by C. L. Stone
He blinked, unsure. “She didn’t want me to get involved in any relationship where some girl would want their money. Gold diggers...” He made a half snort, half chuckle. “Although it’s kind of backwards when she would have wanted me to marry into someone else’s money. It’s kind of messed up.”
“But is that why you wore it?” I asked.
He paused, and slowly released the heart shield and captured my hand that had been over his, holding it. “No. I wore it because I wanted to remind myself.”
“Of what?”
“That I wanted someone who wanted me. The real me.”
“Victor...” I said quietly.
He didn’t answer me. Instead, he leaned in and kissed me. Harder than I anticipated.
My arms slowly went around him as I responded. And with the way the waterbed shifted, it pressed our bodies tightly together. Perhaps a little too snugly, as it was harder to shift around.
His kisses trailed, until he nuzzled a little at my lower jaw. He didn’t move from there for a while, and then gently returned to my mouth to kiss more.
I had a moment where I thought of the others, where we were romantically, and how different they were. Victor was ever so gentle, slow, and... seemed to be like me, a little shy about getting close, unsure. I thought of Gabriel, where I learned about massaging his scalp, or North’s biting. Victor seemed to enjoy massaging me. I wondered if that’s something he enjoyed. He was the one that surprised me by going to the spa for massages in the past.
I shifted my arms more, pinched in on one via the bed, and at first just tried placing my hand that could move onto his back.
From there, I froze. I wasn’t really sure what to do. Until I just used my fingertips and gently slid them along his spine.
He kissed me, but not any harder than before.
I tried again, doing what he did by finding his ribs and tracing one.
Suddenly his hand shifted until he could hook my arm and bring it around, away from his body, and he just held it.
He stopped kissing me so he could open up my hand and kiss the palm.
Did I do it wrong? I wasn’t so sure. I froze a bit, worried. Maybe there were wrong things to do, too.
“Roll over on your stomach?” he suggested to me, and he got halfway up.
I sort of did, though the bed more or less shifted me in that position as he moved.
He straddled me, over my hips, and his lean fingers drifted over my back. His palms massaged my muscles, and his fingers worked around my spine. I couldn’t move, just enjoy.
It was like a light switch, as I realized me touching his back triggered him doing this for me.
As he massaged, though, he leaned over, and he kissed gently at my neck, and occasionally at my shoulders.
And occasionally lower along my back, following my spine.
A tingling sensation spurred in me. Enjoyment. Delight. He could mold me with his fingers and get me to relax in a moment.
He was passionate and doting.
I mumbled quietly, partially talking into the pillow. “Victor, do you want me to try to do this to you, too?” It seemed only fair.
“If you want,” he said. “But... I enjoy this. I don’t know why.” He leaned forward and whispered hotly into my ear. “Every time I touch you, I want to touch you more. And please you.”
I didn’t quite understand. I enjoyed it immensely, but did he want me to do something else?
Questions floated to my lips, but before I could ask them there was a sound, a shout of a deep, adult voice, and for a very quick moment, the fear that someone, Mr. Griffin perhaps, or even someone else, had broken into the house and would come find us, horrified me until I was too stiff to move.
Victor had just pushed away the blanket when the door to the bedroom opened and the light was flicked on. The overhead bulbs became blinding, and I was blinking through watering eyes to focus on who had entered.
There was a paused moment as Victor was sitting up in the bed, I was partially covering my eyes from the light, and a tall figure was standing just inside the door, looking in at us.
Mr. Buble.
My heart raced. It was way too obvious we had been in the bed together.
Yet he didn’t look troubled or concerned about that in particular, but there was a worry etched on his face, and he immediately barked at us. “Forget your things. We’re leaving. Now.”
He left, heading to the other bedroom, calling for Nathan and telling him the same thing.
Forget your things.
Get out.
Victor was up in an instant. He reached to me. “Come on.”
There was no hesitation. No question. No time to ask. Something had happened.
Enough to get Mr. Buble here, telling us to run.
