We Won't Back Down

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Dahlia.

"Yo, Dahlia. Ronnie's asking for you." Athena called from my doorway. I had been in my room curled up on my bed, writing in my journal about how much I just wanted to go home. I sighed and pushed my journal aside while I stood up and made my way to the living room to greet my boyfriend.

"Come with me, i have something to show you down on the beach" he smiled, happily as he took my hand, literally dragging me down to the beach, without waiting for my answer.

"Ronnie? What...why? What's going on, why are you pulling me so fast?!" I stopped once he had pulled me out on the shore and I made him face me. There was something different. There was a look in his eyes that he was hiding something and my stomach began to do flips. There was a pretty tall blonde girl with a black bag standing behind him, anxious for whatever news he was about to tell me. Was he about to dump me of the fucking beach? Was this what he wanted to show me, his new skank?

"I need you to look at what is written in the sand over there for me ok?" he asks and I look at him, crossing my arms over my chest, but finally going over there, seeing the girl handing him something. On the sand was written inside a big heart. "Look behind you"

"Ronnie, what the he..." the words caught in my throat as I turned around to find him on one knee with the most beautiful diamond ring I had ever seen in my life.

"Dahlia Kimberly Elwell, you have the most consistent, loving, and stable thing in my life. We've had a lifetime of friendship and year of close companionship and love. I love you, Dahlia... These past months on road without you, it's really put into perspective my true feelings for you. Would you make me the happiest rockstar of all time and do me the honor of becoming my wife?"

Ronnie asked me to marry him? I couldn't help it, I lost all sense of emotions right then and there and my vision blurred with tears. All of my life I had dreamed of this moment. But it came sooner than I had ever thought possible. I started to choke back tears that threatened to spill over at any moment and I said nothing.

His expression changed from excitement to worry and what seemed to be a major disappointment, which I wasn’t meaning to but it was like my tongue had turned to lead in my mouth. I did the only thing I knew that would answer the question for him, going closer to him and getting on my tiptoes and kissing him deeply. He responded almost instantly, wrapping his arms around me to deepen the kiss. I could feel his smile against my lips and suddenly all I wanted to do was to get lost in him. We finally pulled apart to look at each other and when I tried to speak it just came out as fragments of words and sentence structures covered up and muffled by sobs. That’s right. The tears had been spilled by them, streaming down my face like a pathetic fountain of water works.

“I’m guessing that counts as a yes then eh?” he asked as he pulled away from the kiss, sounding absolutely breathless, which is how I was feeling.

“Yes, a thousand times yes!” I exclaimed, finally finding my voice as the tears finally cleared up. He smiled at me, almost devilishly.

“The look on your face almost looked like jealousy there Dhal. Were you worried about the personal jeweler I picked for your engagement ring?” he asked and I pushed him playfully.

“Of course not! I never get jealous.” I said sticking my tongue out at him before attempting to run away like a two year old. I totally just lied through my fucking teeth however. He grabbed ahold of me before I could get out of arm's length and wrapped them around my waist. His lips grazed my ear and he nipped at it.

“You never were a good liar.” he whispered, his breath causing me to shudder and realize just how close he actually was. I looked over to see that the personal jeweler was leaving behind a bottle of champagne, before going to her car.

“She knows that we aren’t twenty one right?” I ask shocked and he just started laughing at me, causing me to pout. “What?”

“The drinking age is eighteen here, at least you’re close enough, besides I have even bigger news for you and your sisters.” he grins, causing me to tilt my head to the side in confusion and he took out plane tickets from his pocket. My eyes grew ten times their normal size and I couldn’t help but scream bloody murder. Ronnie flinched and then laughed at me as I snatched them up and ran off toward the direction of the house to deliver the news to my sisters.

Once I arrived back at the house, I burst through the front door to find both of my sister sitting around in their pajamas and sulking over the fact that graduation was in a week. They were both online like always. Writing or some other shit they usually did on the world wide webbernet.

“BEHOLD!” I shouted upon bursting through the door and holding up the miraculous gift I was about to bestow upon them. They both jumped and looked at me wildly.

“Dahlia what kind of crack is Ronnie giving you?” Sheila questioned upon my outburst. “Because whatever it is, you need to send it my way.” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at her, since she had started hanging out with those boys, she has been smoking marijuana and drinking. I hadn’t said anything, because I knew she would bring up the fact that I ran off with my boyfriend to go on tour...which I also couldn’t give her shit, because I was drinking a lot with the guys.

“None what so ever,” I chuckled and walked in front of them, “you know how it seems like we will never be able to get out of here?”

