NICO’S POV
I wake up first. As frantic and on edge as I always do, all I remember from the nightmare I was having was Kelly’s eyes, looking at me to save her, and Aphrodite, reminding me about our deal. Well, I guess the deal was off now.
When I see jade asleep on my arm, her brown hair falling over her face, and her arm draped across my chest, I relax a little. She wakes up a little at my sudden motion. “What’s gogin she asks” rubbing her eyes.
“nothing” I reply.
“Then go back to sleep” she mutters, laying her bed back on the pillow, her full cheeks puttering her lips out as she lays there so innocently. Her muscels had just begun to relax with sleep when she startles awake. “Kelly!” she gasps, sitting up, the blanket falling of her shoulders. She shudders, her chest heaving hard, and her breaths coming in haggardly.
“I know, I had the same one” I answer, and the both of us breathe deeply for a few minutes, trying to get our heart rates under control. I look over at the alarm clock by the bed. “Its seven, you should get a few more hours of sleep, I’ll grab breakfast, and we’ll leave at eleven” I say.
“No, no. I’m fine, let’s get out of here, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sleep again” she says softly, pushing the rest of the sheets of off her and hurrying to the bathroom to change. I change as well, and half an hour later we had grabbed everything and left the motel and San Francisco for behind.
“We’re not going to be able to hitch a ride, I mean who wants to give a ride to some random kids?” She says, covering her eyes from the sun, and looking around as if some magical vehicle was going to appear in front of us.
“I’m sixteen, maybe they’ll let me rent a car” I shrug, picking at my nails. She raises her eyebrows at me.
“You’re sixteen?”
“How old did you think I was?” she shrugs.
“I dunno, twelve” she says, not being able to keep a straight face. I shove her playfully as we continue walking fown the road.
“Let me guess how old you are” she crosses her arms and looks at me expectantly, “umm 15 and half” I say, running my hands along my jaw line as if it was a philosophical question.
“Close” she laughs, “15 and and almost a quarter, my birthday was about two months ago?” she asks herself. “What day is it?” she asks me.
“December 8” I say after thinking about it
“Right, well my birthday is October 6, you know if you wanna get me a late birthday present or something” she says. I chuckle softly.
“My birthday gift to you is keeping you alive” I joke, but not only until after I had said it did I relize how awful it was. We both fall silent for a while, and keep walking around the streets.
“I learned how to hotwire a car” I offer after a while. She looks at me again with her eyebrows raised.
“I am just learning all kinds of new things about you today. Did camp half blood have like a stealing cars 101 class or something? And why wasn’t I informed of this” she says, the mood lifting again. She could do that, she had moodswings, like her dad. Good natured and humorous like Percy one minute, dark and moody and dangerous the next. But when she laughed, you couldn’t help but laugh as well, and laughing wasn’t something I was very used to.
“Something like that. I actually learned it while I was you know, traveling” I shrug, not wanting to say to much. As funny and badass I thought she was, I wasn’t about to tell her some of my deepst darkest secrets.
“You gonna tell me where you go on your travels someday?” she asks me as we approach a nice 70’s stingray that must cost a fortune.
“Maybe someday” in hell I finish the thought.
“No you won’t. I know” she says tilting her head and looking at me with her big black eyes, and I wonder how the hell she knew that. “but if you ever do, then that’s when I’ll know you trust me” she finishes, turning back to the car.
“You don’t think I trust you?” I ask, taking out the necessary tools I need from her bag which she offered me.
“Sure you do. But just enough to get through this quest thing with me, you would never trust me with your dark past, or your deepest secrets. If I ask you you’ll say it’s because you want to keep the mystery alive, or chicks dig the tortured soul type. But if you ask me, I’m going to say it’s because you're afraid of getting close enough to anyone to tell them, and then have them be so horrified that they reject you, and then spill all your secrets” she says, then she sees the astonishment on my face and shrugs her shoulders as if she had just pulled it out of her ass, which im pretty sure she had. “The difference between you and me is that I don’t think people are that cruel, but you know they are” she says at last.
“How?” I ask, she scrunches her eyebrows as she does when shes confused. “How do you still have trust in people, or hope that they’ll be good after the hell you’ve been through?” I specify. She turns away from me, and looks at herself in the window of the car. Her black eyes turning sad.
“I don’t know, I mean, I don’t trust them, you know that, I have trust issues. But maybe, I feel like people can prove me wrong, that everyone has a chance to prove me wrong and gain my trust, Percy did, Chiron did” she turns away from her reflection and turns her big sad eyes towards me, “You did. You proved me wrong Nico. And I just hope that maybe some day you’ll trust me enough to admit that I proved you wrong as well” she finishes. I look away and don’t answer her. Besides being the ruler of ghosts, I was also supreme ruler over avoidance.

Notes

Hope you guys like it!