‘They’ve promised that dreams can come true, but forget to mention that nightmares are dreams, too,’

- Oscar Wilde

Chapter Twenty-Six

The light from the morning sun rise shone through the thin curtains, lighting up the hotel room and waking Azelie up from her peaceful sleep. Her eyelids slowly fluttered open as she let out a loud yawn, not wanting to wake up at all, but instead preferring to go back to sleep. Then she realised that the room she was in was not her own, she was in somebody else’s. Tiredness stopped her from jumping up in shock but it didn’t stop her from scanning around to room, searching for any sign of life. It was only then she felt an arm wrapped around her, squeezing her tightly, though it wasn’t particularly uncomfortable. Cole’s arm.

She remembered it all now. Kelly kicking her out of her bedroom so that she could spent time with Alex before they went back home to Washington. She remembered asking Cole if she could stay the night, which of course, he accepted with that little spark of emotion that Azelie always mistook for the feeling of friendship. Then, Cole waking her up in the middle of the night, their little fight about Azelie not sleeping which went on until he finally told her to move over, as he crawled into her bed - which was technically his.

For some reason, she didn’t want to move. She was warm, cosy, and she had just slept better than she had in years. All Azelie wanted to do was just close her eyes once again, and float back to her peaceful sleep. But she couldn’t. Glancing up slightly, but without moving her body, Azelie saw that it was half seven in the morning, about an hour until they were all due to get up to get ready to catch their flight home. She had to move now or she would risk being caught by the teachers who wouldn’t take lightly to her sleeping in Cole’s room - never mind the same bed!

Carefully, she attempted to unwrap Cole’s arms from her waist, trying to escape without waking him. But her attempts were useless. His arms weren’t going to move from around her without a fight, in fact the more she struggled, the tighter they held onto her, until she couldn’t even wriggle about. Sighing slightly, she realised that she was going to have to wake him up if she wanted to escape from his hold.

“Cole,” she whispered, trying to look over her shoulder to the sleeping boy behind her, but he was still fast asleep. “Cole!” She repeated, this time slightly louder, again nothing but a few mumbles.

“Cole, I swear to god, wake up!’ She said, no longer whispering. He just let out a tired groan, mumbling something about it being too early to get up and to go back to sleep. That was the final straw for Azelie.

“COLE!” she shouted while elbowing him in the stomach. “Wake up! Damn it!” This time, Cole did wake up.

“Jesus christ!” He yelled, as Azelie’s elbow connected with his stomach, waking him unexpectedly. His arms instantly unwrapped from around Azelie waist, leaving her free to move once again. “What the hell was that for?” He questioned, rubbing his eyes slightly, still getting over his shock awakening.

“You wouldn’t move, so I had to wake you up!” Azelie shrugged, standing up from the bed and walking across the room to pick up her clothes. She turned around to look at Cole still lying in the bed, the covers revealing most of his bare stomach as he tried to sit up, his brown hair messy and sticking up in a hundred different directions. Azelie tried to ignore that fact that he was hot when he was tired. Trying to think about anything other than her best friend looking rather cute... It was harder than she thought it would be, which unnerved her a bit. Why was she thinking about Cole like that? It wasn’t like she fancied him or anything. That was ridiculous, she couldn’t like Cole that was, could she?

“Earth to Azelie? Anybody home?” Cole laughed, trying to catch Azelie’s attention as she just stated at him, her eyes a mix of emotions.

“Huh! What?” Azelie questioned, only now realising that Cole had been talking to her. He chucked slightly, his voice full of tiredness as he smiled at her, allthewhile shaking his head slightly at her.

“And you say Kelly isn’t a bad influence! You’re becoming as spaced out as she is!” He commented, Azelie just rolling her eyes at him, ignoring his comment.

“What did you say, Cole?”

“I said that you’d better leave soon, the teachers have been patrolling the corridors in case of people decided to sneak in after hours, and sneak back in as everybody wakes up,” He pointed out, the playful tone slowly disappearing. They both knew that if they were caught in the same room, they would be dead. It’s wasn’t his dad or her uncle they were scared of - hell, they would probably host a party at the fact that they had slept in the same bed as the opposite sex - but it was what people would say. They could claim that they were friends all the liked, but nobody would ever believe them if she was caught leaving his room in the early hours of the morning. It would be social suicide if they were caught. Especially for Azelie, she liked to be invisible, and being caught sleeping in the same bed as the school quarterback would ruin what invisibility she had completely.

