by C. L. Stone
There were more warehouse-like buildings along this road, but none were as noisy as Henshaw’s. Half of the numerous garage doors in the second building had sparks flying out and loads of activity as guys and a couple of girls were putting together various vehicles. Trucks. Cars. One RV was being worked on in the last garage all the way down. Since it was a huge vehicle, it was being worked on in the lot, with the front of it open and a couple of people leaning in to tinker with it.
Brandon parked near the first building, where all three garage doors were open. There was also activity in the front office. The lights were on, and I could see movement inside. There were garland and lights up around the edges of the office windows. It was daytime during the week, and everyone was working.
It fazed me that everyone was moving on as if normal. And here I was feeling so out of it after being in the hospital, after dealing with murderers and everything that had happened. I didn’t know how to exist in normalcy anymore.
“Do you want to come in or wait here?” he asked. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”
I heard him, but I was temporarily distracted by the sight of the people working in the shop. “I didn’t realize you had so many employees.”
“Not really,” he said. “Two or three of them maybe. The rest are either here as apprentices with an instructor or they’re borrowing the space and tools to fix their own vehicles.”
A garage that lets people fix their own vehicles? That didn’t sound like a great business model.
My curiosity got the better of me, and I opened the door and slid out of the SUV. Brandon headed to the office and let me know I could look around if I wanted.
I ducked around to the first open garage door and leaned in, watching.
The first spot had displays of fancy bikes, the ones Brandon had told me he’d put together. The second space had a few teens looking over a moped.
I remained by the entryway, watching as one of them, a lean guy with two-tone hair, made some comment I couldn’t really hear.
The other guy looked familiar to me. His voice was deeper and reverberated louder. “I don’t know shit about mopeds. Go grab Stacey or someone who knows how to work the electrical on this piece of shit.”
When he spoke, it sparked a memory in me. Sometime during the time I’d been kidnapped, he...I couldn’t remember. But I recognized him. He had helped me out. Academy. I was sure of it.
What about the other one? And the people in the rear garage? Were they Academy, too?
Because they were arguing, I retreated. I didn’t want to interrupt.
I went around to the office, finding it strange now to be going through the actual front door and not through a window like the last time I came in.
The front office was like it had been before, with dark utility carpet and a couple of desks. Only this time, two of them were occupied.
Brandon hovered over the front of one, signing something on a clipboard. The woman behind the desk was older, maybe in her early fifties, with fine wrinkles around her eyes and lips and her white hair pulled back into a bun on her head.
She looked up instantly at me. “Hello,” she said quickly. “Can I help you?”
Brandon looked up, noted me and then went back to his clipboard. “She’s with me. Kayli.”
“Oh Kayli!” Her tone changed then. She’d been pleasant before, but it was like business pleasant. Now it was more like we were friends. “Sweetheart, did you need something? Can I bring you some water?” She got up from her desk and offered the seat she’d been sitting in. “Do you want to sit down?”
Maybe I should have stayed in the car. I felt like she knew I’d been in the hospital, and I was a bit embarrassed. How much she knew about why I was there, or anything else for that matter, I didn’t know.
I waved off the offer to sit in the chair. “Just poking around.”
The dark-haired guy I couldn’t remember the name of who had been yelling about the moped, he stuck his head in through the door from the garage. He looked right at the lady and spoke to her. “Stacey, do you have a minute?” he said in a far nicer tone than he was using earlier.
“Sure, North,” she said. She motioned to the chair again for me and then to the water cooler in the corner set up with paper cups. “Just help yourself, okay?”
She left, taking North back into the garage with her.
“Is she your employee?” I asked.
“She keeps this place running,” Brandon said absently as he was looking at some more paperwork. He finished filling out the forms and put them down. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought I’d get this out of the way now since we were close.”
“Don’t apologize,” I said, although I had far more questions for him now. After everything we’d been through together, seeing him doing work felt...strange. How could he come back to this when we had Alice and who knew who else after us?
Brandon waited a second, as if expecting me to say something more. When I didn’t, he motioned for me to head for the door. “Let’s go home, okay?”
As we left, we passed North and Stacey and the other kid with the two-toned hair, all looking over the bike. Stacey was pointing at something, explaining whatever it was they were working on.
The kid picked his head up to look my way as we passed. He was tall, lanky. Younger than North, it seemed, at least if I had to guess.
He waved shortly to me in a greeting and see you later sort of way.
I finger-waved back. I had that weird feeling in that moment.
And I felt it more with the weird look Brandon was giving the ground. He wasn’t looking up. He wasn’t looking around. He was glaring.
Sad.
Was that why the kid waved to me? Like trying to cheer me up when my companion looked so down?
Back in the SUV, I was leaning against the passenger window, watching cars and trees absently as we passed by. My brain wasn’t very focused.
“Are you sure it was safe for us to go there?” I asked. “After this morning?”
Brandon frowned as he drove. “I probably won’t go back for a while.”
I nervously raked fingernails along the edge of the seat, afraid to ask but I had to. “What did you just sign? Why were we there?”