Capriccioso
(Capricious, unpredictable, volatile)
Sang
Dr. Green sat in the passenger seat, leaning out the window, motioning for us to get in. Victor, Nathan, and I crowded into the back of Mr. Buble’s car. Mr. Buble got in, barely closing his own door before he put the car into reverse to back out of the driveway.
“What about Kota?” Nathan asked. “We can’t leave him.”
“He is not at home,” Mr. Buble said. “Neither are his mother or sister. Everyone else is safe.”
I sat between Victor and Nathan, holding on to their hands in the darkness in the back seat. Mr. Buble’s clock in the car said it was two in the morning.
“What’s going on? Who is it?” Nathan asked.
“You’re being targeted,” Mr. Buble said.
“The outside cameras are broken,” Dr. Green said. “I was on sensor monitor duty while we were at the diner. Got a notification.” He made a hand gun and pretended to shoot the windshield. “Pow. They broke one at a time. From a distance.”
“First rule of safety at this point is getting those in the vicinity together and out of range of danger,” Mr. Buble said.
“We didn’t hear anything,” Nathan said.
“I didn’t either,” Dr. Green said. “I’m not even sure it was a gun. It was just one at a time and very sudden. I was going to call to warn, but we were so close we wanted to scare whoever was doing it off by approaching with the car. We thought if we alerted you, whoever it was would rush in, maybe in a dangerous way.”
Nathan grumbled. “It’s probably Volto.”
“We have various nefarious suspects it could possibly be,” Mr. Buble said. “It would be irresponsible to guess. Collecting evidence is the only way to know.”
“I am very upset that I didn’t get to finish my pie... I’d been looking forward to it all day,” Dr. Green said. He was wearing a thin sweatshirt and jeans, his curly sandy-colored hair a bit wild and off to the side like he’d been running or in the wind. He turned a bit in the seat and smiled at me. “Hey, pumpkin.”
“Hi,” I said quietly. His tone was slightly flirty, but otherwise didn’t indicate anything, for which I was grateful. Especially after getting caught with Victor...
Where was Kota? Was he still out with Luke and Gabriel? He never came back, and we hadn’t heard from them. They said he was safe but what happened? Why were they gone for so long?
“Where should we go?” Nathan asked.
“For tonight, we’ll head to a hotel while we send another Academy member with someone from the police to your house to investigate.”
“We’re not messing around anymore,” Dr. Green said, his voice dampening a bit from his cheery tone. “We’ve let this go for too long. We’ve let them cross the line into illegal territory and always felt we needed to hide it because... reasons.”
He didn’t have to say it. I was the reason.
Even now, calling the police was on pause until we could make sure we were ready for them.
“No one stays home tonight,” Mr. Buble said. “Investigations will happen tonight and in the morning. However, it’s likely we’ll push to move immediately instead of waiting, even if into a tempora
ry Academy house.”
My heart was beating wildly, despite us being safe in the car together. Volto didn’t often directly threaten our lives, he usually ran us off, which made me wary. What could be happening?
The neighborhood around us changed, largely unfamiliar to me, and Mr. Buble took many turns. I sensed it was with caution, that we were making sure no one was following us. The car ride in the middle of the night went on for at least a half hour before Mr. Buble finally pulled into the lot of a small motel. He left the car running and disappeared inside, I assumed to rent a room.
“Crazy night, huh?” Dr. Green said, twisting in the front seat. The smile was back on his face. “Don’t worry. Owen has the others. They’ll stay in a different hotel tonight. Uncle’s at the diner still, and he’s not a target but he won’t go home tonight. He’ll sleep there nearby, just in case.”
“Not keeping us all together?” Nathan asked.
“Just an extra precaution, split up but not alone.” He beamed, and then yawned. “First day off in a while and I’m running around. Good to be in the Academy, am I right?”
Mr. Buble returned and passed a key to Dr. Green. “Last building, last room. We’re away from others.”
“How’d you get that without sounding weird?” Victor asked.
