Chapter Nineteen
Alexandr Miroslav
It was a cold day when I knocked on Paris’ door, which was why I was wearing the coat Wolf had given me weeks prior. I leaned back against the opposite wall and waited for her to answer, well aware that she was inside, and correctly predicting she would take a while.
My heart thudded a little harder when I recalled why I was doing this in the first place. The memory of Paris’ wine glass and her glassy eyes. The way she’d swayed before slipping into the backseat, promptly falling asleep against the window.
I waved Rain’s pursed lips off when we arrived back to Castle Hill and nudged her awake when she didn’t step out after us. Having to be burdened with taking her back to her dorm and ‘tucking her in’, if me haphazardly throwing her duvet over her could even count as that.
The door swung open and I blinked at the sight in front of me. To my surprise, Paris was dressed like she’d come out of an American high school film. It wasn’t unflattering, only… not what I’d ever expected to see her in.
Her dark jeans were baggy, and her grey sweater had a number of miscellaneous designs that seemed to go well when taken as one. “You like?” She wiggled her brows at my expression.
“Paris.” I greeted, straightening from my slumped position. “You look… not half bad.”
She grinned and played with a strand from her ponytail. “I know. I would say I am quite gorgeous if I weren’t so humble.”
I let out an amused breath, smiling. “I came to ask if you wanted to join me for a walk.”
She paused, hand stilling around her hair, and met my eyes to most likely try and decipher why I had come with such an out-of-the-ordinary request. “Why…?”
I shrugged. “Thought you’d need one.”
She crossed her arms over her chest before sighing and turning away, stepping back inside her dorm.
“I’m not a dog, thank you very much,” she threw back before going to close her door.
I surged forward and stopped it from closing fully, speaking through the crack, which was all she was willing to give, “I need a walk, then. I just thought you’d want to accompany me.”
“Where is Wolf?” She muttered.
“He’s… Frankly, I don’t know where he went off to, and I spend enough time with him for most of our conversations to become arguments.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie. I’ve noticed that once you surround yourself with someone a lot, you get comfortable enough to speak harsh truths and are careless to whether it angers them or not.
It was silent for a beat, and I hoped she would relent. Finally, as if a gift from God, she sighed and opened the door again. “I’ll come with you. I can’t say no to you with a face like that, Sasha.”
She scrunched her face at me and pinched my cheeks. I, in turn, kept my face exactly within her reach, in weak endurance.
“Let me grab some shoes.” I nodded and watched her from where I leaned on the threshold as she contemplated something for a few moments. “We’re walking on the grass?”
“Yeah.”
She hummed before pulling on short black boots that closely resembled leather.
Upon stepping out onto the regularly gloomy Saturday morning Scotland had in store for us, I turned off the paved path leading to campus, and instead began my march through the grass, around the back of the Quarters and along the tree line. Paris matched my steps.
For a long time, the sounds of our shoes crunching against the ice-covered grass were the only thing that filled our joint quietude.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been to this side of the property in all my years here,” Paris said.
I tilted my head to her. “Why not?”
She shrugged, the sleeves of her sweater fisted in her hands and her arms crossed across her chest. “I don’t know. I was just… always preoccupied. I’ve never taken a walk either. God knows I needed one, though.”
Twigs and pinecones snapped under my feet as the trees to my side offered their sweet, earthy smell, one I wasn’t accustomed to, having grown up to the smell of sewer steam rising to the bustling streets of the city.
“This is my first intentional walk since getting here. I used to walk a lot growing up, but yeah, I guess Castle Hill can make one pretty busy.”
Paris let out a breath that formed into a cloud of condensation in front of her. “Tell me about yourself, Sasha.”
This was not how I expected our walk to go, indulging her when really, I wanted to know if I should be keeping a closer eye on her or not. But Paris wasn’t going to talk unless I did, and it was only fair to exchange information.
“Well, what do you want to know?”
The question came without missing a beat, “Why did you lie? When you said you’d never been in love before.”
I blinked at her, and when she didn’t meet my eye, only staring ahead, I did the same and cleared my throat. I didn’t think she would remember that, let alone ask. “I wasn’t lying.” Yesterday’s events came back to me, but I shook them away. “I was just thinking about it.”
“Her?”
“Love.”
“Love?”
I shrugged, suddenly bashful, my skin getting prickly. “I just think it’s strange, is all. I don’t understand why it’s such a noble cause.”
Paris looked disappointed when she glanced at me. “Don’t tell me you don’t believe in love.”
I shook my head in denial and said, “No, of course love is real. I’ve known since I was young. I just don’t see it as a positive. It’s poisonous."
Paris clicked her tongue. “Ah. I see.”
I turned to find a knowing look on her face. “What?”
She raised a brow and shook her finger between us. “We’re not too different, you and me. I just see it differently. Where you see a glass half empty, I see it half full.”
I looked up to the sky and slid my hands into my coat pockets. “I may be a pessimist, but I can assure you, Paris, we are very different.”
“Mmm, I don’t think so. If you see love in such a light because of your parents, then that’s a point to me.
” She kicked a twig before continuing, maybe to occupy herself.
“I haven’t spoken to my mother in years because of how horribly my parents parted.
Not that I sided with my father, but because…
my mother wanted nothing to do with the Vega name.
Kind of hard to stay in contact with a daughter that reminds you of everything you hold hatred for. ”
I sucked in a breath, unable to find the words, but she didn’t force me to. “It’s okay. I don’t blame her. If she earned her peace and would do anything to preserve it, I won’t make a fuss.”
