Chapter Fifteen

Jensen

F inally, we arrive at school. I don’t think I have ever been this happy to get to school.

“Guys, the bus isn’t back yet, we are going to have to wait.” Cash says, the impatience and disappointment easily identifiable in his tone.

“Seriously?” I ask, my leg once again bouncing and moving the whole car with it.

Trick grimaces, “Yeah. We can’t really risk it.”

All of us groan. For fuck sake, this is like torture, except they don’t want any information. If they did, I would scream it from the fucking rooftops if it meant that I didn’t have to wait in this car for a moment longer and could go and find Ever.

I don’t know who ‘they’ are.

All of us are tensely waiting for the bus to arrive, and apparently, none of us feel like talking because the car is silent. We don’t even have any music gone. I am staring at the clock, watching the minutes go by so fucking slowly.

“Is your clock broken?” I suddenly ask in the silence, “Is it going slower on purpose? Does it know?”

“Know what?” Trick asks as he turns to look at me, raising his eyebrow.

“That we are desperately waiting for a bus to come so that we can see Ever, who we have been looking for, so it’s deliberately making time go slower?” I explain.

“I really hope that you aren’t serious right now because I can’t tell, and that worries me,” Cash replies with a frown.

I smile but don’t tell him that I’m only joking because I’m a dick, and I like messing with his head.

The car falls silent again, but this time, it only lasts for a few minutes instead of what felt like hours before.

“Alright, I have had enough. It is close enough to when the bus should be getting back. Everyone can just assume that we took our car to the game and drove home,” Cash exclaims.

“That’s a good point, actually,” Trick agrees. “Text our guy and see if he knows where she is right now?”

“Already on it,” Cash replies.

“Thank fuck,” Riot says, sighing heavily like he had been holding his breath this entire time.

“He said that she should be by her locker, so in the main hall,” Cash replies.

“Where are we in the day? What class is everyone in?” I ask; I honestly can’t make my brain think of anyone or anything but Ever; she is literally consuming my thoughts.

“Erm,” Luc says and then looks at his phone, “lunch.”

“So, the hallways should be pretty empty then if we’re lucky,” I reply.

“Yeah,” Trick replies, and opens his door, “let’s go.”

We all get out of the truck quickly, and my clumsy curse very nearly takes over, but I refuse to end up on the floor and then have Ever see me for the first time in years, covered in dirt. That wouldn’t make a good first impression at all.

“Nice save,” Cash smirks.

“Why thank you,” I retort with a fuck you smile.

As we walk across the lot to the front of the school, my excitement builds, and my heart starts pounding in my chest.

Fucking hell.

“We can’t just suddenly surround her. We might freak her out,” Trick suddenly says.

“In other words, I need to calm the fuck down?” I ask with a grin.

“Yeah, go slow,” Trick replies with a smile.

I shoot him finger guns and grin, “Got it.”

“Since when have you ever done finger guns?” Rafe signs, looking confused.

I frown down at my hands in confusion, “Since now apparently.”

The laughter from my statement seems to break the tension slightly, which is what I had hoped, although the finger guns sort of surprised me, too.

“Wow, that bike is stunning,” Luc says, bringing me out of my thoughts about wayward finger guns.

“Yeah, someone has clearly spent some time on that,” I agree, as I appreciate the bike for a moment. “Wasn’t Vinnie talking about getting a new bike?”

“Yeah, I think I remember him saying something about it,” Trick replies. “I didn’t think it was going to look as good as this though.”

We admire the bike for a moment longer, only for a moment though and then we are all heading through the doors and making our way through the halls to where the lockers are.

As soon as we turn the corner, we all stop, and my eyes immediately find her. I swear my heart stops and then starts beating double time.

“She is stunning,” Luc whispers.

“She’s fucking beautiful,” Riot adds.

“That’s an understatement,” I mutter.

I can’t take my eyes off of her. She has her back to us, but there is absolutely no mistaking that it’s her. We know absolutely everyone in the school. We have to for their safety and ours. She has definitely never attended here before, and it’s not like we could get her confused with a new student because we rarely, if ever, get new students.

Plus, I would know Ever anywhere. She may be older and have gotten curves in all the right fucking places, but even though I can’t see her face, I can still tell it’s her. Her raven black hair is up in a braid, and I remember helping her do that exact style when we were kids. She has always had really long hair, and it used to hurt her arms to braid it, so we learned how to do it.

I tilt my head slightly as I study her, there is something different about her though, and I know she is bound to be different. She is a lot older now and we already know that she has been through some stuff. This is more, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but she has this confidence about her, an edge.

It makes her even more intriguing than I already knew she was. I take my eyes off her for a moment as I look at the other guys, seeing if they are as dumbstruck as I am. Which in hindsight was pretty stupid of me because they are all staring at her with varying looks of awe, and hope. I don’t think I have seen them look like that in years, probably not since she left and we realized that she wasn’t coming back.

This feels like a turning point, I don’t know what it’s turning us toward but I really fucking hope that it has Ever is in it. I know for a fact that none of us are going to let her out of our sight again. We have only just laid eyes on her again and it feels like I’m stepping into the sun again after years of living in the dark. I don’t know how to explain it.

Rafe

S he is actually here. I can fucking see her.

I thought it was a dream or some sort of fucked up joke. Not that I really believed that the parents would do that to us. We were devastated after she left, and I think that had a lasting effect on the parents; I don’t think that they would be willing to go through that again.

I can’t stop staring at her.

She’s beautiful. She looks like she easily personifies the Dragonfly nickname that we always called her, strong and beautiful. For some reason though, I get the feeling that she’s fragile, not fragile as in she could break at any moment, Ever has always been too strong for that but fragile like a bomb. Like she could explode if the conditions were right.

She has been through a lot; we know that, and I think that it has probably changed her. I just hope that whatever she has been through, however she is coping with what has recently happened, I just hope that we can help her.

Cash

M y heart is pounding so hard that it feels like it is going to beat straight out of my chest. I can’t believe that she is actually here. I put my hand into my pocket and pinch myself hard. When the pain rolls through me, I almost laugh out loud in complete relief; it’s real.

I’m not dreaming; if I can feel pain, then it’s real. She is actually fucking here.

Our Ever.