Chapter 24- Heaven

I pushed him and smiled, ‘Not someone, dork, a friend. Unless of course I’m not your friend…’ I did the puppy dog face at him and pretended I was about to turn away. He grabbed my hand gently and turned me towards him, smirking.
‘Come on, I want to show you something.’ I let him hold my hand as he led me to his destination. About five minutes later we walked up to a big 12ft concrete wall and he stopped.
‘Uhh.. What are you showing me here?’ I looked towards the top of the wall and swore I could hear water splashing somewhere. When I glanced back around, Nick was nowhere to be seen. ‘Nick? Where’d you go?’ I was surrounded by brush, we had went off path and into the woods. Just as I was about to call his name again I heard a stick snap. I jumped and turned towards the noise, it was coming from about 20ft away behind the thick greenery. The shrubs starting moving and there was more noise, I took a step back. I was about to turn around and run when I saw the black hair and muscular arms.
I breathed out in relief, ‘Nick. You scared me.’ I smiled but it immediately disappeared when I saw that Nick also had tattoos covering his arms… and the closer he got the more he didn’t look like Nick at all. There were no piercings. Just tattoos along both of his arms and neck. ‘You’re not Nick,’ I breathed taking a step back.
This person smirked and kept walking towards me. He was wearing black just like Nick which meant that he was one of the Malicious. I turned and began running along the wall, I could feel he was running as well. I looked behind me and could see that he was like five feet away. It was very difficult to run in the thick brush so he caught up quick. He grabbed my arm which yanked me back, then slammed me against the wall.
‘NICK!’ I screamed trying to get him to come. The man bent over to get a rock, holding me in place. I tried getting free, kicking and attempting to thrust my arms from his strong hands.
‘NICK! HELP!’ I screamed again and the guy pulled his arm back and was about to bash my face in when Nick tackled him to the ground. The rock was knocked out of his hand and with Nick on top of him, could not move. I got as close to the wall as I could, watching the fight.
He punched the guy in the face with every pause in his speech. ‘DON’T… YOU… DARE… HURT… HER.’ The man stopped trying to move and went still but Nick still kept throwing punches. He’s going to kill him.
I plunged myself into the situation, trying to pull Nick away. ‘Nick, please stop! You’re going to kill him!’ He shot and up and before I could even blink I was on the ground with him standing over me. I looked up at him and scooted away. After a moment he seemed to snap out of whatever trance he was in.
‘Alice.. What.. What happened?’ He helped me up, pulling me into his chest as usual. I backed away quickly staring at the unconscious guy and Nick with blood on his knuckles. He saw me looking and raised his knuckles to take a look himself and then turned around.
‘Y-you kept hitting him.. Y-you wouldn’t stop and when I-I asked you to you pushed m-me away.’ Nick looked so guilty as soon as the words came out of my mouth. I took a step towards him and put a hand on his shoulder. I understood. He had blacked out, he was just protecting me. ‘It’s okay, Nick.’ He was looking down so I lifted it up, ‘Hey, look at me. It’s okay. You were just protecting me. Thank you.’
After a moment of silence and looking into each others eyes he nodded. I gave him a hug and he wrapped his warm arms around me, careful not to touch my white outfit with his bloody hands. After letting him go I glanced at the knocked out guy. ‘What are we going to do with him?’
Nick shrugged and looked towards the wall, ‘Leave him there, come on I want to show you my favorite place here.’ He offered his hand and I took it, intertwining fingers.
‘As long as you don’t ditch me again,’ I smarted back as we walked back along the wall.
‘I had to climb the wall to show you.’
‘How did you expect me to see your special place if I couldn’t climb with you?’
We stopped and he looked back at me smirking, ‘I made a door.’ He let go of my hand and started walking the rest of the way along the wall. I stood there, waiting. How the f**k do you make a door through solid brick? After a minute or two there was a banging on the other side of the wall and I jumped. The bricks in one area started moving out towards me and I backed up just as it popped open in the shape of a door. Nick walked through it cocky-like with his arms crossed, he leaned against the wall. ‘So? Like my work?’
I laughed and crossed my own arms, cocking a hip to the side. ‘It seems like you have a lot of time on your hands to have done that. It’s.. smart.’
‘I’m a f****n’ genius.’ He motioned towards the door. ‘Ladies first.’ I walked passed him and through the entrance. I stopped and looked around. All I could see was another but nature-made rock wall in front of me. Nick walked through as well, the was a handle on this side of the door. He pulled it shut and stood next to me, looking at the wall.
‘Nice place,’ I said sarcastically.
‘Hey, hey no criticizing. We’re not there yet.’ He started walking between both the rock wall and brick wall. I followed not knowing what else to do. ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked randomly.
I looked at him funnily, ‘Uh.. Not really. Why?’
‘What do you like to eat?’ he asked, ignoring me.
‘Wait, why are you asking?’
‘Because,’ he said as we came to what looked like a dead end. ‘We can have lunch here.’ He stopped and turned towards the rock wall which now had vines completely covering a cave-like hole. Nick pulled aside the vines and let me go through. When I went through, I realized that it was a tunnel. At the end of the tunnel was a light.