He sighed and gripped the wheel. He ground his teeth and spoke through them. “I let it go.”
“Let what go?”
“All of it.” He blinked rapidly and wouldn’t look at me. “I can’t talk about it right now or we’ll wreck before we ever get home.”
“The…shop?”
He didn’t say anything. I guessed I was right.
He’d let go of his garage. The paperwork was to pass it over.
His own business? Just like that?
I made a face at the windshield. “Sucks.”
“Yup.” He didn’t say anything else about it.
I rode along with him in silence, angry with Alice and how, with just one phone call, we were already tense again, already trying to figure out what we should do next. I was angry at the Academy for pushing us out.
Here Brandon was, giving up everything he’d worked for. The severity of what leaving meant was settling into my stomach like a rock. A rock I wanted to throw at Alice. In her eyeball.
It felt so wrong. Was this the only way to protect everyone? To give up everything and leave?
I understood now why Corey felt so down. He probably knew this was going to happen. What else would have to change?
I glared out the window like Brandon, unwilling to say anything. Unwilling to or else I’d scream and make him go back and tear up all that paperwork.
And maybe that was why he wasn’t saying anything. He was stopping himself from doing the same thing.
We shouldn’t have to live like this.
Brandon, meanwhile, took care of getting us some late lunch at a fast food place, and then drove us back to the Sargent Jasper.
The building was just an ugly block of brown, a contrast to the posh neighborhood it sat near. It was in a prime
location, overlooking Charleston harbor on one side and on the other a small, manmade reflecting lake. The building itself didn’t fit the surroundings…although to me, that made it all the more interesting.
Seeing it now, getting back to it after what felt like forever away, carried a sense of nostalgia and an unsettled feeling in my chest at the same time.
When we left this place… would I miss it?
I was still eating fries, the last of his batch, as he pulled in to park. My eyes were glued to the apartment building, dazed at the brown brick and dirty windows. “How come you all don’t live in those neighborhoods? Like the one you put Jack in?”
“We didn’t want to,” he said. “We wanted to be downtown.” He turned off the SUV but didn’t get out. He turned, his eyebrows up, focusing on me. “Don’t you like the apartments?”
“They’re fine,” I said. “But shouldn’t we not be here?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, yeah you might be ready for Alice to show up here, but it feels…like we shouldn’t let her know where we are.”
“That’s the next step,” he said.
“It’s just that she got to us last time… Isn’t obscurity better than security?”
He blinked at me and frowned. “Are you worried it’ll happen again?”
I swallowed thickly, putting the fry box back into the fast food bag and wiping my fingers on my pants. “Aren’t you?”
This snapped a wave of sadness through his eyes, the depth of which scared me. “I’m more worried about you.” He chewed his lower lip for a second and then shook his head. “I mean... while we were still on the ship...I thought maybe you’d take off with Blake instead of sticking with us...”
“What?”
“You would have stayed with him if we hadn’t come with you,” he said, and that sadness and depth he had in his gaze affected me in a way that hurt my heart. “I feel like without us, you and him would have been dead. I keep almost losing you.”
I wondered how long he’d been sitting on that one.
And part of it felt like a complaint, that I would have chosen Blake over him.
I breathed out slowly between my lips. When I was in the hospital, it was the topic we all ignored because I thought I was dying. But now that I wasn’t, it was still left on the table.
I couldn’t stop myself. Not when he brought it up. “Did you not mean it?” I asked. “When you told me it didn’t matter about the others? That you...”
He reached out to me then, which made me pause. His hands stretched out, took me by the shoulders, drawing me in.
I leaned into him, and from the first moment when he put his arms around me and held me, I realized it had been long...so long... since I’d felt him in such a way. It felt like eons, even if it had only been a couple of weeks while I was in the hospital. He’d touched me on occasion, hugs and other stuff, but not like this. Not like he’d missed me too. He held tight enough that we could have melded together. In the car, it was a bit awkward, but it didn’t matter.
I hadn’t realized how much I needed to feel that.
And maybe he needed it too. He needed this because he just let his shop go. It was sinking in what we were leaving behind.
Brandon’s lips were close to my ears, and I felt their movement as he whispered to me. “I’m sorry. I want to talk about it, but let’s wait a bit.”
“I don’t want to wait,” I said. “That’s all I’ve been doing.”
He pulled back and looked me in the face, the depth of his eyes changing into something I didn’t understand. Unlike the usual sadness, it was replaced by something like concern and determination. “I just need you to know I’m not...I mean... I do love you. A lot. And I just need you to know, no matter what, I want to follow you wherever you go, as long as it’s safe for us.” He breathed out slowly and then pressed his lips together for a second. “We told the Academy we were just dating to keep it simple. I mean, hell, it’s just dating, right?”
I blinked at him, trying to figure out what he’s trying to explain. “So, it’s like dating without the commitment to just one,” I said. “Right?”
He nodded vigorously. “Exactly.”
“Do you want to just date?”
