Chapter 10
Ten
Enoch
I dragged my hands through my hair, watching Emory drive away from the middle of the street.
“Fuck!”
I spun on my heel, jogging back up to the house and found Jae sitting on bottom step, hands on his knees. He looked up when I entered, and I could see that he’d been brought to tears by Shiloh’s punch.
“You fucking asked for it,” I said with the shake of my head. I climbed over him up the stairs in search of my phone. I heard him groaning behind me as he followed me.
“And I fucking warned you she couldn’t be trusted,” Jae rasped, his voice strained.
I spun around studying his expression. “You were eavesdropping?”
Jae stared, his answer in the silence. I ground my teeth with anger.
“Turns out Sebastian wasn’t half-wrong.”
My brows pinched with confusion. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’d know if you hadn’t shut everyone out when you left.”
My stomach dropped with guilt, and I sagged against the counter. “What do you mean, Jae?”
“You didn’t find it strange that your entire family suddenly up and left the place they’d put down roots for years?”
“My dad decided to fully retire, and he wanted to be closer to Baba and Ded as they’re getting older,” I said, studying his reaction. “Eden didn’t want to be left behind and when they decided to move too, so did your parents.”
Jae scoffed and shook his head. “No. Your dad was suddenly and inexplicably fired, shortly after the mayor was arrested. Then Rosa, Sebastian’s mom comes forward with some deep family secrets, talking about an alleged criminal organization that her ex-husband and ex-brother-in-law were involved in. ”
I blinked, my head spinning. “I don’t understand.”
“Sebastian’s bio daddy and uncle were involved in a gang,” he said with a condescending blink of his eyes. “A very scary and very violent gang that was supposedly led by the mayor of Granby.”
I nearly laughed with disbelief. “What the hell are you talking about? The mayor? Of Granby? Bullshit.”
Jae rolled his eyes with exasperation. Like he was dealing with an ignorant child.
“Yes, dipshit. Sebastian…he kind of got on the crazy train after that, became convinced that this gang had somehow been involved in Shiloh and her brother’s death.
Anyways, everything was going to shit. Your sister was pregnant and scared, Sebastian was losing it, your dad was jobless, my dad was worried that your dad was gonna get dragged into some investigations if there were coverups happening in the police department, and instead of staying in Texas, they put their houses up for sale, had everything packed in a matter of days, and left like bats out of hell. ”
I stared at the floor, my eyes swimming with unshed tears. “I don’t understand, why didn’t anyone tell me any of this?” I looked up to stare at Jae. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
“You don’t think I wanted to? You were gone!
And after finding out about how you were coping with Shiloh’s death, there was no fucking way I was going to risk your sobriety telling you about Sebastian’s crazy theories.
I didn’t think they were worth sharing when they were just theories.
I didn’t think they were true. When nothing ever came of it, when there were no more news stories, no mentions of any criminal organizations or other investigations, we kind of just…
moved on. Focused on family, on building roots in Harrisburg.
But then this deputy shows up, tells us Shiloh is alive and is in Witness Protection…
I was suspicious. And clearly, I was right to be, when she just admitted that she was working for that gang!
Hell, I always suspected something was off with her, with the drugs and shit, her behavior and cageyness, and nobody fucking listened to me! Well, guess what? I was fucking right!”
I swiped away a stray tear that had escaped.
I couldn’t blame Jae, not really. But it still hurt that I had been kept in the dark.
Knowing about Sebastian’s theories probably wouldn’t have changed things, but knowing I was so distant from my family that I hadn’t been made aware of them stung, nonetheless.
“So what if she testified against those people? That’s a really fucking honorable, courageous thing, don’t you think?”
“No, this is much worse,” Jae said with a shake of his head.
“Did you not hear her? She was working with them! I can guarantee you that she wasn’t out there selling Girl Scout cookies, Nox.
God only knows what else she’s hiding about her past. We were her supposed closest friends, and we didn’t know a damn thing about any gangs.
She’s been pretty fucking open about the fact that she’s not innocent and that you should stay away from her.
