Chapter 9: Careful

~Malia~

My mind was still reeling from the knowledge that Louis was none other than Prince Louis, heir to the royal throne.  I wanted to vomit when Lizzy finally made me connect the dots, and she could tell how badly it had thrown me for a loop.

"Are you okay?  You look a little green..."

I had a little giggle at that and she smiled in relief a bit when she saw that I had relaxed enough to laugh at her joke.

"I'll be fine, I just need a second to digest this...news."

"Totally understandable.  I mean, I'm sorry for telling you like that.  I thought you already knew..."

Flashes of his strong, muscular arms and tall physique swam through my mind in that moment and I had to force myself to shut off the mental picture before I drove myself absolutely insane with all of the things I'd said to him, and the things he'd said to me.

It made sense, then.  All the things he'd said and done since I met him.  The incident in the hallway earlier that day rushed through my mind and I remembered how he had cornered me up against the wall and demanded what I wanted from him.

I almost empathized with him, then, wondering what it must have felt like having to look over your shoulder anytime you had a new best friend, wondering if they only wanted to hang out with you because you were a royal.

At least I had gotten a somewhat normal childhood; until Daniel and my mother passed away I had been relatively happy.  Of course, I had wondered who and where my birth father was, but with Robert being a good enough substitute back then, I had a father figure that I could look up to.

But all of that was in the past.  That all changed the second my mother's heart ceased to continue beating.

"You still with me?"

I shook my head and realized I'd gone off on one of my inner monologue tangents, not paying attention to anything else happening around me.

"Yeah, sorry. What were you saying?"

"I was just asking if you knew who your real father was," she said and I shrugged my shoulders, hoping that she wouldn't press the issue.

"Why?" I asked her, curious why she even paid that much attention to that small detail at the beginning of my grueling story.

"Well, your mother was practically royalty.  What if she got with someone of equal stature enough to challenge the throne today with their child: you?"

"That's ridiculous.  I was born out of wed lock or something right?   Doesn't that make me a bastard or something?"

She snorted in laughter.

"Hardly, the rules aren't that extreme nowadays.  If you were born of two of such strong noble descent, you could have a pretty clear path to the throne."

I rolled my eyes.

"As if I would ever want that.  It's the last thing I'd ever even think about, let alone put enough thought and action into it that it would actually become a reality.  No, Prince Louis can take that throne and all of the fun that I'm sure comes right along with it," I told her with as much sass and irritation as I could muster.

"Okay okay, I was just saying that it'd be pretty cool, that's all. I wasn't telling you that you should do it.  Now come on, I'm hungry."

I followed her into the kitchen and we chatted on and off for a few hours after we ate about our favorite things that we enjoyed: tv shows, movies, books, everything under the sun.

Before I knew it, it was almost eight o'clock and I had about a million missed calls from not only my driver, but also from Mar and both of my grandparents, which was surprising.  They had barely ever called me on their personal phones before.

I called Mar almost immediately.

"Mar, what's up?"

"Oh thank god you're alright.  When we heard the news and your driver told us he couldn't get in touch with you after you decided to go to your friend's house after school, we thought the absolute worst.  Tell me where you are and we'll come get you ourselves."

I told her the address after I asked Lizzy where her house was located and then I remembered what she'd said.

"Wait, why were you so worried in the first place?  What news?"

I heard an audible sigh on the other side of the line, it was reminiscent of the noise everyone made before they told anyone bad news, like they were pausing because they didn't want to have to tell someone something that horrible.

"Robert...Mr. Carmichael.  He escaped from prison last night."

***

Numb.  That was how I felt the entire ride home.  It was how I felt when I was told that Daniel had been killed.  It was how I'd felt when I found out my mom died.  It was like I would give anything, even kill, just to feel something again and  I didn't care how bad it would hurt when the feeling came back if only it would come back at all.

But I knew better that time.  I relished the feeling of the numbness, the shock slipping over me like a thin veil that hid the truth from my vulnerable head and heart. I was purposefully trying to stay in denial, maybe it wasn't him, just someone who looked like him with the same first and last name who escaped from the exact same prison.

