5

Eiling

I SAT stiffly in the passenger seat of Kayden Facro's car and let my mind go into overdrive, like it usually did around him. First of all, rewind everything that had happened in the last seven minutes.

I ditched the hotel I was lodging at because they raised their price and I couldn't meet up. I dished out a lot of shit onto Rosa's plate and left her yelling at me. Then I sat, depressed, on a bench at the side of the road and suddenly Kayden freaking Facro showed up in his big brand new car and offered me a ride to God knows where–but he doesn't know that I'm homeless.

I risked a glance at him from the corner of my eye, my pupils dilating comically when I noticed he was staring at me from the corner of his eye too. I ripped my side gaze from him, stiffened in my seat and tried to calm my raging heart.

Is it just me, or did the temperature in her increase by fifty degrees?

I was obviously being paranoid, as per the usual. The main problem I should have been thinking of was what the hell I was going to tell Kayden when he asked where I was heading to. I cursed this new lemon, that life had thrown, when I discovered that I couldn't come up with anything to tell Kayden. I would probably just tell him to drop me at any point of the road and then lie that my 'friend' lived close by.

Right in the middle of my mindless scheming, Kayden asked the expected question.

"So, where're you off to." When I looked at him, he had his eyes firmly focused on the road. It relieved me a little, that his attention wasn't fully on me or anything.

"I'm off to a friend's house." I lied easily, it was easier to make sensible statements when he wasn't looking at me.

He turned to me for the briefest of seconds and I felt my heart skip twelve beats. I had to blink myself out of it. He didn't look like he believed my words.

"Really?" Ha asked, a partly amused tinge to his voice. "What's her name? I'm certain I should know her if she's from our school."

He was right, populars knew everyone, except negligibles of course.

"I–I don't t–think you know her," I stuttered.

"Oh, okay then," he shrugged casually, but that glint was still in his eye. "Does this friend have an address, because I've been driving in circles for the last five minutes now."

I bit on the inside of my cheek dreading this situation. I needed to get out of it, quickly.

I let out a sound of fake exclamation. "Were here already!"

Kayden stepped on the brakes, bringing the car to an abrupt stop. While I bit my lip and prayed to the universe to support just this once and not embarrass me, Kayden ran a scan over the environment. I kept my eyes squeezed shut so I wouldn't have to face the shame head-on.

"Wow," he breathed after a beat. "I didn't know your friend lived at a strip club."

There was amusement dripping from every single letter in his statement. My eyes snapped open and my jaw hit the floor when they landed on the sign in front of us. Neon lights, silhouette of a half naked woman holding a champagne glad in her hand. Mortified didn't quite cut what I felt right then. I wanted to die!

Kayden let out a low rumble of laughter before putting his car back into drive and getting out of there. My cheeks and neck burned with so much embarrassment I was sure I was going to explode. Considering the situation, that wouldn't have been such a bad thing.

I casted a look back at the sign. Was this some sort of divine calling to strip? I mean, strippers got tons of money right? I shook my he'd and faced the road again, determined to get any of such thoughts out of my mind. I didn't have the nerve to do that anyway. I was sure strippers had some sort of confidence.

"You don't have a destination, do you?" Kayden's tone had become darker, all amusement left his voice, replaced with something harder.

I felt my insides melt and I bit my lip to hold back the emotions that threatened to swallow me whole. Hearing Kayden say my condition out loud made those emotions surge up again, I felt like I wanted to hurl.

You're stronger than this. Titanium, pure metal. That's what you are, baby. Stay strong. Don't cry. Don't be vulnerable. Not around kayden, not around anyone.

"Do you not have a place to stay?" There was now a softness in his voice, a sharp shrodtness. Threatening to climb over my walls and tear me to pieces.

"I–I uh, I'm not… um." No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't form any proper sentences. And the emotions we're raging, like a storm. Kicking at the walls of my heart.

He shook his head, seeming to get a realization. "You don't have a place to stay."

