Always There

Chapter Seventy-Four

"Goodnight, Dad. I love you too. Bye, old man," I respond before hanging up the phone.

Whoever is at the door is still knocking as I make my way through the apartment and towards the foyer. The only people who could possibly be this persistent are Ella and Shawn, and I can't help but to groan upon realising that I'm going to have to deal with those two tonight in this exhausted state.

Once I finally reach the foyer I unlock the door, groan again, and then yank the door open.

I'm tired and I just want to curl up in bed with a book and then maybe cry for a few hours. I've had a terrible, lonely two weeks without Blossom, and it's this frustration that causes me to be so unfriendly before I even see for certain who's been pounding at my door for the past thirty seconds.

"What the fuck do you want? It's late. Why are you knocking at my door like a manic at eleven fucking o'clock?" I bellow, expecting to be greeted by Shawn and Ella's faces.

But it's not Shawn.

And it's not Ella.

Of, fuck.

She's been crying for awhile, and she's still crying. I can tell from her tear-stained cheeks and her red eyes.

She fell to her knees as soon as I began yelling. She literally dropped to her fucking knees because I scared her so badly.

Now she's kneeling on the hall floor, sobbing. Tears are streaming down her cheeks mercilessly and she's shaking as she wails and whimpers, staring down at the floor in front of her.

Her whole body is quivering so badly that I doubt she would be able to stand up even if I asked her to.

It's been raining all day long, and this is proven by that fact that she's soaking wet. Her hair is down and plastered to her face and the short white sundress that she's wearing is so soaked that it's become sheer as it clings to her body.

Perhaps the most perplexing of all is the fact that she's clutching her stuffed unicorn to her chest as if it's all that she has left, even though there are two suitcases and a backpack all around her, as though she dragged them in here and then dropped them out of sheer exhaustion.

"Jesus Christ. What happened?" I ask, kneeling down on the floor in front of her.

I reach for her face and she flinches away from me, scared.

I drop my hand to my side.

And then, by some miracle, she begins to cry even harder.

"I'm so sorry," she sobs. "I shouldn't have came here. I just didn't have anywhere else to go. I've been wandering around the city all day hoping to find a hotel I can afford but everything is too expensive and I don't have enough money because I'm an idiot and I spent it all at the mall with Kennedy two days ago because I thought that I would be home with my parents today! Maybe I would be if I wasn't such a fucking idiot!"

She buries her face into the fur of her unicorn as she continues to cry, curled up in a defensive ball.

And I have absolutely no clue what the fuck is going on.

"Blossom? Why are you here? I thought you were flying home today," I ask softly. I'm so fucking terrified that I'm going to say something that's going to somehow upset her even further.

She slowly lifts her head to look me in the eye.

The moment her eyes meet mine, she lets out the post pathetic, heart-wrenching sound that I've ever heard in my whole entire fucking life.