Angel sighed as she followed Vince home. She was between Leon and Vince; they didn't trust her to drive home by herself. Once they reached the house, she went straight to her room without looking at anyone and declined Mia's offer of dinner. She wasn't hungry. A few hours, that was all the time she thought that had passed. Not practically all day and half the night. But now that she had thought it over, she realized that she had turned off her phone after they had tried to reach her the first five times. The only thing she had wanted more than anything in that precise moment was to just get away for a little while. She didn't like it when Vince was mad. She didn't like the way he acted when he was mad at somebody. Now almost everyone was pissed at her for running off without talking to them first. She sighed as she got ready to go to bed.
She was very confused about everything lately. She didn't know whether to just answer Leon about dating him or tell Vince she would date him and blow Leon clear out of the water with her answer of no or just blow them both away by declining both requests and date someone totally different from either one guy on the team. Dom was off limits but he still treated her like a little kid and she was starting to get a little tired of it. Letty didn't like her attitude so much anymore and Mia didn't like shopping with her. Leon and Vince were mad at her right now about her running off.
"Screw them," she muttered as she made her way to the bathroom. "They need to get over it and stop competing over me. I just don't know what to do. Jesse please send me a sign of any kind cause I could really use the help right now. It's been almost a year and still nothing of an answer could I give them. I think they're starting to get fed up with me." She sighed as she just let the warm water cascade down her back and just soothe her tense muscles. 'I can't go back to my house cause I just don't feel like dealing with Leon right now. I can't stay here either cause I have no great desire to really deal with Vince or Dom either.' She sighed as she got out and dressed. She waited until she was certain there was no one outside the bathroom door. Except when she opened the door, there stood Vince. Vince had his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. She gulped soundly. "Hey, V…. Uh…how's it going?" She knew it was the most stupid question to ask especially after she caused him to get hit in the face by Letty. A blue and black bruise was already starting to become visible on his face. She sighed before she addressed him again. "Look, I'm really sorry for what happened at the garage today. I didn't mean for Let to hit you, honestly I didn't. We were just messing around and she started to chase me and then I grabbed you as a human shield and then the next thing I know you're getting a knuckle sandwich." She said this all in one breath and now she simply waited for the eruption of the volcano that was Vince. During her little semi-speech, Vince's face got darker and darker with every word. This caused Angel to become really scared.
"Angel, me and Leon need an answer from you. You're killing us with this waiting. I wasn't mad at you or Letty; I was upset yeah but not mad. I could never be mad at two people who I care so much about. You scared me when you took off and then you turned your cell off which scared me even more cause I thought something bad had happened to you." Angel's eyes turned into those so much like a deer's, when it's caught in the headlights of a car.
"But, I wasn't trying to scare ya'll or anything like that. I just wanted some space, from you two, from every little thing that I can't hide from. If I can't hide or run from something then I become like a caged lion or bear. I get real mean and take it out on anyone I can or something like that. I had it spelled out for me once, by someone who couldn't stand to watch me run from things that I couldn't hide from." As she talked they walked to Vince's room, which caused Leon to get jealous. She sat down on his bed and he sat on the floor, after locking his door. He thought that this was a private conversation and didn't want any unwelcome visitors entering while they were talking. Angel only raised an eyebrow at him but didn't say anything. "No one could understand back then that I didn't want to run nor hide anymore. I just wanted someone to talk to and that person to listen to what I have to say and not just half listen and then blow me off like I didn't matter. I already felt as if I didn't matter and I hardly had any self-worth and it wasn't until my aunt got married to Jesse's dad that it came to my attention that I was more important than I thought. Jesse realized that I just wanted someone to pay attention to me and to listen. No one was willing to do that back then but Jesse was. Every time I would say something and no one acknowledged that I had even spoken, Jesse would take me aside and ask me to repeat what I had said before, away from everyone else. I wasn't wanted in my family. I was just a nuisance to them. My parents had died when I was a baby; I believe I was one or two when they died. My aunt was my mom's only living relative. My dad was an only child and his parents had died way before I was born. My mom's parents had died about two weeks after I was born." Angel stopped to think about that last statement then shrugged when she couldn't think of a better way of saying it. "Anyway, Jesse was the only one who really cared. My aunt and his dad didn't like that he listened to me. They didn't want to put silly notions of working on cars or racing or even driving into my head. They thought that that wasn't the right place for a girl of my status in their society, that's one of the reasons why Jesse left in the first place. He didn't like the way they treated me then. After he left, I started to change, dramatically. I went places with my friends, I got a drivers' license." At this point Angel was on the verge of tears and Vince sat next to her with an arm draped across her shoulders lightly. "I started to take auto tech classes, after I took all of my required courses and then some. All that I needed and wanted was a tech class of some kind and I didn't want HomeEc with all the girly girls." Angel showed disgust on