He stilled, then gave a slight shake to his head. “No.”
I paused. “Me either, but that’s me saying that with the others…” I groaned. “You know what sucks? I want to talk about it, but I keep dodging and tiptoeing around it because I don’t want to hurt feelings.”
He blinked at me. “I don’t have anyone to talk with about this either. I mean the others want to brew on the idea, which I get, but…”
I scratched absently at my elbow. “Can you talk to me?”
He shrugged and looked away from me out the windshield. “Rather you than anyone else.”
“Can you handle if I talk to you openly about the others?”
“I think so.” His eyes drifted to the Sargent Jasper. “Maybe not sexual things? Not yet at least.”
“Let’s keep it simple,” I said. “When I’m with you, and not talking about this, I’m with you. Okay? It’s us. And I’ll avoid doing things with them in front of anyone else.”
He nodded. “As long as we get time alone together.”
“Whenever possible.”
It seemed an easy agreement. Maybe this wouldn’t last forever between all of us. Maybe this was circumstantial and once we were out from under fire, it’d be different.
For now, this is what we were. Together, in a weird cluster with me at the center in a way. “Let’s just not bring anyone else into the mix right now,” I said.
“I don’t think I’d survive dating someone else right now,” he said. There was an edge of a smirk on his lips, amused. “I mean, I know you’re a married woman now and everything...”
I snorted. I’d signed a marriage certificate for Raven to keep him in the country. It was weird to think of myself as married at all when it was just a piece of paper. “I don’t even know what to do with that.”
“Yeah, me too.” He reached out again, putting a hand on my forearm. “I just wanted to tell you...I still love you, and I know it’s weird. But we’ll figure it out, okay? Let’s get Alice away from you-know-what, the others… We’ll get out of Charleston and away from her, and we’ll figure it out.”
I agreed with this. It would be weird for a while. After all the catastrophes that had happened over the last few weeks, we didn’t ever give ourselves time to exist in a space together and just figure things out.
Maybe running off where Alice and others couldn’t reach us for a while would, and give us a chance to sort it…maybe we needed it.
He kissed me once gently on my brow. “I got off track on what I was meaning to talk about.”
“I’m sorry about your garage.”
He shook his head and sighed loud. “I’m not.”
“Why?”
His brow and lip twitched at the same time. “You were worth it.”
It was a moment where time froze and what he said repeated in my brain a million times.
It was the determination in his gaze, steady and unwavering, the sadness gone. That’s what had me feeling he meant it. For whatever reason, he knew we had to get out of town, let go of things, and he went and sold his shop.
To get us out.
To keep us safe.
His sacrifice.
I hated this. I loved him, but I hated it. I hated that this was what it was coming to. Letting go.
How could I hesitate now? I had been thinking of my brother, but they had so much they were letting go, too.
My jaw hurt as I was clenching so hard. My emotions were too out of control to answer him.
He pulled away from me and opened his door. “Let’s get find out how to get out of Dodge.”
♠♠♠♠♠♠
We left the SUV and headed up to the apartments on the seventh floor. The Sergeant Jasper was the nicest building I’d personally lived
in, even though it was run down a bit. The lobby was fake marble flooring with ugly, white panel ceilings and some columns and stuff to make it fancier looking. It was all aged and showed it.
However, now, instead of a single security guard at a podium, there were two, plus cameras obviously pointed at every entrance, a metal detector arch to walk through, and an extra guard who stood by the detector. He was actively searching grocery bags from some lady as we entered.
“This is ridiculous,” the woman said. “Why is this all here?”
“It’s for your benefit,” the guard said, finishing up his inspection and waving her off.
“I’m not paying for it,” she said and stormed off toward the elevator. “Expect me to make complaints. I don’t want my rent to go up for this.”
I stuck with Brandon, doing what he did. He had to empty his pockets of phone and keys into a bowl and then go through the metal detector arch. I followed behind him.
The guard held a hand out for me but hesitated as I went through. The light on the metal detector arch went green.
He raised a dark brow. “Where’s your phone?”
“Don’t have one,” I said.
“Oh,” he said and he moved his hand out of the way. “Sorry. That’s usually…sorry.”
By the time we got to the elevator, it was empty. I was grateful when the doors closed and we were alone again. It felt like guard watch us go in, but I refused to look at him. That was awkward. Yes, I was too poor for a phone. Didn’t bother with one. The guys gave me one at times, but I left it behind so much because I wasn’t used to carrying one with me yet. In the hospital, I’d never thought to even ask for another one.
“Did you do that?” I asked. “Was that what you added? More security? A metal detector?”
“Yup,” he said. “We’ll take it out when we leave. And I’m not sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I said. The guard had been right.
It was for their protection.
Up on the seventh floor, Brandon used his keys to open the door to the apartment shared by Marc, Axel and Raven. Inside the three-bedroom apartment, not a whole lot had changed. The dining nook had desks and a couple of computers. The living room and kitchen were tidy. The three bedrooms’ doors were closed, the two bathrooms’ doors on either side were open.