41. Forty-One
Forty-One
Brennon
The loud pounding against my skull was getting really annoying. Until it was replaced by something worse. Angry shouting.
“Get the fuck up!”
Other voices, too, yelling our names, “Brennon! Xavier!”
Xavi was upright already, reaching for his boxers and the shorts I’d removed from him last night. He barely got them on, and I just managed to wrap my bed sheet around me when Abbi, followed by Michele and Isabella stormed their way into my cabin.
“Excuse us!” I shouted, scrambling to ensure my dick wasn’t just hanging out, “Get out!”
“No!” Bella stated, like it wasn’t up for debate.
“No?! This is my cabin! We were...uhh”
Bella teased, “Gu?y, sabemos lo que estabas haciendo,”
I mean, I guess it was pretty obvious exactly what Xav and I were doing, or had done, last night, considering the mess of our clothes everywhere.
“So, no. We’re not going anywhere. Not until you tell us where Toni is.” She explained, opting for English so it wasn’t just she and I having this little chat.
Michele brushed Bella’s arms softly, until she relaxed, and explained, “We went by her cabin, and she wasn’t there. And judging by the fact that she’s not here either, we’re worried.”
Her mouth creased, as did mine, at the realization that no one but Xavi and I knew what happened last night. That they didn’t know about Toni. Worse, that Michele didn’t know about Cole. I couldn’t linger on those thoughts because Abbi interrupted them, jabbing her finger in my direction.
“I’m not doing this shit with her again. So, where the fuck did she run off to? Because I know she ain’t leaving him behind,” She then pointed at Xav.
Xavi side-eyed her–well, all of them–like he did to just about everyone other than us. Though, of course, he didn’t reckon with Abbi and her ability to rive straight through his shit.
She took one look at him, rolled her eyes, and sighed, “Let us help you, you idiots.”
Xav was, of course, affronted that anyone would have the audacity to call him an idiot, because he was far too used to being the smartest person in the room. The most socially clueless too.
“How can you help?” He asked.
Abbi stared back at him, “Xavier Rothberg, you think you’re so fucking mysterious, but I have known you since we were sixteen. I know you have a plan. Or if you don’t have one yet, you will.”
A snort burst from me at Xavi’s discombobulated face.
“She’s got you there,” I joked.
“Shut up, Brennon,” they both replied in unison. Nobody but Birdie ever appreciated my sense of humour. Then, they faced me again, only Abbi was gentler when she asked, “Where is she? What happened?”
Xavier and I exchanged a silent look. In it, all the things we’d put to the side last night when we lost ourselves in each other, loved one another hard enough to briefly forget the pain. Today, we couldn’t afford to ignore the reality of our situation anymore.
Weeks ago, when I said we were done keeping secrets, I didn’t just mean from each other.
I meant from all the people in our lives who cared about us.
For Xavi and I, that wasn’t many people, but these girls…
these girls had shown up for Toni at every turn.
Even when I hadn’t. They deserved to know what we were up against, and if they still wanted to help us after that, who were we to turn them down?
Our horrific revelations were met with stunned silence.
Until Michele broke it. She shattered with a gasp.
Her knees shook and gave out. Her eyes never left Bella, but we all bore witness to her heartbreak.
Michele, the kindest of us all, may have been the one to break up with him, but we all knew she had loved Cole once, as much as he’d loved her.
I suspected that had changed. For both of them, although I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when.
None of us were unaffected. Xavier’s voice shook through the whole story, and when he said the words out loud, that Cole had been shot, his shaking was so violent I swore he’d stop talking altogether.
Still, no one said the words. We were all thinking it. Abbi and Bella with their glassy eyes, me with the heavy weight clogging my throat, and Xavi with his shaking and blank stare.
A bird’s chirping disturbed the heaviness that hung around us.
Nature, a reminder that things endure. That the world keeps turning even when someone leaves it.
Then, it chirped again, unnaturally loud, as if the poor creature was inside these walls with us.
Only, it sent Xav flying. He dove across me and from beneath my bed grabbed at phone he’d collected last night,
“You have service out here?” Abbi asked, puzzled.
“Shut up! Shut up!” He ordered before answering, sounding so calm. A stranger would have thought he was unaffected, but I saw the tremor in his hand as it clutched the phone to his ear, “Hello?”
Abbi had looked ready to knock the phone from Xav’s hand. She didn’t. Seconds passed. And then his eyes closed, and he released an exhale no one in that room would ever forget.
“Nettie,” he breathed, “Hold on, baby,”
He removed the phone from his ear and hit something on the screen, then held it out around us.
“Xavi?” Her voice was every good thing that had ever happened, that would ever happen. It was every song, every note, every piece of poetry.
“We’re here, baby,’” I cried, tears openly streaming down my face.
“Brennon! Brennon, baby, I didn’t leave you, not on purpose! I promise.”
“I know, Birdie, we saw the whole thing,”
“I just couldn’t leave him, I couldn’t let him be alone–” her voice broke, and I wasn’t the only one crying. Only Xavier was able to hold his composure enough to speak, “We know, Nettie, we know, but baby, we need you to tell us where you are?
Whether the result of granular phone speakers, or emotion, her voice sounded rougher than normal.
“I don’t know,” She answered, panic rising in her voice as she began to describe her surroundings, “It’s pink, like the penthouse. The same bed, same fuck-... the same everything, only, there’s no windows.”
