Chapter 34
Eric
F uck. What kind of a person was I? I'd brought danger to my parents' doorstep while they were dealing with PTSD. I stepped off after my dad. He shared a curious glance at me as he descended the stairs. The words were on my tongue to say something, warning him of the danger we were running from, but I didn't. Because I was a coward. Evil. I had to be. Storming back into the room, I grabbed the bedposts at the foot of the bed and shook it.
"What was I thinking?!" I banged my head on the wood.
"Hey, hey. Stop doing that." Ethan pulled me back. "You were thinking about Lily's safety."
"And what about my parents' safety?!" I whipped around and stared at his stupid brown eyes. "And why did you open your stupid mouth about staying at a hotel? What was the reason for coming here if we're not going to stay here? The military protection was the whole point."
Listen to me. Even now, I was still fucking selfish as hell. I should have been thinking about protecting them too, not risking setting their progress back.
"Will you keep your voice down? Someone might hear you." Matt ran toward the door and looked out into the hallway before coming back inside and shutting the door, with the lock this time.
"Yeah. Well, maybe they should!" I argued.
"Yeah? And Lily too?" He glared at me and slapped the back of my head. "Idiot."
"No, idiot." I shoved him in the chest.
He shoved me back and all the tension and guilt inside my body molded into a tangled ball of energy that rushed to my fist.
"Okay, okay." Ethan jumped in and pulled me away before I could hit him. Ryan pulled Matt away.
"As if you could take him on anyway." Ryan teased Matt.
"Yeah, well, don't underestimate my lack of mass." He returned with a scowl as I shrugged Ethan off me.
"You're going to attract attention and then your dad's really going to know something is wrong." Ethan warned.
"Well, maybe he needs to know something is wrong. What kind of person brings danger to their parents' doorstep? Fuck!" I rubbed lines into my forehead and shook the bed again. "I should at least warn them."
"Then you'd only be triggering them." Matt grunted.
"And if the fucking Colombine family shows up at our doorstep raining bullets, that's not going to trigger them? What kind of fucking friends are you? Why didn't you talk me out of this?" I yelled, needing someone else to blame. But there was no escape.
Ryan
"He's right." I spoke up, unable to bite my tongue anymore as I waited and wished for them to be overheard, for Eric to find the heart he used to have and man up to the consequences. So I didn't have to be the one to do it, the crazy one, as I'd recently been classed.
They turned to look at me.
"His parents have a right to know, so they can at least prepare themselves." I shrugged.
"And they're just going to keep it to themselves, are they?" Ethan asked.
I would hope not. That was the point. That someone driven by responsibility and guilt, would be brave enough to say something and free me from this hell I'd locked myself in, take away the guilt and responsibility from off my shoulders. Because if I said something, I was letting them all down. I'd already lost Lily. I couldn't lose them too.
Eric ignored us. "What do I do?" He repeated under his breath as he paced and shook his fisted hands as if he was trapped behind jail bars, shaking them down. I knew the feeling all too well. The need to tear down the barriers cornering and trapping you inside its depths, suffocating you.
And what was the point of these damn new meds? I was going to need a higher dose or something. I wondered how many milligrams they gave to someone who may or may not be the target of a crime family because they made the stupid mistake of getting involved with a mob boss who manipulated them into killing the son of that crime family. I was going to bet that it was a lot higher than whatever the hell I was on. As hard as I tried, my eyes kept finding their way back to that case of beer.
Fuck, I just needed to make it stop.
"Tell them." I muttered beneath mine.
"Well, of course you would say that." Matt threw his hands up at me.
"What's the worst that could happen?" I asked. Nothing could be worse than this.
"PTSD?" Matt shook his head at me. "Or weren't you listening?"
"Well, either way, their PTSD will be triggered. Or weren't you listening?" I threw back at him. "At least this way, measures can be put in place."
"All of you seem to be forgetting about Lily in all this." Ethan rumbled.
"Yeah, well." My chest hurt and that beer was looking more appealing by the second. "She deserves better than us."
"Yeah, well some of us aren't ready to lose her yet," Matt returned.
"You're not getting it. This is no longer about whether we lose Lily or not. It's about who is going to protect her," Ethan asserted.
"Exactly. If they know, they can protect her better. We're all just sitting ducks at the moment," I argued.
"Or they might kick us off their doorstep. What then, huh?" Ethan fired back.
"Eric's parents wouldn't do..." Matt's words were cut off by Eric storming out of the room.
"Wait, where are you going?" Ethan ran after him.
We all piled out of the room, following him downstairs. Air filtered back into my lungs at the same time they began constricting.
"Eric. Wait. Come back. Think about this..." Ethan was muttering under his breath as he caught up to him, but he was shrugged off.
Eric pulled open the door and rushed out back. The end of this fucking mental roller coaster was near.