“I told them we had a dog,” he said. “It’d bark if it heard other people too much. That usually works.”
Outside the last building, Dr. Green got out of the car to open the motel room up as the rest of us got out of the car and stretched. It was a cold night, and we were all in various stages of not totally dressed, with Nathan in a pair of boxers, Victor in boxers and a shirt, and myself still in some shorts and one of the guys’ T-shirts I’d worn for the evening.
The motel room was a standard two double beds and a wide mirror and sink on the far side of the room next to the bathroom. Despite it being a randomly picked motel and randomly picked room, Dr. Green and Mr. Buble immediately set to work inspecting every inch, including the wall sockets and the overhead light using tools from keychains they’d carried with them. It was unlikely there was reason to think someone had been here before us, but they left nothing to chance.
When it was deemed clear, the feeling among us in the air changed and the door was locked. Victor, Nathan, and I sat on one bed, Dr. Green flopped onto the other, making a star with his body and stretching while kicking his shoes off. “Way better than the hospital cot I’ve been sleeping in for the last week.”
“You should go home more,” Victor said.
He turned his head to look at us and grin. “I can’t. There’s a Volto.” Despite the danger, he looked like he was enjoying the excitement.
“Possibly,” Mr. Buble said. He stood by the door, checking his phone and occasionally typing into it. “I suggest we all double-check our phones, if you’ve brought them, and make sure they’re still secure.” He perked his head up. “And may I ask for a volunteer to come join me. If you choose to do so, it’s likely we’ll be up for the rest of the night.”
Victor, to my surprise, immediately stood up. “I’ll go with you.”
Mr. Buble nodded. “We’ll leave the others to sleep.” He motioned to the rest of us. “Don’t leave this room without a good reason, and if it’s a must, don’t leave each other. Go immediately to the hospital if that’s the case.”
“Boo,” Dr. Green said but sat up. “I’m just kidding. I’ve just been at the hospital a lot. But that’s okay. I’m a doctor.”
Nathan and Victor groaned simultaneously. I giggled.
Dr. Green continued, “We’re good, don’t worry.”
Mr. Buble opened the door, walked out but held it for Victor.
Victor heaved a sigh and waved shortly at us, although he looked at me. “See you tomorrow.”
I finger waved back as he walked out the door.
Nathan let out a long breath and shook his head. “Man, this is going to be a really long night.” He paused. “And we have a small problem.”
Dr. Green was twisting himself, trying to crack his back but stopped this and leaned on the bed to look over at us. “What problem?”
Nathan grimaced but said, “It’s complicated...”
He quickly went over how we found Volto’s mask in Erica’s car, suspected it was her, and how we’d earlier tried to confirm it by getting a look at what was on her computer.
“The USB drive is still in my room. We were packing and Silas had to go to the diner before we could actually look at it.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to the rest of us?” Dr. Green asked, frowning. “Does Kota know?”
Nathan shook his head.
I spoke up quickly, “We just didn’t want him to worry about it until we saw something more substantial. Some clue.”
“I kind of worried he’d tip her off somehow. If it was her,” Nathan said.
Dr. Green stood up and paced the motel room in front of the beds. His sandy hair swept across his forehead and his brows wrinkled in concentration. “Where’s the mask now?”
“At the house. I probably should have grabbed it on the way out.”
“If they find it, it’s likely they’ll think Volto left it and assume that this was him, even if it might not be.”
Nathan flopped back and pressed his palms to his eyes. “Shit. I didn’t think about that. I guess we have to tell them now. I did hide it but there’s a chance they’ll find it.”
“And there is a way to tell if it’s her or not,” Dr. Green said.
“How?” I asked.
“If she’s been at work this whole time, or the times when Volto has been around, and so on,” he said. “Once you have a suspect, you work on a timeline. They can’t be in two places at once.”
“Oh,” Nathan said slowly, as if considering the idea. “We started with evidence.”