I bit down harder on my lip. "You don't know that." Finally, some sensible words. "I'm fine. "

"I saw you crying on that bench."

That cut my words, felt like a blow to my chest, knocked out all the air from my lungs. Air. I needed air.

"Were you crying because you don't have a place to stay?"

Fuck. How was he getting these guesses? They were eerily accurate, too accurate. Made me feel like he could now see through me, made me feel fucking small and fragile. And his tone wasn't helping either.

I couldn't take pity, I hated it. Give me a snappy, aggressive person and I would easily handle it. But once that person could see me vulnerable, I was helpless, open to defeat and weak.

I was beginning to feel all those things now. If he didn't stop, I was going to break. Like I did some minutes ago.

"Why do you care?" My voice wasn't snappy, in fact it was the opposite. All cracked up and croaky.

Kayden turned to me to bore his gaze into mine and I felt myself become sucked into his eyes. Why was I feeling like this? He brought the car to a stop.

"Because I do," he said softly.

"You're not supposed to care," I shook my head at him slowly. "You're one of the populars. I'm like nothing compared to you so why would you give a fuck about what happens to me?"

His stare quickly turned from pity to confusion. I exhaled deeply, chest heaving like I'd run a marathon. We stayed like that for a moment, him staring at me and me string at him. He was probably confused at why I was refusing to accept his concern. But I knew how these stuff went, and I wasn't going to be a victim. He couldn't toy with my emotions like that and act like he cared when he didn't.

I'd expected him to come back to realization. To see that he wasn't supposed to be around me and to tell me to leave his car.

"You could stay at my house for the meantime. "

"Yeah you don't. So without further ado, I'm leav–" My babbling words hung in my throat as his words registered in my head. "Wait, what'd you say? "

He adjusted himself in his seat. "I said, you could come stay at my place."

I gave him a look of disbelief which consisted of my jaw on the floor and my eyes wide open. Was he for real? How could he just drop such an offer? Wait, was he serious?

"Are you being serious?"

He shrugged. "Dead serious. We have tons of spare rooms that no one ever uses. And my family is cool so they wouldn't mind. Besides, you're no trouble. "

I resisted the urge to tell him how wrong he was about me not being any trouble and focused on the golden offer.

This was a miracle, it was unbelievable and it proved that he actually did care. No one would just throw such an offer in the air, no matter how many spare rooms they had. My question however, was why?

"Why are you doing this?" I asked him.

"You need my help, isn't that a good enough reason?"

Kayden was nice, the nicest in the Prime after Reece. But still, this had to come with a price.

"Look," he continued when I didn't budge. "We both know you need help. You might not see this as normal but I do want to help you and I don't know why you would suspect that there would be an ulterior motive."

"There's always an ulterior motive." I blurted out before I could think.

"Well there isn't an ulterior motive," he twisted his face in a cute way. "I'm going to stop saying 'ulterior motive' now. And I'm not accepting a "no" from you either."

I stopped adoring his face for a moment and let myself ponder on my choices. I could open the door right this moment and bolt, or go apeshit and yell at him, or I could be sensible and accept the first gift fate had given to me in a while.

"So, what do you say E?"

I looked at Kayden who was now wearing the most hopeful look I'd seen on him on his face. It was hard not to give in, so I didn't–not give in that is. But I stated my terms.

"I'm gonna pay you." There was no way I was going to stay at his house for free. My nonexistent ego would be bruised.

He scoffed. "That's a term we're going to discuss later because I would never take money from you."

There was sense in his words, the dude was fucking rich. What was a bunch of tens of dollars from me going to do for him?

"Um… okay then."

The second those words left my lips, a smile stretched on his lips and his eyes sparkled. I had to work to keep myself from bursting into one of my own.

"That's great because we're here! " he announced cheerily.

My face fell into shock. "What?!"

As I took in my surroundings, fear settled into my heart. He had parked the car a few meters from the large gates that separated us from an even larger mansion. I swallowed and stared at Kayden with wide eyes.

Suddenly, this didn't feel like a good decision anymore.