her face when she said girly girls. "When my aunt found out she was furious and then she became even more furious when she found out that she couldn't take me out of those types of classes cause I already had a number of grades by the time they found out. Of course by this time, Jesse's dad was in jail for trying to kill…someone and my aunt wasn't very happy that…that someone got him put there. My aunt just couldn't understand why I was changing or why I changed from the girl I was to the girl I had become. I talked to Jesse every now and again and he understood why I was changing or why I changed. I needed the change and so I left one day after my aunt had left for work. I had been tempted to just burn the house and all the horrific memories buried within the walls. I would've gotten caught so I packed everything I had and came here. I had tons of money that was in the bank from my parents' will. They left me millions from all their savings and insurance. They had cashed stock bonds and everything like that. I was eighteen and I graduated. I had been told upon my eighteenth birthday that I was able to dip into this type of fund, because it was all mine. Little did I know that my aunt and uncle had been dipping into it generously and never did put it back into the account. When the bank and I found out about this we both pressed charges and after my aunt was in jail and a couple of years were added to my uncle's first jail sentence I left. I never looked back. I never went back to visit any of my old friends and since Jesse was, basically, the only family I had left I came out here. It was then that he had first asked me to live here in the City of Angels. Except that back then I just wasn't ready to live with a bunch of people I had barely known for more than two weeks. That's why I decided to move in next door when I saw that house was for sale. Every time I had come to visit, I would look over at it and just have this feeling of longing for it. That's why I grabbed at it the first time I found out it was up for sale and I'm glad that they let me have it for the price I had asked. It really would've been a shame to buy that house for their asking price. When they found out that they had bids even lower than mine I guess they decided whoever was the closest to their asking price did they let me have it." Tears were now pouring down her face and were like streams coursing down her cheeks. She didn't bother trying to dry them. She was letting years worth of tears flow. She didn't know that she had had any tears at all to shed for all the shit she'd been through since she was old enough to talk.
Vince just held her as she cried and cried. After a certain point he didn't try to coax her into telling him more. He figured she would tell him more when she was ready or wanted to. He waited for her to calm down. She did, eventually. It felt like hours and it probably had been hours. Vince started to lie back on his bed, taking her with him. After he got settled, she curled up into his side. "You can sleep down here if you want. You don't have to go home or even upstairs if you don't want to," he whispered so as not to scare her. She just nodded. Pretty soon they were both sound asleep with Vince's door still locked.
Hours later Angel started to wake up when she felt like she was being watched. When she opened her eyes she found Vince watching her. She smiled.
"Hey V." He smiled back at her.
"Hey yourself beautiful." She laughed. He frowned at her.
"I think maybe you need to have your eyes checked out there V." She slipped to the edge of the bed. She could feel his eyes follow her.
"Really? Then why do I feel the way I do around you?" Vince nearly growled. He didn't like it when she talked that way.
"I don't know. Maybe you just like the challenge of trying to get me in bed." She shrugged as she stood up, well tried to anyway. When she went to move up off the bed, Vince grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down.
"You know better than that Angel. I feel this way about you cause of the way you are and the way you do things your way and you don't let anyone talk down to you except maybe Letty but she's a totally different story. You're sexy, sweet and very smart. Unlike me and all the other girls that I've dated in the past. You're way smarter than me."
"No. You have more street smarts than me." Vince just looked at her and she looked away.
Vince reached over and gently turned her face towards him with his index finger. "You listen to me Angel. You have more street smarts than almost every girl I have ever known or know now. You are crazy around cars that you like or want to get your hands on. No girl except for maybe Letty is like that. When you tune cars in the shop I can't help but watch you and most of the time I end up working alongside you." Angel smiled at the comment. It was true, he always ended up working with her and she helped him with the car he needed to get finished. "Angel you need to understand one thing and that is you are gorgeous. You are fucking dead sexy in some of the things you wear out to races and I can't help but get excited when I see you every week cause I get all hyped. I like mysteries and that's what you are, a mystery, and I love it. And I think I've fallen head over heels in love with you." Vince's voice dropped at the end of his impromptu speech. He hadn't known until that moment how speechless Angel could get when the right words were used.
Angel just stared at Vince for what felt like eternity for both parties. She opened and closed her mouth several times like a fish gulping for water. Until, finally she found the exact words she wanted to use to relay her feelings for Vince, the one person who she thought couldn't make it through her defense systems.
"V," at the sound of her voice, Vince looked at her and waited patiently but expectantly. "V, I think I've fallen head over heels for you too." She looked away but looked back at him quickly with the biggest smile on her face. Vince thought that she could light the whole world up with her smiles, when she really smiled.
Vince couldn't resist the urge to lean over and kiss her.
a/n: sorry took so long….had to finish chapter 2 but there it is and chapter four is in the works…it should be up soon I hope plz review xangelx