have children with. She was never going to experience having children, watching them grow or would never experience going to college. A wave of guilt washed over me as I buried my head in my hands.

Dakota had fallen asleep shortly after my confession to Ashton, who had already left to attend some family business. My heart felt so heavy that at times, I found it hard to breathe like my chest was caving and giving up on me. It was inconsistent but I was already growing accustomed to it.

I hardly slept and I knew my mascara was smudged and my makeup was streaky because of the tears I had shed and yet, I didn't want to move from the armchair that seemed to connect me to Dakota. I held her fragile hand in my own, her hand's warmth transferring to my own and a tear slipped down my cheek and my mind shot back to a time when Dakota and I were seven years old and she had walked waved fake tickets in my face.

"We're going to travel the world together!" Dakota had exclaimed in a squeaky voice. "We're going to take over the world, Aurie!" Dakota, that evening, had fainted and I had paid no attention to it. I had thought she was having a fever.

I leaned forward in my chair, reaching out to her forehead as my shaky head caressed her skin and I was afraid. Who was going to hold my head high when I couldn't?

"You need to get some rest," a familiar voice spoke softly from behind. My father. "Go home, take a shower, eat something and rest."

I ignored him. As childish as it was to give my father the silent treatment, I didn't want to speak to him. I couldn't even search the right words in my head to say to him. I was mute.

"Aurora, I'll call you if anything happens," my father spoke again, his voice stern. "Please. I'm not about to lose two daughters."

Something in me had snapped as I raised from the armchair and shot him a glare, my voice shaky as the words on my lips broke free. "You already lost one daughter when you didn't give a damn about her."

Half an hour later, I was standing in Dakota's room in my bathrobe. I had reluctantly got out of the bathtub after an hour of drowning in my own sorrows and I couldn't help but felt the need to go inside her room. My eyes danced around the room, the colours of pink and white caged me. I walked up to her nightstand and found a framed picture of Dakota and I when we were little, a lump rising in my throat.

I picked it up and let my thumb caressed the happiness she carried in her face before setting it down back in its place. I bit my lip, swallowing the lump in my throat as I approached her desk where her laptop had been on and a planner opened.

"You were always stupidly organised," I whispered under my breath with a small smile. "That's what I love about you."

I frowned as a pin board caught my attention in the corner of my eyes and when I made my way towards it, my eyes widened in disbelief. There, in front of me, displayed pictures of Dakota and I when we were younger, our parents, and the little things she had kept when we used to go out together as family. She kept the receipts of the presents she had bought me for all of my birthdays.

I was so blind and oblivious to realise that Dakota had been suffering so much on her own, with no one to lean on when I could've been that person she depended on. I was too immersed in my own rage and hatred for my parents that I had forgotten about the person who has always loved me. I was completely selfish.

I hated myself for it.

↡

I returned to the hospital after a packing a bag of clothes, knowing that I wasn't able to sleep tonight. Dakota had still been sleeping but my father was working in the lounge area, his head completely immersed in his work. I took my place in the arm chair and sat, staring out in the window where the lights of buildings were beginning to make an appearance, the sun rising as if to grace us with its presence.