Chapter Nine: The London Eye

It was Sunday. Kate stood rigid with her hands stuck in her coat. She kept muttering, telling herself that she shouldn't have come, what a stupid thing to do, but she stayed in the London fog, watching for any sort of figure to come to greet her.

If only the clock hadn't struck to two the very moment after she kissed him. If only she hadn't been spellbound when he went off in such a rushed and completely calm state. If only she had realized what had just happened and asked him.

"Why?" she would've demanded. "What the hell were you thinking?"

In the next twelve hours following the incident, Kate came up with three explanations for this as she laid wide awake on her bed. Her body was in too much a state of shock to do anything logical, like sleep.

The first explanation was the easiest to accept. Joseph Allen, she thought to herself, is a loony. Long ago, he escaped from a psych ward and went on a few years to become a politician, later becoming Prime Minister of London. Or perhaps, the position had made him go batty, in which case he was not fit to be left alone in public.

If Kate had read about the incident in a tabloid, this explanation would be her immediate response. However, the whole thing did happen to her, and considering the way he usually acted in public, this wouldn't be an event so terribly out of the ordinary.

The second explanation was the fairytale explanation, and for a moment, it amused Kate. It was that Adam, from his time at the Bailey household, had grown to be fond of her, and couldn't help himself once they were all alone in the house. It just was that the part before it didn't quite fit, and that he wasn't some random man, but instead Adam Monroe, the tyrant that she had despised for years.

This explanation presented itself at around two-thirty and continued to reign through Kate's mind until the break of dawn. If he wasn't himself, if had been someone else, she thought, would she be more accepting of the situation? The answer was of course, yes, and her mind ran off with replays of how he brushed upon all of her senses with that second kiss. She could still remember the sweet smell of his breath and how her whole mind just evaporated once their lips met.

She fought with herself, renaming all the things he had done wrong in the world, but found herself instead counting all the things that he had done exceptionally well. For instance, he was the first to speak in the ashes of the virus, and he was arguably the most important leader of the rebuilding movement right afterwards.

At about six thirty, she came to realize that she wasn't going to be able to sleep after all. She dug through her closet, bringing out two cardboard boxes of pictures and newspaper clippings. She kept them to remind her friends of every mistake that the government had made in the past five years.

One cardboard box was entirely devoted to Adam Monroe. She sifted through it, reading each story, and studying each photo. Yes, people had told her that she had an obsession. What she figured out then and there was that it was an obsession of obscene hatred that looked remarkably like an infatuation.

The third explanation was the most practical, and although she thought of it first, Kate didn't dive too deeply into it until the middle of the morning. This was that Adam had intended this to happen. This, as in, her completely losing her mind. He had kissed her purely out of spite, which was a devilishly clever thing to do. Any physical wound she could recover from, but this would haunt her forever.

At around one o'clock, Friday afternoon, Kate finally fell asleep. She did not dream about Adam. Instead, she dreamt that she was at a deli counter, demanding a refund for some spoiled cheese that they had sold her. It was only once she was out the door that she realized that her cheese was blue cheese, and that the mold was the kind that made blue cheese what it was.

She woke with a start at eight in the evening and started screaming into her pillow. Not only did she have to deal with this Adam problem and a crazy-ass dream, but her Circadian rhythm was officially ruined.

The rest of Friday and Saturday went by as usual. After eating, Kate found that she could fall asleep again, but hardly woke refreshed the next morning. At noon and at three, she attended her University classes, not paying attention to either of them. Her friends took her out for a small bite to eat and then she saw a movie with them, although she couldn't say that she actually watched it. However, she did remember thinking that she must not have been acting very awkward since none of her friends asked if there was anything wrong.

At nine, her phone rang. She answered it.

"Kate, can you meet me at the Eye tomorrow at six?" It was Adam. The nerve he had to call her. How'd he get her number, anyway?

Kate wasn't prepared for something like this. "I can, but-"

"Alright. See you then." The phone clicked and a dial tone followed.

Kate could've kicked herself right then and there.

So here she was, getting more miserable and colder and angrier by the second as a gigantic Ferris wheel, the so-called London Eye, loomed above her. However, it was hard to become as angry at him as she was before, as most of her emotional capacity was lost in the area of confusion or were at a loss of what to think.

