27
Emaline
It’s a shadowy figure that greets mewhen I maneuver through the crowd of students, panicking as I search for The Bear”s broad frame. My heart flutters when I see him, which annoys me because he’s so cold and indifferent. Why I expect him to be any different is futile, and me being na?ve, luckily, I’m not hopelessly optimistic.
“Where’s Aaron?” I enquire, already feeling ill at the thought of having to ride on the back of his motorbike again.
“On an errand and couldn’t return in time,” he replies tersely, which is his speaking style.
“I don’t think I can ever get used to riding on the back of your bike,” I inform him, rubbing my churning stomach.
“I figured that, so I bought Xave’s car,” he proclaims, walking behind me as most female students I pass in the halls gaze longingly at him, and jealousy rises in me with the urge to tell them to stop staring at him. I must resign to the fact that one day, he will meet his match, the girl who sets his heart on fire, and then I will have to let go of my fascination with him.
“Oh? Thank goodness,” I sigh in relief as he opens the exit door, and we step out into the cold, breezy weather. I glance back at his narrowed gaze fixed onto the horizon, examining the people surrounding us, near and far. He’s so beautiful in a rugged and edgy way, with his black hooded sweatshirt and the collar pulled up around his neck to shield him from the cold.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” he mumbles, still staring ahead of us.
“I enjoyed the sandwich you made me,” I inform him, triggering a slight smile on his intriguing face.
“I’ll let Xave make you lunch tomorrow so you can compare who can make a better sandwich,” he challenges me.
“Deal,” I chuckle shyly, enjoying this little exchange, and then I remember that I need to clarify something. “Are you still expecting me to stay at the Cliffton house overnight?”
“Yeah, you need to stay out of harm’s way, and we think it’s better to stay with us than at your grandparents’ place,” he explains, still keeping his gaze on the people coming and going and scrutinizing them. He’s searching for the danger, I suspect.
“Okay, so I need to grab some more clothes and bits and pieces,” I tell him. “Do you mind making a detour?”
“Of course not,” he shrugs nonchalantly. “We’ll pick up some food for dinner on the way home. I feel like fried chicken.”
“You don’t look like fried chicken,” I chuckle, trying to make an awkward joke and instantly wishing I could suck those words back up again because I’m so lame.
His eyebrows lower over his eyes as a grimace emerges on his face, but he remains silent as I imagine the ground opening up and swallowing me whole.
Desperate for him to forget my stupid joke, I change the subject by asking, “Have you seen any sign of the Viches?”
He shakes his head. “No, but that doesn’t mean they’re not nearby watching,” he replies, bringing me back down to earth with a solid thump, and I start nervously looking around. “And ah…Aaron found out a few things and solved a few mysteries.”
“Like what?” I ask, eager to see an end to this entire saga because it’s putting me constantly on edge. I already had a nervous constitution before my sister disappeared. However, the human body is excellent at adjusting to high-stress situations, as long as the high stress doesn’t last too long.
“I’ll update you once we’re inside Xave’s car,” he instructs flatly. We walked the entire way to the parking lot silently, which was hard for me, while his eyes searched around us for anything untoward. Being without sound and needless chatter is usually a comfortable place for me. Still, I need noise around Austin and his older brother, and my mouth blurts incessant chatter to steer away my nervousness at being in their company. But this time, proudly, I managed to remain quiet.
“So, ah,” Austin starts as he signals for me to put my seatbelt on. “He had a good chat with his mates Kieran and Kody, who confess they didn’t know much-”
“They’re obviously lying,” I hiss, annoyed. “I hope Aaron didn’t believe them.”
“Aaron wasn’t born yesterday,” Austin says confidently as he starts the engine. Then I wait patiently for him to continue, but instead, he backs out of the park.
Once on the open road leading to Addington town, he adds, “He spoke to Harley Leonard, that chick who held you captive in the vault.”
“She’s the guilty one, I’m telling you right now,” I ascertain with conviction.
“Well…she said that the USB stick is hidden in the Butcher’s Block, so Aaron had retrieved it to hand it to the police,” he tells me.
“And did he find it? Let me guess…it’s suddenly missing, and Harley will whine, ‘It wasn’t me,’” I snip hotly.
He smiles and grunts. “Aaron will contact me when he’s done the deed, and as far as Harley is concerned…she had a hunch that it was your sister who contacted Viches.”
“My sister? Gosh, that’s a dumb thing to do,” I state. Then, when I ponder it, I wonder if she’s right.
“It is a dumb thing to do, but that’s the only explanation that Harley came up with as to how the Viches found out about the USB,” Austin says, checking the rear-vision and wing mirrors before flicking on the indicator to change lanes.
“Do you believe her?” I ask him, hoping he’ll say no because I’ve set my sights on making Harley the bad person in this scenario after she deceived me in the first place.
“I don’t know her,” he answers simply. “But you know your sister, so do you think she’s capable of doing something stupid like contacting crime lords Viches?”
“Well…when you put it like that,” I sigh as embarrassment claims me. “Yeah, I think my sister is more than capable of contacting the Viches, thinking she was doing the right thing rather than going to the police.”
