Chapter 8

“Aiden,’’ I gush out, as though I’m short of breath.

“Hi Krista,” he smiles the faintest of smiles and glances over at Kalek. “Hi,’’ Aiden steps forward and holds out his hand to Kalek to shake but he does the same thing he did to mine and stares at it like it’s made of some unknown foreign matter. “Okay….’’ he drawls out dropping his hand back down at his side and stepping backwards to where he was standing before. “So, how’ve you been?’’

“Are you serious?” I half shout at him my face blooming red with fresh anger.

A look of confusion marks his face. “Wha-” I cut him off.

“You can’t just disappear for ten years, all of a sudden just show up and then ask how I’ve been like the last time you saw me was a week or two ago!”

“What else am I supposed to say?” he asks, a hurt look flashing over his face for only a moment before disappearing.

“How about “I’m sorry” or “I didn’t mean to leave you to the foster care system ten years ago”. I feel a tear roll down my cheek and off of my face.

Kalek leans into me to whisper something that sounded like “calm down”.

The two guys are still standing in the room, one staring at me the other staring at Aiden, listening to everything we say, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were recording our conversation.

“Do you believe us now?” The guy that’s staring at me asks.

“Krista, I’m sorry about what you had to go through, I didn’t mean for any of this to ever happen. The god of the sun told me he would find you and bring you back to the sun but he couldn’t find you. All he could find were stories about your foster homes. It’s very, very, difficult to track down people from the sun, yes, they may have more advanced technology, but we can’t access all the files on Earth, police records included.” Aiden says, I swear I see his eyes coat over with tears for a moment before he blinks them away a second later.

“How is any of that supposed to help. Them trying to find me doesn’t change anything, we still got in a plane wreck, mom and dad are still dead and I thought you had been dead the past ten years that I’ve been in foster care,” I basically scream at him. “Did you know that in every single foster home I went to the people that took me in died because of me. It wasn’t only a couple of people. It was every. Single. One. That I lived in. I killed innocent people, Aiden!” the tears are flowing faster now. Kalek grabs my hand and starts whispering something in my ear. I wasn’t sure what he was saying but it somehow, in a way, calmed me.

“Krista, let me talk to them for a few minutes,” says Andrew, I had completely forgotten he was right behind me. Kalek takes my hand and pulls me behind him as we slide past Andrew and the door to the hallway.

“Did he seriously never even attempt to contact you the past ten years?” he asks me once we’re out of hearing range of the sunroom.

“No, he never did, and now he’s expecting me to pick up from where we had left off. I was five-years-old last time I even saw him! He doesn’t even know the beginning of what has happened to me the past decade,” I am now screaming, but I have no idea why, Kalek didn’t do anything wrong. “I’m sorry. I was trying to not yell.” He turns so he is standing in front of me and he uses his hand to make me look up at him, he wipes a tear off of my cheek and then takes both of my hands in his.

“If you choose to go with him, I’m coming, I don’t care what they say. I don’t want you going somewhere with a ton of people you don’t even know the slightest thing about.” He takes one of his hands out of mine and wipes another tear from my face but then does the unthinkable and leans down towards my face, looks at me for a minute and then kisses me. He puts his hand behind my neck and his hand that he is still holding onto mine with he lets go and lets it wrap around my waist.

He pulls away suddenly, “I’m sorry,” is all he says and he’s gone, disappearing down the hall into his bedroom leaving me standing dumbfounded in the middle of the hallway.