Born to Fight

Chapter 6

Celeste

Over the next few days, I was simply working on trying to adjust, and get used to my new surroundings. I was constantly fearful of the men who had been responsible for killing my mother finding me, so I stayed inside the house. Whenever Loki had to go outside to relieve himself, I would let Loki into the backyard and lock the door for the duration of his time outside. I had to admit I was terrified of letting him outside on his own, which was foolish I knew. Loki would be fine, it was unlikely the men I was hiding from could pick him from any other German Shepherd around. I was always making sure that the house was kept locked up whenever Jamie and Josh weren't home. As beautiful an area as the surrounding countryside was, and as good as it would be to get outdoors and enjoy going for a run here, I couldn't enjoy it because I was too afraid to set foot outside.

I had an ever-present fear that if anyone were to see me, it would be more of a chance for the men who killed my mother to find me. Since I had been here Jamie had done his best to shield me from the crime that had rocked my world and left me an orphan. I hadn't seen any media stories on television or online or even in the paper. It was as though Jamie was worried that hearing anything would cause me to have a meltdown. And maybe it would. Who knew? I mean, I wasn't a psychologist or anything, so what did I know?

 Deep down I knew that if I was a target, then it would be highly likely that the men that had killed my mother would have checked the house, found me and then killed me as well. There was a little voice in the back of my mind that kept telling me that maybe the men responsible for my mother's death didn't even know that I even existed. But I couldn't be certain of that, so I chose to ignore it. I also knew that if the men that had killed my mother knew of my existence and were aware that I lived on campus, then they could have just assumed that I would be at school. That could explain why they hadn't bothered to check the rest of the house that night.

I had already acknowledged that I had become a prisoner of my own fear. I hated being scared all the time. It made me feel weak.

Whenever Josh and Jamie announced that they had to leave to go to the base, I felt the fear kick in immediately, and suddenly I found myself feeling like a damsel in distress. My weakness made me angry. My mother and grandfather had raised me to be strong, independent and self-reliant. Now here I was relying on people that I barely knew to protect me.

These feelings I was living with brought on shame. I felt like I was letting my mother and grandfather down. By being so afraid, I was not living up to the standards my mother had held me too. This made everything I was feeling and thinking so much harder to deal with.

Jamie could tell something was wrong, and he let me know every chance that he got that he was there if I ever wanted to talk. I was tempted to take him up on his offer of a chat. But the problem was that I didn’t want to burden him any more than I already was.

In the grand scheme of things, Jamie and I hadn’t known each other for very long. The fact that he was allowing me to stay with him when I had nowhere else to go was a blessing to me. One that I would never be able to repay him for. So, for me, talking to him about my fears, and what was going on inside of my head would be too hard to do. There would be so much detail that I would have to go into because Jamie hadn’t known my mother, he didn’t know my family's history. With the pain at the loss of my mother so fresh and leaving me so raw, that kind of discussion would be too much for me to handle right now.