“Ah right,” Azelie nodded, understanding what Cole was saying. She bundled her clothes up in her arms, not caring if they were folded or not, while turning to walk out of the room. “Well, see you later,” She smiled, waving to him a little bit. Cole immediately jumped out of bed, smiling over to her as he did.

“I’ll check that coast is clear,” he said, walking past Azelie and slowly opening the door, while looking up and down the corridor for teachers. Cole quickly stepped out of the way, motioning to Azelie which way she had to go before sending her a smile as she walked out of the room. With a little wave goodbye, Azelie sprinted her way up the hall, deciding that the stairs were a safer option than the elevators, less chance of her meeting someone she knew.

Azelie tried to push all of her unanswered questions out of her mind as she sprinted up the stairs, trying not to even consider letting herself answer them. Why had she slept so well with Cole? That was just odd and confusing... it had been one of the worst nightmares she had, but he managed to get her to sleep soundly for the first time in god knows how long. And since when did Cole look so freaking hot? Azelie was practically screaming this in her head, trying to figure the exact moment Cole has suddenly become this guy who Azelie though about one million times a day. Why couldn’t he get out of her brain! Leave her alone so she could live her life without questions? She knew the answer, but she refused to even think it for a second, using all the strength she had to push it back down.

She finally reached her floor, her steps echoing behind her as her shows hit the hard concrete, she was careful to check that there were no teachers patrolling the corridors. When she was sure that the hall was safe, she sprinted down the hallway to the door of her room, thankful that the carpet now absorbed most of the sound her feet were making,stopping to knock wildly on the dark wood, praying that Kelly was quick in opening the door.

It took thirty seconds for the door to open, at which point, Azelie didn’t even check who had answered the door and instead just barged into the room, followed by her quickly spinning around and shutting the door behind her, making sure that it didn’t make a noise when it closed. Taking a deep breath in, she realised that she had made it without being caught.

“You alright, Azelie?” A voice questioned, pulling Azelie’s attention in the direction of the voice. She looked up to find Alex standing in front of her, his dark brown hair all messy.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” She smiled in reply, “Although I suggest you get a move on because the teachers will start patrolling the halls soon,” she advised.

“Yeah, shit! I forgot about them!” He replied, turning around and walking further into the room, Azelie just behind him.

“Azelie!” Kelly tried, spotting her best friend has she leapt out of her bed, running towards Azelie, wrapping her arms around the dark haired girl, “Good morning,” she smiled.

“Hello Kelly,” Azelie replied, smiling slightly at her best friend.

“Kel, I’m gonna have to go before the teachers go out on patrol,” Alex said, sounding sad about having to leave Kelly. Kelly just nodded, understanding that if Alex was caught they were both dead. She slowly unwrapped her arms from around him as they said their goodbyes, following him to the door of the room, kissing him in the door way as she let him go.

“I’m gonna go have a shower,” Kelly said as Alex closed the door behind him, quickly walking over to her pile of stuff and picking up some of her clothes as she made her way into the bathroom without saying another word. Azelie wasn’t quite sure if she was just sad because Alex had left or if it was something else, but she decided just to leave it until later to figure it out.

Azelie walked over to her bed sitting on it. She quickly grabbed her bag from beside her mattress and began to dig inside searching for her phone. Just as she expected, three missed calls from Ted, the last one only half an hour ago. Azelie had figured that Ted would be wanting to call her early in the morning to make sure everything was alright for her flight home. She was actually surprised that he hadn’t just flown out to San Francisco to check over the plane himself.

She pressed on the call button as she put the phone up to her ear, listening to it ring until Ted picked up.

“AZElIE!” He shouted down the phone, “Oh my god! I was so worried about you! I was like five minutes away from calling the teachers to check on you!” he added, Azelie rolling her eyes at her uncle.

“Well, that would have been pointless because they would have been asleep too!” she smiled slightly, imagining her uncle fretting over her like a mother hen. She really did wonder about Ted sometimes.

“Well, they would soon be awake and checking on you!” He replied, not caring in the slightest if he would have woken them up or not.

“You’re crazy,”

“All the best people are, Azelie! I thought you would have realised that by now!” He replied, his voice full of humor. “Anyway, I was just checking that you were okay and that you weren’t dying or anything,”

“Yeah I’m fine, you okay to pick me up around two?” Azelie questioned.