“Would it change anything if she didn’t earn it?” I wondered out loud.
Paris didn’t ponder. “No, at least I don’t think so. I guess it’s just a way to justify the martyr complex I’ve forced upon myself.”
We walked a few more steps before she spoke again, “She’s married now, you know? To the love of her life. So, I don’t think love is the problem. I just think some find it in the wrong people.”
My brows dipped because I had never seen the concept as anything but black and white. And yet here Paris was, solving my life-long conflict with the notion on a mere walk.
Perhaps she was right, perhaps it wasn’t love that ruined my mother. Perhaps it was that she found it in my father, and he was really to blame.
From what little I knew of the vague ghosts, she had been the one to follow him to America. Not the other way around. Oftentimes, I used to imagine what my mother’s life was like growing up. Had she grown up loved? With two parents who would lay the world at her feet if she only asked?
I wondered if I would have grown up with cousins to play with and siblings to argue with if she had chosen someone else.
“Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”
Paris let out a chattering breath and wrapped her arm around mine, as she took to doing the first time we went to The Gallery. “I always am. It’s a gift and a curse sometimes.”
I tilted my head down to her before pausing in my steps. She looked up with her brows dipping in confusion, her arm loosening before falling to her side.
I shrugged off my coat and wrapped it around her, waiting for her to slide her arms in before linking her arm with mine, as she had done before
Paris was even shorter without her heels, and it made the coat brush the ground every few steps, but I didn’t mind. Mostly because it wasn’t mine, and Wolf had enough money to buy a new one should this one tatter.
A light gust of air swept past us, and I forced the shiver up my spine away. I was a selfish person, and a small part of me wished I hadn’t given her my coat, but I couldn’t very well ask for it back.
Partly because she would refuse, and I would let her.
I wasn’t sure why I gave Paris as much leeway; I didn’t give others.
Had it begun when we both leaned away from Thaddeus at our first meeting? Or when she offered to dye my hair? Or was it when she picked the lock to my dorm?
I was so caught up in my epiphany that I hadn’t realized how far we walked, looking over my shoulder to find the Quarters as tiny dots in the distance.
Huh.
I needed to go on walks more often.
“My legs are cramping,” Paris voiced before pulling to a stop, forcing me along with her.
She loosened her arm from around mine and found a large enough tree to sit against. I walked closer but remained standing. “We can go back if you’d like.”
She looked up at the sky as if they shared a secret I was not privy to. “No, I like it out here. Come. Sit.”
She patted the ground next to her, and who was I to deny someone like Paris Vega.
She plucked pieces of grass and began forming knots. “So, what was the gutsiest thing you’ve ever done?”
I looked out to the greenery around us and shrugged, folding one leg under the other.
For one reason or another, it was easier to talk to Paris than it was anyone else.
An inkling I had was that it was because she’s never judged me for anything I ever said or did.
“I once fell asleep on an active railroad track. Well, collapsed, more like.”
I snapped a twig I picked up from nearby and began playing with the soft, fraying edges of the bark, wanting to find something to do with my hands as well.
“What made you collapse?” She asked, no opinion hidden in her tone.
I thought back to the memory and pulled a blank. A bullet graze? Or was it in a panic because of the man chasing me?
“I’m not sure. But it must have had to do with the sheriffs. Nosy bunch, those ones.”
Paris let out an amused huff of air, another cloud of condensation floating around us. “I’m going to need context here, Sasha.”
I sighed, pushing back to lean against the same tree as her.
The memories were becoming foggier with every passing day here.
Sometimes, if I tried to recall, they’d only come in flashes; a bright store sign, a family I’d walked past, a dog pissing near a fire hydrant.
I was well aware of what had happened, but I couldn’t link the fact to any memory.
“I was a runaway… from many things. So, when a pair of law enforcers see a young kid with tattered clothes and a duffle bag, they get suspicious… and I end up running. Except, Bend didn’t have a bus station where I was.
It’s a beautiful place when it rains. Big lakes, deep forests. ”
Paris pursed her lips into a sad smile, her head tilted as she regarded me. “Sucks you didn’t get to see it properly… Where is Bend?”
Her smile turned pleased when I chuckled. “It’s a… city? If you could call it that. It’s more like a town, in Oregon.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
We fell back into a peaceful silence, only the shuffle of leaves against each other to be heard.
“Were you a runaway because of a crime?” She wondered. Either she was really good at hiding her judgment, or she had seen it all. From what Thaddeus had let on about her, I would have to continue concluding on the latter.
On paper, “I was running from foster care. I was an orphan–am an orphan. I would rather it stay that way than be placed with the people I’d come to meet.”
Paris nodded, eyes suddenly fierce. “You did the right thing. Sometimes the only thing you can do is take matters into your own hands, because this world surely isn’t a forgiving one.”
I couldn’t help but agree, and when the cold had just about frosted the edges of our lungs, we pulled ourselves upright and made the trek back to our dorms.
I couldn’t help but shiver at the warm change in temperature once we’d stepped inside, and Paris wasn’t someone who wouldn’t catch it. She shoved me before I could continue to the second floor. “You were cold and didn’t say a word?”
I pulled my head back and my brows lifted at her audacity. “I give you my coat and that is how you repay me?”
She returned said coat and tightened her ponytail. She paused, took in a breath, and then, with a grateful look, said, “... Thank you.”
I nodded back at her as she walked backgrounds down the hall.
“Looks like the walk did you well. We should do it again.” She winked.
It was only then that I remembered why I asked her to come along in the first place, and from her sparkling eyes, she knew it too.