So, take the fucking hint, Nox. You need to let her go and move on. ”
“You can’t make that decision for me. You don’t know the full story and I’m not going to just assume shit about her because you have some grudge against her for leaving us.”
“I don’t hate her for leaving us. I hate her for what she did to you.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to center myself so I didn’t explode on Jae.
I understood his anger. Hell, I was angry too, but that didn’t mean I was going to let it blind me from what was really going on here.
Shiloh was seventeen, and no matter what Jae might have thought, she didn’t hang around a bunch of criminals for the hell of it.
And whatever had happened to make her get involved with them, I would never judge her for those reasons.
“Whatever. I need to make sure she’s okay,” I muttered, opening my eyes and grabbing my phone from the counter.
Jae stood in my periphery for another long moment before turning and heading back downstairs.
I released a long sigh before attempting to call Shiloh. It rang and went to voicemail. I rolled my neck, trying to release the building tension and decided to wait another few minutes. She might have still been driving.
I cleaned up our unfinished food and then called her again. I audibly groaned with frustration when she didn’t answer. I continued to distract myself by cleaning the grill outside and then cleaning the kitchen.
I tried once more to call Shiloh, and it went straight to voicemail.
I hung up and dialed again, only to get her voicemail once more.
I wanted to throw something. I was angry at her for leaving the way she did, but I was mostly scared.
Scared that she was hurting herself, scared that she would do something that she couldn’t take back, something like what I already lived through once and refused to live through again.
I sent her a text message asking her to let me know that she was safe, but the message wouldn’t go through.
My heart raced, immediately conjuring up images of her in a car wreck, her phone damaged and preventing her from getting any of my messages.
It took a solid minute to touch reality and realize that she had more likely blocked my phone number.
Dammit!
I was pissed that she would treat me with such little regard to how her actions might affect me. I was pissed at myself for triggering her with all of my questions. I was pissed at Jae for believing the worst of Shiloh.
God, please keep Shiloh safe. Keep her safe and let her know that I’m worried and want her to reach out.
My leg shook with anxiety. I needed something to keep me busy, something to keep me from going insane, from spiraling.
I ran downstairs to the garage and grabbed the sledgehammer, a crowbar, and my designated shoes for housework. I connected my phone to my headphones and pulled up my favorite playlist. Then I demoed the guest bathroom.
It was extremely cathartic. Hitting, slamming, breaking. Expelling all the anger and worry felt good. As I stared at the mess I’d made, my eyes snagged on the bathroom trashcan that I’d tipped over at some point during my destruction.
My chest tightened at the sight of the Band-Aid wrappers. I was right. She had hurt herself. I wanted to be wrong, but when I saw the blood on her fingernails, I couldn’t ignore that gut feeling that something had happened in the bathroom.
I’d done that before, ignored the red flags, and I couldn’t live with myself if I did that again. Maybe that made me obsessive, but I was determined this time around not to miss anything when it came to Shiloh.
It physically hurt to know that she was in pain, that she was suffering, and that I couldn’t help her.
I tried another fruitless phone call and text before continuing to rip out the bathroom floors. It was a frustratingly tedious task of chipping away at the tiles, that unfortunately also ran up one of the bathroom walls as well. Which meant I’d be tearing down the drywall too.
After completely gutting the bathroom, minus the shower-tub combo because it looked like a recent addition and was in good condition, I drove to base.
I spent an hour at the gym, despite having a home setup, just to avoid going anywhere near Jae.
I knew he was going to be tracking my location anyways to make sure I wasn’t hitting up a bar.
I came home and showered with every intention of going to sleep. Instead, I was obsessively replaying our conversation in my head. Trying to pinpoint the moment she snapped and I pushed her too far.
Or maybe it was an accumulation of moments that built up until it all boiled over.
I had no idea what she went through or what kind of trauma she was reliving to talk about her past with me.
And I wanted to be sensitive to that fact.
But we weren’t going to get anywhere if she was going to push me away and leave me scared for her.
Wondering if she was okay. If her heart was still beating.
And maybe some of that fear stemmed from my own unresolved trauma over her suicide. But anyone would worry about someone’s wellbeing if they knew they were hurting themselves.