Page 19 of Knight
CHAPTER EIGHT
Gwen
I was sitting on the couch chatting with Tara when I heard the key in the lock. I knew it was Knight and as much as I wanted to jump up and dash to my room, I couldn’t. So I held my ground and kept talking to Tara like I wasn’t even fazed that Knight had come home.
When in reality, I was super shocked. I knew he’d been avoiding me. He wouldn’t normally come in until late and he would often leave before I even got up.
It hurt, I wouldn’t lie, but he had made his feelings known all those years ago so I should have expected the distance he kept between us.
“Oh, hello,” Tara said in a surprised, perky voice as she turned to see him walk in. For some reason, it grated on my nerves but I did my best to swallow the feeling down.
“Hey,” Knight grunted out, not even giving her a second look.
On the one hand, I was glad that he wasn’t making eyes at her but on the other, I was pissed that he was being openly rude.
“Well, um, I should get out of your hair then,” Tara said jumping up and grabbing her books. His rudeness and dismissal was so blatant that I was sure she didn’t miss the way the air turned to ice in the room. “I’ll see you in class.” She darted off to the door before I even had a chance to tell her bye.
That was it. I’d had enough. Or maybe it was lack of a decent nights sleep, but I snapped.
“What the hell is your problem?” I barked.
Knight froze, halfway to his bedroom and his escape from me. He didn’t move his head as his eyes cut over to me. Suddenly I was so cold and all it took was one look from him.
I stood there waiting for an answer even though I knew I wasn’t going to get one.
“This isn’t working,” I finally said because I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to feel comfortable in my own living environment. “I’m just going to tell my dad that I want my own place and I’ll be out of your fucking hair.”
I didn’t wait for a reply, one that I probably wasn’t going to get anyway. I stormed off and slammed the door closed behind me once I was in the safety of my room. I leaned against the solid wood and tried to hold my tears back. I knew he wasn’t the same boy that I’d once known but that didn’t stop hope from keeping the flame alive in my heart.
All I wanted to do was crawl under my covers and hide. And really, I was two seconds away from that when I heard his feet on the floor just outside of my room. I didn’t breathe as I waited for him to knock or say something. Part of me thought he wouldn’t even do either of those things. That instead, he would stand there for a long moment and then turn and leave, and I would call him a coward in my mind.
“Gwen…” He sighed and still I held my breath, waiting for the words that would change this whole hostel dynamic we had going on.
There was only the thin layer of the door between us but it felt like so much more. It felt like we were, and had been for a long time, a world away. I knew at some point one of us was going to have to break the ice, but I wanted it to be him since he had been the one to freeze me out in the first place.
“I’m going to bed,” he finally said and I wanted to scream. “This place is yours too, don’t feel like you have to hide in there or that you can’t have people over.”
With that, I heard his steps retreating and I had no idea what to even think. He didn’t tell me that he wanted me to stay yet, he didn’t tell me to get out. Frustrated was a light word to use for how I felt.
If I wanted things to change then I knew I was going to have to be the one to do it. I felt so torn on the whole Knight thing. I wanted the old Knight back yet, I wanted to get to know the man that I now shared a space with. I knew we couldn’t ever go back to how thing were when we were kids, but that didn’t stop the child in me from hoping.
“Knight?” I called out through the door. I imagined that he hadn’t gotten far and when the sounds of his boots walking on the hardwood floor halted, I knew he had heard me. “I can’t do this anymore. And I know you don’t want to either.”
I was met with silence. The air so still that I felt like I was suffocating. With a shaky hand, I grabbed the doorknob and twisted. The door opened and I saw him standing there, his back to me and his shoulders hunched in what I would have assumed was defeat.
“I won’t live like this. I deserve better,” I said as I stared at the back of his neck, willing him to turn and face me. But then again, I might have lost all my courage once I looked into his eyes. “I don’t know what I did to you, but it’s not fair to either of us to live in a place where neither of us feels like we want to be here. I’m sorry my dad asked this of you. I wished he hadn’t. God knew if I had any idea I would have done my best to stop him. Then again, I’m sure he suspected I would and that was the reason he didn’t even tell me beforehand. But I can’t, no, I won’t live like this.”
There. I’d said my peace and I resigned to fate that Knight was my past and that was all he would ever be. I was prepared to let him go because that was all I could do. I thought I had before, but at that moment I realized that I had only lived in denial of the past.
“Don’t go.” His words came out so low that I wasn’t sure I’d even heard him right.
“Why?” I asked because that simply wasn’t good enough. “Because you’re afraid of my dad or because you want me here.”
His body jerked with a silent, sarcastic chuckle before he turned to face me. There was so much anguish and pain etched on his face that it pulled at my heartstrings.
“Because I don’t want you to go,” he said and his eyes pinned me as though he was trying to tell me so much more than his words.
“Something has got to give here, Knight,” I whispered as I felt my feet move to close the distance between us. I stopped when I had no more room to move forward and looked up at him. “What happened to us?”
