Which can't you live without; Maxerica or Aspenerica? - It should get really clear who it is later on who I can't live without.
Do you like Disney movies? - I like the princess ones obviously. My favorites are Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, Mulan, and the Lion King.
Any good books you're reading at the moment? - Well, as I said before, I just finished the Divergent series which was incredible. I read another book a couple weeks ago called How to Love and that was pretty spectacular. I'm reading a really pointless and thought-provoking play called Waiting for Godot for English class, as well as the Bell Jar. They're canon lit so if you want to read a book that will look impressive to your teacher, look at those.
Favorite song/artist? - I don't really have a particular artist that I love (there are just so many to choose from!). I love the TV show Nashville and all of their music, the Band Perry, Imagine Dragons, Tenth Avenue North, Red, Skillet, Chase Rice, the Naked and Famous, Passenger, the Fray, the Lumineers, and Don Omar. Obviously, I listen to a lot of different kinds of music but I am a music nerd. I listen to just about anything. Favorite song...hmm...Royals by Lorde and the Best Songs Come From Broken Hearts by the Nashville Cast/Connie Britton. Yeah, like I said, I love everything.
"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn." - C.S. Lewis
Aspen led the trio through the dense woods. It was cold and cloudy and the uphill trek was no easy task. Maxon followed America, so that each man was around her and ready to protect her if need be. She adjusted her backpack on her shoulders uncomfortably, not going unnoticed to her husband walking close behind her.
He jogged a few feet, closing the distance between them. He held her by the elbow. "You feeling okay?" he asked, looking into her eyes to see if she was faking any nonchalance.
She smiled bravely. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just feeling a little crampy, that's all," she assured him, pressing on in front of him.
Aspen had stopped and was watching them from a few feet away. She walked past him as he said, "Maybe now is a good time to take a break." She ignored him and kept walking up to the top of the hill. "She's not okay," he whispered to Maxon.
"You don't need to tell me that," he told Aspen. He frowned, watching her as she stopped at the top of the mountain. "Do you see something?" he called. He trudged forward, reaching her and studying her again. "Tell me what's wrong."
She shook her head. "I just…oh…" she clutched her stomach. "It's just a cramp," she insisted, grimacing with tears pooling in her eyes. "It'll pass," she choked out.
"Maybe you should sit…" he started to suggest but he ended catching her as she sank down to the ground. "Ames!" he exclaimed, gently laying her down. She looked pale and faint. He looked over to Aspen and motioned for him to come forward. He was stuck in some kind of spell but quickly snapped out of it and ran toward them.
"Maxon…" she groaned. "I'm bleeding." Her voice was small and scared. He was confused for a few seconds, trying to decipher the meaning of her words and also checking her body over for any wounds. Was she shot by a sniper? Then the meaning flooded through him like a tsunami.
His eyes were wide. "It'll be okay Ames, just stay with me," he insisted. He looked at Aspen who still looked confused. "She's miscarrying; do you know what to do?"
"You're kidding, right? I have no experience in this!" he exclaimed, at an utter loss.
Maxon sighed and looked back down at his wife. A chill ran up his spine. "Just relax, okay? I'm going to take a look." He nodded to her as he spoke, hoping to calm her but he could feel her heart bounding in the hand he was holding. Gently, like she was made of glass, he slid her pants off. Her pants were soaked with blood. From that fact alone he knew that their child was beyond saving. Without any other knowledge in miscarriages, he decided to just let nature take its course.
"Are you comfortable?" he whispered, supporting her with his strong arms. He draped a blanket over the lower half of her body for modesty.
A few tears leaked out of her eyes. "Maxon, I…I'm scared," she whispered. She moaned in pain and shifted uncomfortably. She closed her eyes.
"No, no America! You keep looking at me!" he shouted, shaking her slightly. Her eyes peeled open slowly and he nodded. "Just look into my eyes, stay with me." He kept whispering to her and wiping her hair away from her face. His heart was pounding, his blood rushing in his ears. All he needed was to know that she'd be okay…that was all he needed.