“Evidence and clues are what you look for without a suspect, timelines are when you actually have someone in mind,” Dr. Green said. “So timelines first. Less invasive.” He beamed. “Trust me, I’ve done the reverse before and you end up reading into things too much, especially if you know the person. But you’d know this, too, if you’d talked to us.”
Nathan averted his gaze and grimaced. “Okay, yeah. You got me. I just thought it’d be a quick solution... at the time... And maybe I didn’t want to believe it and didn’t want anyone to think of her differently if I was wrong.”
“I personally doubt it’s her,” he said with a tight smile. “I can’t picture a motive. Or maybe I want to not believe it either.” Dr. Green sighed and sat on the bed again. “But we have to tell them. The mask will throw them off the trail, as will the hard drive if they look at it. We have no idea if it’s related, but it could look like it was planted.”
He was right, of course. A tightness in my chest formed from guilt from our misguided attempts to figure this out. We should have told them long before now.
Nathan fished his phone off the side table where he’d placed it. “Who should I tell first?”
“Probably Owen,” Dr. Green said. “He’ll know who to contact.”
“Not my first choice.” He got up, heading closer to the window, dialing on his phone and at the same time, looking out the window to check beyond it.
Dr. Green motioned to me and I joined him sitting on the bed furthest away from where Nathan was talking to Mr. Blackbourne on the phone.
He signed to me instead of talking. At first, his hands moved so quickly, I couldn’t tell what he was saying. I blinked at him and raise an eyebrow.
He repeated it, although slower. “Don’t worry. It will be okay.”
I trusted him, but I suspected Mr. Blackbourne would be disappointed in us keeping the information to ourselves for as long as we did. We’d puzzled for so long on how to find more evidence to be absolutely sure. Maybe because we didn’t want to believe it.
I signed back to him, “I feel bad.”
He frowned and offered an open arm for a hug.
I
hugged him, and he lingered, holding on to me. He signed with one hand. “Missed you.”
I missed him, too. “We may live closer soon.”
“I heard.” He stopped signing as Nathan spoke. I didn’t want to listen in, I guess feeling bad that Nathan was having to talk and I didn’t feel like I was able to support him, what little I could. We’d been in this together.
“Don’t feel bad,” Dr. Green signed. “Right intention. Wrong methods. Nothing to be ashamed of. Owen will know that.”
I hoped so.
It wasn’t too long before Nathan was off the phone. “He wasn’t mad.”
Dr. Green beamed. “He doesn’t get mad unless you’re being dummy dumb-dumbs for no reason. It’s one of his psychological mind heebie-jeebies he does.”
Nathan chuckled. “Are you okay? You’re talking weird.”
“I am super tired,” Dr. Green said and then yawned big. “And it’s super late.”
“I’ll stay up a bit,” Nathan said. “One of us should keep an eye out and listen for any news.”
“Right, you get first shift.” Dr. Green yawned again and tugged lightly at my arm. “Let’s sleep.”
It was a bit concerning getting into bed with Dr. Green when Nathan would be up and watching. When Nathan went into the bathroom while we were setting up the bed, I leaned in to whisper to him.
“Nathan gets a bit uneasy if we...” I didn’t want to say the rest. I hoped he understood.
Dr. Green winked at me and smiled, and in a quick motion, leaned in and kissed me gently on the lips.
He lingered for a second and whispered. “Oh, I know better. Gets under Owen’s skin, too.”
Mr. Blackbourne? I couldn’t get myself to ask, but it set my heart fluttering again.
As much as I was getting to learn what they liked and didn’t like, I took it on myself to be mindful. Who was in the room, who wasn’t, who was okay with what. It was something Lillian had told me about during one of the times I’d spoken with her, when it came to a relationship with multiple people.
“People can be okay with knowing you’re dating someone else,” she’d said. “It’s different seeing it. But it’s like... the feeling of seeing public displays of affection for your siblings or friends. It’s an awkward moment as it is, and on top of that, there’s added jealousy, which is reasonable for them to feel. I try not to ask them to be okay with more than what they are comfortable with and they try to forgive any moments that might be sprung upon them by accident.”