“Yeahhh, what is your point?” Athena questioned, actually closing her laptop to look at me and I held up the tickets. They both stood up at the same time, coming in front of me to investigate what I was holding. I watched as their eyes widened to the size of dinner plates at fancy restaurants before the mass freak out began. “You mean, we can get out of here and go home!?”

“Do...do the parents know?” Sheila asked, her voice shaking from excitement and possibly from the fact that she was about to cry.I shook my head no.

“Nope. And they won’t. Not until we’re well settled in with our favorite aunt and she tells our parents she’s fighting for our custody. We’re all almost 18 anyway. Even if they did win the battle it wouldn’t matter and we could still graduate because we’ll already be there in time and mom and dad don’t have enough money or patience to bring us back before that. And we can still do the battle of the bands contest. We never dropped out. We can do this guys. We just have to go out and do it!” I told them, attempting to pep talk them into going. I didn’t think it would take much persuasion because I knew they had been home sick and would have given just about anything.

“I’m in! When do we leave?” Athena asked, which was a very good question. I looked more closely at the tickets for a date. It was dated for two days from now. Perfect. Our parents were out on a work trip and wouldn’t be back until the end of the week.

“We leave Wednesday at noon. So come on, we have no time to lose. Lets pack up and go home girls!” I stated, standing up and pulling them both into a sisterly group hug. Upon receiving this hug, Sheila grazed the ring on my finger and jumped back.

“What… what is that?” Sheila asked, grabbing my hand. “Is… is that… what I think it is?” She asked me, tears filling her porcelain blue gray eyes. I nodded and felt the sting of hot tears at the ready. I looked down at my engagement ring feeling all of the love for Ronnie wash back over me. The ring was double banded and lined with black diamonds and slightly bigger red ruby gems that was tied together at the top with one big black diamond that shined as bright as a little black sun. I would have to wait to start planning the wedding for now. I needed to get my girls home. It was all because of Ronnie that this was even possible. I was going to have thank in a very… personal way. I smiled to myself just thinking about it.

“Someone’s getting laid to toniiiight.” Athena sang in a sing-songy voice and I shoved her, blush rising to the surface of my cheeks.

Two Days Later

We boarded our first class flight back to America after watching my sisters say goodbye to the friends they had made while they were here and I said goodbye to Ronnie, who informed me that he’d be back before graduation. I had set my sisters and I up on this online schooling thing for our high school in order for us to finish this grade and graduate with our our class.

So, that was our mission on our long flight here was to finish as many lessons as we possibly could, then the next day would be doing as much school work up until the day before graduation where we would have to talk with the principal and counsellor. They would tell us if we were able to graduate with our class or if we would have to take more schooling. I was hoping for the first of those choices.

I noticed that Sheila kept looking down at her cell phone, something was bugging her and she wasn’t just going to come out and say anything. I closed my laptop and walked over to her, watching her jump as I plopped down into the seat next to her.

“What’s on that mind of yours?” I asked, looking at her curiously and she didn’t meet my eyes at first.

“Nothing besides working on homework...what makes you ask?” she asked, her tone going defensive for a split second trying to make sure I didn’t hear it. By this time, Athena had shut her laptop and joined us, which meant she had no chance of not answering it.

“Oh come on, spill already.” Athena prompted her and she kept looking down at her phone before she finally gave an agitated sigh.

“Apart of me wants to tell the guys that we are coming back...at the same time,” she put her phone back into her pocket, “I just want to focus on the band and school, not letting them know would give us more of an opportunity to do that.”

“I wholeheartedly agree with you. I mean, telling the guys would mean more distraction. More stress, and more drama. And we don’t need that right now. We need to focus. Graduating and the band comes before boys. Especially guys like them with the way they’ve been acting.” Athena spoke up, looking down at her feet upon saying the last sentence. Craig had really beaten her heart black and blue over the last few months. I wanted so desperately to beat Green and Mabbitt different varying shades of black, blue, green, red, and purple! But that’s for another line of discussion.

“I think you girls are right. Telling the guys would only cause us more strife. But you know they’re going to be pissed when they find out we’ve been there the whole time.” I stated, only thinking long term.

“Well then… I guess they don’t have to find that part out, now will they?” Athena said and Sheila smiled and nodded in response. Lots of hugging followed and afterwards we all dispersed again, doing our separate things once more. I stared out the window of the jet plane that was soaring up across the Pacific ocean. Staring down at the miles and miles of crystal blue waters, I wondered just where this crazy life was going to pull us next.