“Only what?”
“Xav, there’s no windows. I can’t see outside.” The panic had well and truly set in.
“Slow down. Breathe, Toni, breathe.” He coached, taking slow, audible breaths himself.
“You’ve practiced this. Pretend I am right there with you. I will be so soon. We are coming for you.”
Her voice, panicked again, “Xav, Bren, there’s someone here, my father or his men! What do I do?!”
“You’re going to hang up the phone, then you’re going to hide it.
“Okay,” she confirmed.
“And remember this one, very important thing, my wild girl. We love you. And we are coming.” There was a loud click as the line disconnected.
Not one of us said a thing, all looking expectantly at Xavier.
“I have work to do.”
Abbi, done taking her cues from him, answered, “You mean we… we have work to do.”
Xavier lips parted, ready to brush off Abbi’s comment. Only, from the floor, Michele called out, “Stop!”
All eyes shot to her. She took a deep breath from her knees and squeezed her eyes closed while her pale hand twitched and shook every second until it found Bella’s.
Bells’ eyes shone, and she beamed while helping Mich to her feet, never letting go.
So much love and acceptance radiated out from the two of them.
I recognized in Bella, the thing I’d recognized last summer, too, someone who already knew themselves and was just waiting for the right person–or in my case, people–they loved to catch up.
Okay, fine, and maybe I also needed to get my head screwed on straight, too.
Now, though, Bella’s face put a visual to the pounding of my heart the first time Xav used the term ‘boyfriend’. Abbi, on the other hand looked stunned, but only for a second before she erupted, “Are you kidding me?!” As she jumped toward them and threw her arms around them both.
“I love this, I love you. Oh my god, how did I miss this, tell me everything, holy shit! Who else knows? Does anyone? Oh shit, we’ll keep your secret, won’t we?
!" Abbi rattled off so many questions and statements that neither of the girls could get a word in edgewise before looking back to Xav and I.
Bells looked to Mich, who had finally re-opened her eyes and gave her a soft, encouraging, smile.
“It’s not a secret,” Michele mumbled, her voice slowly getting stronger, “Or at least I don’t want it to be anymore.”
She looked directly to Xav, who’d remained stiff throughout their revelation.
“We are going to help you and Xavier; you are going to let us. Because I need to. I need to do something. For him.”
I’d never seen anyone communicate silently the way the four of us had always done, but maybe Michele had that same power because Xavi’s chin dipped in agreement under her gaze.
“Glad that’s settled. Bells, we have to go, make sure your campers get picked up okay, but the second they are gone, we regroup.”
Abbs gestured to all of us, before turning on her heel and heading out the door.
Bella kissed Michele’s fingers before following, and I expected Michele to follow suit.
Then, I’d finally be able to put some fucking pants on.
It was hard to believe I’d had this whole conversation with nothing but a sheet covering my junk.
Only, Michele lagged behind, watching Xav carefully.
Assessing him even. It was easy to dismiss the nice girl, the cheerleader, the blonde.
But I always said Michele was way too good for Cole, and she proved it a thousand times over when she approached Xav and said, “To answer just one of Abbi’s questions, there was one person that knew. ”
Her words, uttered so gently to us both, made my eyebrows shoot upwards “Cole. Cole knew. I don’t know how, but he knew.”
Her voice fractured and I found myself blinking back more tears.
It took everything we had for Xav and I to leave them behind.
I hated myself for it. I’d hate myself for it for every second of every day.
There would never be another summer morning when I didn’t see Cole’s body, limp and bloodied behind my eyes.
And Michele wasn’t even finished breaking our hearts.
“I know he did a lot of things wrong. To me. To you two. But he tried to do some right things, too. When he found out, he said he was sorry. He told me h-... he-... he was happy for me.”
In the face of her tears, and my own, it was Xav who surprised us both. He didn’t hug her or anything. He wouldn’t. But his eyes were just as glassy as either of ours and he choked out a raspy, but sincere, “Thank you. Thank you, Michele.”
She gave us a tight smile, before waving goodbye.
When the door closed, leaving Xavi and I alone again, he reached for my hand first. The comforting squeeze of his fingers, a reminder that this time, we’d be in it together.
This time, unlike all the times before, we weren’t abandoning each other.
We weren’t giving up on each other. And that included Toni, too.
This time, we weren’t clueless kids. In the six years since Toni first disappeared, we’d been harsh, we’d been cruel, to her and to each other.
We’d been lonely and we’d been hurt. But maybe those lessons were necessary to teach us how to value the important things, the things, the people that mattered.
Lessons our father’s–families–never did.
For them, or at least for Blue, Daniel, and Franklin, it always came back to the money.
Their money bequeathing them power, or vice versa, I wasn’t sure.
But either way, that shit was evil. Then again, so were our parents.
But it always, always came back to the money.
It was also how most criminal organisations got caught in the end.
You can be an evil motherfucker but that doesn’t mean you can handle the complex financial accounting to successfully manage the kind of cash being routed through The Delilah Foundation.
That required computer skills and the mathematical wizardry of someone who’d been cruising his way through one of the most difficult advanced business degrees in the country.
Between Xav and I, we’d find her. Step one: avenge Cole.
Step two: save Toni. Step three: burn the Barrett empire to ash and fuck in the flames while it blazed.