“Why would she do that?” he asks, as he checks the wing mirror, then looks behind him to check out the car trailing us. His suspicions make me nervous, so I look back to find a red car driven by a guy in a baseball cap.
“I don’t know,” I answer without thinking until I deliberate. “Maybe it had something to do with money. Or maybe she didn’t know how dangerous they are.”
“Yeah, well, people do stupid things for money,” he exclaims, and I agree by nodding.
The red car turns off, and Austin relaxes into his seat. We enter my suburb on the edge of town, where the city meets the country. Turning down my street, my heart lurches at the sight of the old two-story cottage and my old Volkswagen van parked up the drive. I sigh at how much I miss sleeping on my own and driving my car, yet it’s been only one night since I’ve been away.
“I guess there’s no way I can drive back to your place in my van?” I ask hopefully, knowing what he’s going to say.
“Your van is too recognizable,” he answers swiftly. “It puts your safety at risk.”
“I get it,” I say, fishing for my keys in my bag.
“At the rate we’re going, it won’t be long before police take action and arrest the Viches. Then we can go on with our lives.”
A strange sense of doom comes over me when he says that, as if my life with the Leroux boys will end when the drama with the Viches comes to a halt. But that’s just me being a pessimist.
“Hang on,” Austin says, opening the glovebox, taking out a handgun, and shoving it into the belt of his jeans. “I’ll check inside first.”
I bite my lip to hold back a fearful gasp at the sight of a gun so close to my face and quickly climb out of the car. Austin steps ahead when I unlock the front door to ensure no one is lurking. My grandparents won’t be home from the hardware store for another hour unless they see Bri at the hospital. Then it’ll be longer, so I won’t see them, unfortunately.
A few minutes later, Austin returns and signals me to enter as he waits by the front door. I run upstairs, promising to be quick and grab some extra pairs of panties, two knitted sweaters, sweatpants and jeans, and some warm undershirts. Realizing I have nothing to put them in since I left my luggage bag with my first set of clothes at the Cliffton house, I run downstairs to find a plastic trash bag in the kitchen.
In my rush, I knock over a pile of papers on the table where my grandparents keep their invoices. I swallowed over a lump in my throat and snooped through, finding two more invoices with OVERDUE stamped in red, amassing over $8000. A mystery person paid one invoice, but more keep coming. They should’ve sold the business to Mr. Leroux when he offered to buy them out, but their stubbornness stopped them. Perhaps now is the time to let go of the hardware store and retire early.
A letter at the bottom catches my eye because it has our bank logo. I hold it up to the light to read, and to my utter dismay, it’s a warning letter stating that they failed to pay the mortgage for seven months, and now foreclosure is inevitable.
My mood turns decidedly dark as I walk back to the living room and meet Austin”s gaze. “Have you lost something?” he asks, noticing a change in me.
I force a smile to disguise my shock. “Um, no. Why do you ask?”
“You seem distracted, and there are no clothes in your hands,” he points out, frowning.
“Oh, of course,” I turn back, head back into the kitchen, find a plastic trash bag, and dash back up the stairs to shove my clothes inside.
What would life be like if the banks forced the sale of this house and my grandparents, the most incredible, most generous people in the world, had nowhere to go? It will be worse than hell.
I follow behind Austin’s tall frame outside and shut the door, checking the lock before climbing back inside Xave’s car.
“Are you okay?” he enquires as I stare at the house my sister and I moved to when my parents disappeared, and my stomach twists in despair. Our grandparents are our saviors, and if it weren’t for them, we would’ve been placed into foster care. I can’t contemplate how awful that would’ve been for Bri and me.
“Yes,” I answer softly, staring at my grandparents’ house as Austin drives away. He says something else, but my mind is a million miles away, so I don’t respond.
His phone beeps, and he reads the message when approaching a red light. “It’s Aaron,” he declares. “He found the USB stick and has taken it to the police.”
I nod, still gazing out the window. “Good.”
“He also says that he told the police that the Viches may have something to do with your parent”s disappearance since they were their accountants,” he adds, and I still can’t get excited; maybe it’s because my life has had so many disappointments.
“Good,” I reply, and he falls quiet again as he drives through the busy streets of Addington and heads to a fried chicken restaurant.
Everything is in slow motion, a strange surrealism, yet we arrived at the chicken restaurant before I knew it.
“You’ll have to come in,” he insists, “because I’m not leaving you alone.”
“Okay,” I say, trying to pull myself out of this depressing fug.
He slips the handgun into his jeans and climbs out of the car as I do the same. As he lines up to place an order, I take the nearest seat and take out my phone to message Rosie. I want, no need to talk to my bestie, but the words are stuck in my brain, unable to be transferred onto the screen, so I put my phone away again and rest my chin on my hand.
Once Austin’s order is ready, we return to the car and climb inside. The small space is filled with the scent of fried chicken, adding to my already queasy stomach. I’m hungry, but I’m not hungry. It is a strange predicament to complete an odd day in a weird existence.
There is only one option that I can think of.
The inevitable.
When he pulls up to the first red light, without turning to look at him because the shame is too much, “I’m ready.”
In my peripheral vision, I see him turn to look at me, “For what?”
I sigh, hardly believing what I’m about to say, “To take your offer. On the Butcher’s Block.”