Aspen looked on at them, looking more helpless than ever. "We need to get her to the hospital," he whispered.
"No," Maxon snapped, his eyes flicking up to Aspen. "Are you crazy?"
"She's losing a lot of blood!" Aspen exclaimed. He quickly lowered his voice, looking around them nervously. "Our noise is going to give away our location. I'd rather not die today."
An internal war raged inside Maxon. He wanted to take America and run far away from this life, to make everything fine and happy again. He wanted to protect her. To fold her in his arms for the rest of his life, her warm body an assurance that the world is not a cold dead place. He knew they needed medical care to save her too but how could they do that without giving up their fake identities?
Aspen tugged his hat over his face. "This is the stupidest idea you've ever had," he whispered angrily to Maxon as they walked across the parking lot of the hospital.
"I took my cousin's name and appearance for this very reason. There is a method to my madness." He shifted America's limp form in his arms. He could not help but notice the amount of weight she'd lost in the past weeks.
"Well at least you know you're mad," Aspen muttered. The doors to the hospital swished open and Aspen assumed his role, running to the front desk and pounding on the counter. "Please, you have to help my wife! She's miscarrying and has lost of blood!" he shouted.
The receptionist looked startled as Maxon ran in behind him. She was frazzled by Aspen's outburst. "You can put her in one of the wheelchairs there and follow me!" she squeaked, running out from behind her desk.
Aspen jumped up and down in the elevator as they went up to the ER to keep up the nervous tension around him. They were led to a small partitioned area and America was placed in the bed by Maxon. "We were camping out in the hills and she said she felt somewhat crampy…we didn't even know she was pregnant," Aspen lied.
A nurse nodded grimly and started checking America's vitals. "And you are?" she asked Maxon.
"I'm her brother." He choked on the word brother but pulled it off by looking even more upset. "Will she be okay?" he demanded in a Honduraguan accent.
The nurse shrugged and looked at a monitor next to her. "We need you both to wait outside to give us room."
Aspen shook his head. "No!"
"Absolutely not!" Maxon exclaimed at the same time. His accent slipped subtly. More nurses rushed around them and they realized that they truly were in the way so they both reluctantly went to the waiting room.
They sat in the stiff cushioned chairs, a chair separating them. "Stupid idea," Aspen muttered under his breath as he watched the people rushing by nervously, his hand gripped around the knife in his pocket. "There's too many people around; someone is bound to recognize you two."
Maxon put his face in his hands and sighed. "It was a stupid idea."
Aspen jumped at his easy agreement. "Really? You agree with me?"
Maxon shook his head. "No, I meant going after my father. We should have stayed in Honduragua where she'd be safe and less stressed. It's my fault this is happening." Aspen snorted in response. Maxon looked over at him. "You have no idea what it's like."
"What what's like?"
"Being a parent," Maxon shrugged. "There was something of mine inside her. Something the two of us made and it is miraculous and now it's gone. Out in those hills…" his voice trailed off.
Aspen sat up straight suddenly. "It's still out there!" he whisper-shouted. "We left it there!"
"You don't get it!" Maxon suddenly exclaimed, lowering his voice. "Children are the one thing on this earth that will every truly be yours. And when one of them is threatened, you do damn near anything to protect them."
"And this is you doing damn near anything?" Aspen questioned coldly.
"This is me saving my family. If we get caught, we all will probably get killed. But if I don't do anything, she dies!" He pointed in the general direction of the emergency room. "I'm betting my life on hers. Because if I die, and she's still alive, I know that she'll still have people protecting her. I'm on my own. The moment I walked out of her life I walked out of any kind of security I'll ever have. Being king is a dangerous job and you don't have friends; you only have enemies. Sooner or later, my enemies will catch up with me."
Aspen digested all of this and studied Maxon's hard face. "Thanks for explaining," he whispered spitefully. Maxon shook his head in disbelief. Aspen added, "You know, you're not the only one who walked away from her."