Yeah, that had to be it.  Just a funny, weird coincidence.

And though my head knew it was foolish and ridiculous to think so, my heart couldn't bare anything but the denial.

I spent the rest of the night in that blissful false ignorance, and then the next morning when it was time to go to school I felt the crawling panic surrounding my body, my head becoming flush with the anxiety that was about to attack my entire body.

"What's wrong sweetheart?" my grandmother asked me at the breakfast table.  I felt terrible that I had to lie to her and say that it was nothing, but I knew that she could see right through me.

The drive to school was especially painful, having not learned any new information from my 'family' because they thought I was too fragile and broken to handle anything they could have told me.

All I knew so far was that he had escaped, and I didn't know if he was going to come looking for me or not.  More or less, I knew in the back of my mind that he barely had the resources to pay off his gambling debt let alone come and find me by tracking me halfway around the world.  It was a ridiculous notion with ridiculous outcomes every time I thought about what might come out of it.

Pulling into the gated driveway, I noticed more paparazzi cameras at the entrance than there were the day before.  I knew there would be some media coverage considering the prince went to school there but I didn't know who that said prince was until Lizzy told me.

I mentally slapped myself in the forehead when I thought of how ridiculous I was, how stupid I was to not pick up a magazine and learn all about the prince that I had to share a school building with, but my mind was a bit occupied by the demons that constantly invaded every waking thought that passed through my brain than to worry about some prince.

I shook my head and withdrew my phone as soon as I was on the green manicured lawn; I figured if they weren't going to give me answers then I was going to get myself some.

I found a good spot on the benches out front, grateful that Mar's driver had gotten me there a bit earlier than I had expected.  I didn't quite like the idea of someone whose job was to take me wherever I needed to go, but I didn't have a valid driver's license and I definitely wasn't going to walk to school on crutches and bruised ribs.

When I got comfortable in my seat, I first typed his name into the search bar.  Robert Carmichael.  The first few things that pulled up were errant Facebook and Twitter profiles and I instantly dismissed them, knowing that he didn't have the time or patience for social media, what with all of the drinking, smoking and gambling he did that took up almost all of his time.

I shuddered as the memories tried to flood my mind but I quickly pushed them back to where they always were and always would be hopefully.  They would destroy me if I allowed myself to relive them, and I wasn't in the mood to be destroyed that day.

As I scrolled through the search results, I found a few news articles explaining who he was and the charges brought up against him because of what he did to me.  Then I saw it; the story of where he escaped.  They said he had outside and inside help, as if someone had paid off the guards.

The article said he had connections to local gangs in the area, one that was notorious for kidnapping and rape, and I closed my eyes and allowed that information to sink in.  Robert Carmichael was a seriously twisted animal, and everyone knew that when they found out the extent of the damage I garnered from him.

He presented himself to the world as such a great step father, a man who would step in whenever no one else was there to do so, and he did a pretty okay job in the beginning.  My mom really was the turning point for not only him but me as well.

I was no longer the girl who was always smiling even when she was in pain, always trying to hide her feelings from the world to save everyone pain from worrying about her.  No, I was no longer that girl.  I didn't care if anyone else was worrying about me, because that was their choice and I couldn't control that anymore than I could control the weather around me.

I felt like an entirely new person after my mom died and my step father started abusing me, as if the old Malia was simply washed away with a few kicks to the stomach and a funeral.

I read a few more details about his arrest and then a droplet of water splashed onto my leg and I looked up to see if it was raining but there wasn't a cloud in sight.  It was strange, but then I put my hand to my face and felt the tears pouring from my eyes.

Of course I was crying, though it was more in fear than anything; fear that he would come and find me and take me back home to the US and I would be trapped in a life that I knew I would never be safe in ever again.

Drying my eyes, I locked my phone when I heard the bell signaling that it was time for class to start, and found myself shocked when I was met with a pair of enigmatic blue eyes that were watching me with such an intensity that I physically recoiled from them.

Those blue eyes were going to get me into some real trouble if I wasn't careful, but careful wasn't exactly in my vocabulary.