8 Wait...She Can Fight?

Hugh's POV

I heard the muffled thuds and screams coming from the equipment storeroom and felt a shiver of panic. Angela was in there. Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God. I jogged over to the door and threw it open.

Wow.

She sat in the middle of a pile of bruised and battered bodies. I identified Wayne, McLean amd Hunter, and guessed that the other two were Boyd and McKinney. She looked up, grinned her beautifully mischevious grin, hopped up and made her way over, deliberately stepping on Hunter's arm which made me smile inside.

As drew closer, I noticed her ferocity for the first time and wondered how I never saw it. She's like a lioness, I thought. Glorious amd deadly.

I would gladly let her kill me.

I found myself suddenly at a loss for words, but I managed to get out, "You can fight?". I kicked myself inside. Obviously she can fight. You idiot.

Her peals of sweet laughter bounced off the walls at my stammered question.

"There's a lot you don't know about me, duckling", she chuckled, before patting my arm and dancing down the corridor, humming.

I looked down where her hand had touched my arm. I could still feel it, the ghost of her touch. She had called me duckling. Tears sprang to my eyes as I remembered how she would laugh when we sat in class together, when I ran my hands through my hair in frustration when I didn't understand how to solve a textbook question. She had patted my mussed hair adoringly and said, "You look just like a messy little duckling caught in a breeze.", and I loved it so much that I did it more often, on purpose just to hear her call me that.

I felt a spark of hope. Maybe, just maybe, I can get her back..