“Well, you will just have to think about me while you’re away. I am sure that it won’t be that hard to miss me. I miss you.”
She came in for another kiss and he tried to block it, but there was no way that he was going to be able to. Not without her seeing how disgusted he was of her.
He didn’t want to have that conversation, the one that they were dying to have at some point. Some point very soon. Nathan just had to get the guts up to go against his family to do so. Nothing major would happen, other than being shunned from everyone that he’d grown up with and who shared the same blood as him.
She purred as she pulled away.
“You really do taste good. Are you sure you don’t have a few minutes to give little to me?”
It was supposed to be sexy. Nathan knew that's what she was going for. To be real, she was beautiful, but there was a coldness about her that no amount of makeup or beauty could help. Her bad attitude ruined any kind of true beauty that she had. Her perfect face was always scrunched up in a scowl.
Once she walked away, he cursed fate like he had done many times before. If this was what fate was, he didn't want any part of it.
Chapter 3
Laurel was going to miss London. It was the center of everything when she was there, but now there was no point in her staying. She had nothing to keep her there. If Nathan wasn't already promised and her best friend hadn’t taken off to California, maybe she would have stayed around. But as it stood, there was no reason for her to.
So, she went home. She took the bus because she didn't have a car. A person's own transportation wasn't necessary in the city. They had so many buses and trains and different ways to get around, that it wasn't necessary. Back in Brighton, though, she was going to need to get something to putter around in. It was strange to think of the normal and the mundane. No more dragon flights for her.
That's what her life was, though, and she had to come to grips with it. No matter how much she wanted to be part of that world, she just wasn't. She was human. One way or another, Laurel was going to have to accept that, even if it felt harder than she would have imagined.
When she got home, there was a familiarity that she had missed. The last few years that she had traveled around with Mallory had been full of adventure. But they had also been full of unsureness and the idea that she never really knew what was going to come next. It was exciting, but at the same time, it was exhausting. She tried to tell herself that this would be better.
She would have all this time to do what she wanted to do. But what did she want to do? She wanted to be with Nathan. She wanted to be part of his world. It just wasn't meant to be.
Her parents were a little surprised because she didn't give them much warning before she popped up, but they quickly recovered and showed her to her old room. They hadn't touched it since the last time she had stayed there when she was about eighteen. How strange it was to be back.
She sat on the bed and looked around at the pictures that had meant so much to her just a few years ago. She had a few cute guys and a couple of bands, but she couldn't think of the last time that she had watched the show with the cute guys or listened to a song from any of the bands featured.
It was hard for her to think of any of those things as important, anymore. How could music be important when she knew that dragons were real? How could she live her life, knowing that there was another option?
“There isn't another option for you, Laurel.” She said that out loud to herself several times over the next few days. The more she settled into her old life, the more she missed the one that she had left behind. It was hard to go from limitless possibilities, to trying to find a job in a small town. It felt so meaningless.
*
She had finally got a job at a local diner in few days, but Laurel knew that she had to figure something else out. It wasn't going to do. If she had to go back to her old life, there was no way that she was going to be able to keep it as bland as it had been before. She might not be a shifter or witch, but that didn't mean that she had to have a boring life, right?
Laurel really wasn't sure if that was the case or not, but she set about to change everything. Now that she wasn't running with shifters and living in that crazy world, she had to find something in the one she was presently living in to make her happy. It took her a lot of thought and almost a couple of weeks before she realized that she just needed to go back to her original plan. Before she had met up with her best friend Mallory, who was a dragon shifter, and jumped into her world. Laurel had been set to go back to college.
*
The thought of going to college kept her going and it gave her something to focus on. She talked to the college that she’d wanted to go before, and they were eager to get her set up to finish her degree. Laurel hadn't told anybody about her plans, but when she was accepted and just needed to do the paperwork to finish it, her parents were finally brought into the loop. They didn't react the way she thought they would, though. They actually started acting really weird, and she couldn't understand why.
“College? Laurel, why do you want to go to college so soon? You just got back.”
“Well, Mom, I don't want to work at the diner forever. You know that's all I'm going to get around here, if I don't get some kind of education. I would get my Associate’s. That's probably enough to get my foot in the door or to transfer to a better college. I can stay local and finish up my studies.”
It was kind of strange, because Laurel actually thought that her parents would be happy about it. They had lamented about how she needed to pick a direction with her life and all this and that, but when she picked one, they didn't like it.
Why didn’t they like it? What parent doesn't want their kids to go back to school and get their education?
“I just don't think that you should go so soon. Give yourself some time to adjust to being outside of London. I'm sure that life was a lot different for you there.”
I kind of chuckled a little bit. My mom had no idea how different it was. Neither one of them did. Dad took business trips into the city quite a bit, but Mom only went on special occasions and even then, she didn't like to go very often. We're talking tenth anniversary kind of celebration.
“It is a lot different, but I don't want to just sit around the house, either. I thought you'd be happy about this.”
“Sure, honey, of course, we're happy for you. I just don't want to lose you again, already.”