Adam came just as the clock sounded its sixth toll. The first she noticed of him was that he was smoking and walking quickly. Next, she realized it was the first time she had ever seen him wearing jeans. She tried to stare and glare at him, but he kept his eyes down until he stood next to her. "How are you?" for a second, he glanced at her face and started to walk slower.

Kate started to walk to catch up with him. "Don't ask me that," she replied, and added in a sarcastic voice, "but, how are you?"

"About the same," he said and sucked on his cigarette.

She scoffed. "Put that out. You'll ruin your health."

"My health?" For once, Adam cracked a laugh, but to her surprise, he put the cigarette out against a light post and threw it in the trash. "Terrible weather we're having," he said, looking up dismally up at the sky over the river.

Kate stopped walking, and she turned to face him with a concrete stance. Her eyes started to water. "Stop it! Just stop it!"

Once Adam stopped walking a few feet ahead of her, she continued, "I can't stand it. Just tell me why you brought me out here, and don't waddle about the subject, trying to seem clever and all. You've wasted enough of my time."

Adam turned on his heel to stand overlooking the river. Kate followed him.

"I'm sorry for what happened last Thursday night. It was completely inappropriate on my part, and well, yours as well." He gazed out over the river and still didn't look at her.

Kate grimaced. "Then, please tell me, why?" she asked with a fierce growl. "I thought you hated me."

"I did hate you. God, you were annoying," said Adam and finally looked at her, but then changed his view to the water again. "But, at least you were interesting. In fact, you were fascinating, and the more I saw you, the more I thought about it." He put his hands on the rail. "You would be wonderful. You were already smart, educated, funny, beautiful, and passionate, although you were most passionate about hating me."

Biting her lip, Kate listened on. No one had called her beautiful since her Leavers Ball.

"And I thought, 'God, she would be perfect. She would be a perfect ten only if she had the drive to follow through with her beliefs-'"

"Perfect? For what?" So it had been a test, then. He had forced her into stabbing him so that he could test how strong her backbone was. And so it was a fairytale explanation with an unconventional twist.

Adam finally looked at her, although it wasn't the same knowing smirk he always wore. He almost looked unsure of himself. "To marry," he said.

"Marry?" She wasn't sure that she liked the fairytale explanation anymore. "Are you serious? I'm only twenty-two, and you're... well..."

"Four hundred and some old?" Adam's eyes lit up. "Well, my pickings for a very small age gap are pretty slim. Anyway, there are more important things."

Kate leaned upon the railing and put her head in her hands. "God, I used to hate you. I used to hate you so much," she muttered. She had gotten over herself that she only disliked what Adam stood for, and that was the oppressing government. So, she got over the hatred. But marriage? Her mind had already been flipped upside down for the past few days before she even got to thinking of anything like that. Could she really spend the rest of her life with him? It was just too unreal. She wanted that blue cheese dream back again.

Adam seemed to sense her inner conflict. "I'm not asking you now. At this point, I am simply hoping that you can tolerate me being alive."

Kate put her head up. "I suppose I can," she said.

"Then, I thank you."

As Adam took her hand and planted a kiss upon it, Kate suddenly understood. Every doubt and question that erupted from the first kiss was silently answered at that very moment. Her mind was free and clear now, and she could truly blush and smile. He was just a man and was only a man. He just had a tendency to act like a child.


A/N: I do have a question of that chapter for this one. I have recently seriously planned this story out, and it turns out to be in four equal parts. Well, you've seen the size of one part already, about eleven chapters, so sorry about making it so long. The question is: Should I keep all these four parts into one fanfiction, or divide them, like having four books within one series? The point of dividing them into different fanfictions would be to attract more readers that would be less intimidated by the chapter count, and because each part really is a different flavor. Though, what I would be worried about is the confusion for not reading the previous parts, and the confusion you, my current readers, would experience trying to find the next part.

What do you think? Split it or keep it as it is? Thank you all for your consideration if you do reply/review, or even consider replying. Or rather, considering replying isn't worth the consideration at all, so you really should review with any sort of words you like. Thank you muchisimo.