"And?"
"And that puts us on a level playing field."
Maxon shook his head. "No, it actually doesn't. See this?" He held up the chain with his wedding band on it. "This is something you don't have with her. We have a child locked up somewhere, scared to death, wondering where his parents are…yes, we screwed up as parents but we screwed up together. That's something you'll never have."
"You see, the way I see it is that you're not wearing that ring. Your son is thousands of miles away. It's just you, me, and the girl we love. No strings attached, nothing between any of us."
With a heartbreaking reality check, Maxon realized that he was right. He had nothing on America. She had basically dumped him back in Honduragua, saying that she wasn't sure if she could still love him. So he nodded. "Fair enough. I'll fight you for her. But I don't play clean," he warned.
"I'm not expecting you to," Aspen shrugged, leaning back in his seat.
A nurse approached them and handed Aspen a clipboard. "We need your information. She'll need a transfusion. Luckily she's a universal blood type so we figured we'd ask if either of you two wanted to give her the blood," the nurse said. They both stood and volunteered. She laughed in the presence of such attractive men being chivalrous and blushed lightly. "Or we can just take blood from the blood bank."
"I'll go. You have paperwork to fill out, Mr. Rogers." Maxon mock-saluted him and followed the nurse back into a small room where he immediately started to sweat from the closed-in feeling.
She smiled at him slyly, then handed him another clipboard. "You need to sign this form and also fill out some personal information." She eyed him curiously. "I know you."
He shrugged. "I get that a lot." He wrote down the address and telephone number needed, a bogus number to a shutdown post office he'd seen on their way to the hospital. He signed, just an unintelligible scribble and passed her the clipboard.
She read through the information and smiled, laughing quietly to herself like she knew something he didn't. She didn't ask any questions though. She inserted the needle and the IV. As Maxon's blood slowly made its way into the blood bag, she leaned against the wall, occasionally checking her watch.
"Where's my sister?" he asked as she finally started to remove the IV.
"She's sedated. We're keeping her on life support until we can get her this blood," the nurse answered. "But she isn't your sister, is she?"
He frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"I just…I noticed that the man out there who claims to be her husband doesn't have a ring. She didn't either but you both rubbed your left hand ring finger when I inserted the IV. Strange habit for a brother and sister to have," she commented. "Is Damian Lorca your real name?"
"What makes you ask that?" He started to get antsy. His heart pounded as he put the bandage on his own arm.
"That address and phone number…it's for the post office where my father used to work," she told him. She smiled again. It was a sweet smile. "You're busted King Maxon."
He jumped off the table and pinned her against the wall. "You tell anyone, you die," he growled.
"I won't, I won't," she insisted, terror striking her eyes. "I promise, I won't. I'll keep this a secret."
He tentatively released her. She slid away from him, taking the blood bag. "I'll take good care of your wife, Your Majesty." She curtsied clumsily. "And I'll keep your secret. I just…I need to know who Damian Lorca really is if anyone asks. And who Mr. Rogers is."
"Mr. Rogers is irrelevant. Anyone who asks will only ask for two people. Damian and Bianca Lorca are my cousins." He put his hands on his hips and stared her down.
She nodded quickly. "Thank you." She curtsied again and walked out. Aspen was right outside.
As the two men slowly made their way back to where America was waiting, Maxon whispered, "We're busted."
"No, you're busted. I played my part well. One point to me."
"There was a point-one percent chance of her father working at the place that I stole the address too. Don't start counting your money yet."
I knooowww...abrupt ending. Anyway, just a forewarning: I've hit a bit of a snag because my mom's computer, which has half the book on it, is broken. So, yeah. I'm posting Chapter 5 now but in reality I'm on Chapter 16 and I can't write the rest without whatever is on my mom's computer! It's awful and I'm just as frustrated as you all. Yeah, updates may slow down a bit but I'll push my mom to fix her computer ASAP and hopefully have those chapters done soon!
Keep reviewing and sending questions please!