“I’ll be there! But I do have a killer headache so I’ll won’t be going to the gallery today,” Ted said. This shocked Azelie; Ted didn’t stay off work for just anything. He loved the gallery and really didn’t trust anybody else to run it right even for the day. Whenever he had somebody else looking after it if he was away, he would call every hour on the hour for the entire day until they closed up, ensuring each minor detail was right so the whole thing didn’t ‘fall into complete chaos’ as he put it.

“Is it really that bad?” Azelie asked, now concerned for her uncle. It had to be really painful for Ted to stay off for just a headache.

“Yeah, it’s been getting worse for days and I’ve got an appointment for the doctors later,”

“I could always just get Cole to drive me home, Ted. You don’t have to-”

“No, no, no! It’s fine! I’ll be there, Azelie! Don’t you worry,” He replied. Ted could be on the floor dying and he would still drive to pick Azelie up before heading to the hospital. “Anyway, I’ll see you at the airport at two,” Ted added, bringing the conversation to an end

“Alright see you then,” She said.

“Love you, bye!” He quickly replied as he hung up the phone.

“You okay?” Kelly asked, as she stepped out of the bathroom, her hair soaking from her shower. Azelie just lay on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling and then turned to look over at Kelly. And with a fake smile playing on her lips, she nodded her head and lied.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she spoke, hoping that Kelly would believe the lie. Azelie had a bad feeling about something, but she wasn’t quite sure what.

The feeling bugged her for most of the morning, but in the chaos of the airport, she soon forgot about it and instead concentrated on getting home in one piece. She sat next to Cole all of the flight home, just talking to him as if everything was fine.

“Ted! I’m home!” She shouted as she walked into the door, turning around to see Cole’s truck speeding away. Ted hadn’t come to the airport to pick her up, so Cole had driven her home instead. She was surprised that Ted hadn’t come to pick her up, but she just assumed that he had gone back to bed after he had called earlier and tried to sleep his headache off, completely forgetting about the time. She dumped her suitcase at the front door, pushing her shoes off and leaving them beside her bags.

Galileo walked out of the kitchen, running up to Azelie, consistently meowing as he weaved in and out of her legs, distracting Azelie slightly from her thoughts of Ted.

“Hey Galileo! Good to see Ted didn’t kill you while I was away,” she smiled, remembering how much Ted hated her cat. She picked him up from the floor, holding him in her arms. The cat continued to meow, Azelie mistaking the meowing as hunger. “Ted must have forgotten to feed you this morning! Come on, let’s get you some food,” She added as she walked into the kitchen.

Azelie wasn’t paying attention was she walked into the room, concentrating on the cat rather than what was in front of her. Suddenly, she slipped on the floor, sending Azelie flying onto the hardwood floor, hitting her head on the hard floor as she did.

Everything around her went fuzzy for a moment, but she managed to shake it off, and instead tried to concentrate on what she had slipped on. Was there a leak or something? Has the dishwasher or washing machine broken and flooded the kitchen. As she looked down she got her answer.

Blood. Everywhere. The entire wooden floor was covered in a pool of red blood, and now Azelie’s clothes were soaked with it, too. Somehow she managed to keep the contents of her stomach down as she looked across the floor, finding Ted lying motionless in the middle of the pool.

A scream was let out, but Azelie couldn’t hear it, her entire world had stopped, everything stopping in it’s place. Time. Her heart. Everything.

“Oh god,” she cried, trying to run over to her uncle’s body, slipping once again on the blood, but this time she didn’t care. “Oh god, oh god! Ted! Wake up Teddy! Wake up!” She cried, tears rolling down her cheeks. She didn’t know what to do first, if she should turn him over, check if he was breathing or not. Everything was just a blur as her stomach threatened to give in.

“I’m so sorry, so so sorry! This is my fault! Oh my god, Ted wake up, please just wake up,” She sobbed as she tried to turn him around, not knowing really what to do. She tried to check for a pulse, but she was shaking too much to get a heartbeat.

She suddenly realised that she had to call an ambulance, they would know what to do. She ran over to the other side of the kitchen, sobbing uncontrollably as she did. A couple of minutes later and help was on the way. Azelie was trying to do exactly what the person on the phone had told her to do.

“Stay with me Ted. Please don’t leave me, please. I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry! Please, Ted pleased,” she begged as she waited for help, praying over and over in her head, hoping that she wasn’t too late.

This is where I run and hide ;) Next upload will be Sunday if you keep it under 100 on teen fiction, or Monday if it goes over :)