Always There

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Eight:

Bryce's POV

Setting down the last box of Blossom's stuff onto the kitchen counter, I turn to my girl, who is seated on the couch, to tell her, "That's it. You officially live here now. You can't escape anymore."

She giggles, standing up from her seat on the couch. She grins at me as she skips towards me, falling right into my embrace as soon as I open my arms for her. I kiss her hair and squeeze her tight, only releasing her when her phone begins to ring from the living room.

"Sorry," she whispers before scampering back into the living room to pick up the phone.

When she reads the caller ID, she laughs, accepting the call before holding the phone up to her ear. She begins to speak to whoever is on the other side of the line animatedly and so I shake my head lightly at her before grabbing the handles of both of her suitcases, then wheeling them into our bedroom.

Seeing all of Blossom's things packed up made me realise how she doesn't seem to hold on to many items. She only has a few boxes of belongings, one of which being all of her school things, and two suitcases filled with all of her clothes despite the fact that she lives in a completely different country from where she's from, meaning that this really is all of her belongings that she has access to.

I leave her suitcases against the wall by the door to the closet, where I made plenty of room for her in the drawers and also room for her to hang up her dresses.

When I head back into the main living area, I find Blossom straining up on her toes, peering into one of the boxes on the counter. As soon as she hears my footsteps, she turns around to face me, her hands behind her back and a sheepish smile on her face.

"Um . . . You don't have any plans for us for tonight, do you?" she asks timidly.

I stop walking towards her when we're a few feet apart. I then raise an eyebrow at her. "No. I don't. Why?"

She bites her lip, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. "I kinda-sorta invited Kennedy, Nathan, and Knox over," she blurts out all at once.

She immediately goes back to biting her lip, and for some peculiar reason, she looks extremely anxious as I make my way towards her. Her hands fall to my forearms when I place one of my hands on either side of the counter beside her, trapping her there.

She flutters her eyelashes at me and I give her hair a quick tug. "You don't want to spend our first night together alone? Am I becoming a boring boyfriend? Because if you'd like, I could get really drunk. I'm sure that would bring you some amusement," I tease her.

She rolls her eyes at me, moving her hands up from my arms. They instead flatten on my chest and she gives me a gentle shove.

"Leave me alone, you bully. If you're going to be whiny than you can carry all of your shit to the bedroom yourself, thank you very much," I tell her, giving her thigh a squeeze before grabbing one of her boxes off the counter and heading back towards the bedroom.

I hear her pick up another one of the boxes before trailing after me, taking quick steps to keep up. Once we enter the bedroom I head towards the desk with my shit for school, placing the box of her school things down beside it.

Turning back to Blossom, I find her shoving the box she had been carrying into the closet. Once she has it tucked away, she turns to me with a timid smile on her face. "This is all just decorative stuff from my dorm. So is the other box in the kitchen. I barely decorated the dorm, though; it never really felt like home."

She stands up from where she was crouched on the floor. She takes several small steps towards me until we're a foot or so apart.

She's wearing a pair of tight black jeans with rips at the knees and thighs as well as a red sweater of mine that I haven't worn in ages. I braided her hair for her before we left for breakfast this morning and it's still braided down her back, though a few strands have come loose and now frame her face.