16. Chapter 16 #2
“Gatlin!” I hiss as scramble back to my feet as quietly as possible. His room is the farthest down the hallway, as far away from everyone else as I could get him. That was the easiest way for me to watch out for him. I call out his name over and over as I rush down the hallway.
I don’t know why I’ve always felt the need to protect Gatlin.
We’re a little less than two years apart in age.
I’m older than both Mathis and Blaine, though I’m merely a few weeks older than Mathis.
Gatlin is younger than Mathis, but Blaine is the baby out of all of us at just a few weeks shy of seventeen.
Gatlin’s door swings open, and he cautiously sticks his head out to see what’s going on.
His innocent eyes stare down the hall at me, and I’m suddenly reminded of exactly why I’m always trying to take care of him.
He may be seventeen, and he may be bigger than me now, but he’s completely ignorant to the brutality of the real world.
I used to watch television, I eavesdrop on the staff and maids here, I’ve spent hours with my ear pressed against my father’s office wall to overhear conversations that no child should ever be privy to.
Gatlin, he’s been shielded from all of that.
As much of it as I could protect him from, at least. The eyes that stare back at me, they make me question whether or not the effort I put in for his sake was in vain.
Now, he’s clueless about what really happens out in the real world, and I worry because I won’t always be around to look after him.
I skid to a halt, waving my arm toward me. “Close your door. Come on. Hurry!” I hiss as I turn back around and head toward the basement door.
“What’s happening?” He quietly calls after me. “Lance! What is going on?”
“Shhh!”
As I pass by the front door, I can hear Blaine and Mathis arguing on the porch.
Then I hear keys jingling and I know that we’re already running out of time.
I round the corner, flipping the locks open as fast as I possibly can.
One of them gets stuck, and I pound my hand against the lock quietly to try unsticking it.
“Come on, come on, come on.“ I chant to myself as Gatlin finally catches up to me.
The first lock on the front door clicks open, and I glance over my shoulder in panic. My eyes connect with Gatlin’s briefly, and he must catch on to what I’m doing because he starts flipping locks open with me. Why the fuck are these people so paranoid?
“There are thirty steps. Go all the way to the bottom and sit there. The wall is five steps away from the stairs. If you have to use the bathroom, follow around the back of the stairs and piss on the floor. There’s a drain back there. Okay?”
“I’m going down there?!“ He squeaks out in terror. His fear grips my chest tightly, and the guilt starts to creep in. There’s nothing I can do to save him this time though. Locking him down there is the only way for me to save him.
“Yes. I’m sorry, Gatty. Only while Mathis is here. As soon as he leaves, I’m going to let you back out, okay? I swear it won’t be long. If anyone but me opens this door, do not answer. Especially not Mathis, okay?”
“Okay… okay.” He agrees as he shakes his head nervously.
I click the last lock open and slowly open the door until it hits the point where the hinges start to squeal in protest. It only leaves about a foot for Gatlin to squeeze inside, but he rushes through the opening easily.
His eyes are red and rimmed with tears as he stares through the gap at me one last time.
“I love you, Gatty. Thirty steps, okay?”
He sniffles as he nods back at me. Everything about this breaks my heart, and the fact that I have to lock him down there?
Fuck. I hate it, but I can’t chance anything when it comes to Mathis.
The real question is, can I still trust Blaine?
Another lock flicks open behind me, and that only leaves one more on the front door.
As soon as he finds the next key on the ring, we’ll be out of time.
“I’ll let you out as soon as he leaves. I promise.
” I say before closing the door. I start flipping the locks again, glancing over my shoulder periodically.
My heart thunders in my chest, because I know that if I miss a single one, then Mathis will notice.
He’ll know that I was tampering with the locks, or that his mom isn’t the one that locked Gatlin downstairs in the first place.
Both of those options have outcomes that absolutely cannot happen.
“It’s really dark, Lance.” He whispers through the crack of the door.
“I know, Gatty. Close your eyes. See how many numbers of pi you can recite, think about the hardest math problem you can and try to figure it out in your brain, just keep your mind busy, okay? It’ll be over before you know it.”
A key slides into the last lock on the front door just as I start the last two locks on the basement. My eyes dart to the front door in panic as I wiggle one into place.
“He’s coming, Gatty. Go down the stairs.
Please. Don’t answer anyone else. I’ll come get you soon.
“ I explain as I force the last lock into the slide. The front door swings open, and I dart down the last few feet of the hallway before sliding around the corner to hide. I’m in the opposite direction of my room, and if Mathis finds me over here, he’ll know that something was going on.
There was absolutely no way I could get back to my room fast enough, though.
I lean back against the wall, trying to steady my shaky breaths and pounding heart.
That was close. Too close.
“I’m telling you… I heard mom say that she locked him downstairs this morning. If you let him out, she’s going to be ticked, Mathis. Why don’t you just wait until she lets him out? You know that she won’t leave him down there very long.” Blaine says as he follows on Mathis’ heels.
“She’ll never know he’s gone unless you tell her.
It’s not like she ever checks on them.” He says with a hint of humor in his voice.
Everything about him disgusts me, and I’m eternally grateful that Gatlin and I didn’t end up anything like him.
It’s hard for me to even fathom the fact that we share a single strand of DNA.
I toe closer to the edge of the wall, peeking around the corner to see if I can watch them.
“You mean she never checks on Lance. They aren’t the same.
She babies Gatlin, and you know it. She was about to leave the country club, and she could come to fetch Gatlin at any point.
It’s not worth it, Mathis.“ Blaine argues as he turns around to close the door. Mathis has started walking toward the kitchen, so I can’t see him anymore, but I keep my eyes on Blaine.
As soon as the door clicks closed, he goes to turn around and catches a glimpse of me.
He does a double take, his eyes going wide with fear before darting back to Mathis.
He pauses, not sure what to do, before he takes a couple tentative steps toward the hall that Mathis disappeared down.
He leans against the wall as casually as he can manage, which, for him, is stiff and unnatural.
He waves me in his direction and points to the floor beside him.
“Fine,” Mathis concedes. “So, I wait until next week. Maybe that asshole will be in the basement then, and I won’t have to fight him to get Gatlin out of the house. The women there are going to eat him up like a fucking cake, dude.”
“I don’t understand why you even want to do it. Doesn’t that take their attention away from you?”
“Not if were a package deal,” Mathis replies with this skin-crawling edge to his voice. What the fuck is he planning to do with Gatlin? Whore him out for his own benefit? What the actual fuck is wrong with him?
Blaine waves his arm behind his back over and over, signaling for me to go across the hall while Mathis isn’t paying attention.
I dart behind him as fast as I can, not even chancing looking in the direction that Mathis went.
When I get to the other side, I slide to a stop, leaning against the wall to catch my breath again.
I glance over at Blaine, and he tosses up a thumbs up at me behind his back.
I suck in a deep breath, exhaling in relief as he wanders off down the hall toward the kitchen.
“I have a game this weekend, but maybe next weekend you could take me instead. I could play hard to get. Say I just wanna watch or something to get them to focus on you.”