Love's Cruel Redemption

by C. L. Stone

  Nathan knew what Dr. Green was doing: distracting North from thinking about Sang and what she’s doing while he was cranky.

  North’s wild eyes blinked rapidly a few times before he seemed to chill out. “I’ve an SUV I brought in this morning and a big box van in the garage.”

  Nathan spoke carefully. North was tense today. Without much sleep, and his Jeep gone, they all probably need to proceed delicately. “The BMW was fished out. It was brought there.”

  North snorted. “That’s going to be a helluva job. I have to pull out all that leather. I don’t know if I can restore it to what it was.”

  “Of course you can,” Dr. Green said. He blinked at his laptop and inspected whatever was on the screen. “It’s been done before, I’m sure.”

  “And I have to swap plates,” North said. “Guess I’m taking Mr. Blackbourne’s car, but I probably need Vic with me when I leave. So he can drive it back.” He looked at Nathan. “Which means you or someone else needs to take the SUV.”

  “Sure,” Nathan said. Whatever he wanted.

  “With Hendricks actually gone”—Dr. Green waved his hand shortly—“what do we do now? Where do we go from here?”

  North put out a hand. He raised one finger like he was counting off. “We need to find out who took the Jeep.”

  “Volto,” Nathan said. “I told them.”

  “Yes, but who dropped it off?” North said. “Volto didn’t drop it off. Who drove it and parked it out front?” He raised another finger. “I don’t know why the food was switched out at all.”

  “What was in the boxes in the truck?” Nathan asked.

  “The same shit,” he said. “Meat. Lettuce. It’s like a one to one swap for the most part. Mostly produce. Although I didn’t have time to ask the guys why they agreed to swap it while I was sneaking back out.”

  “Who were they?” Dr. Green asked.

  “They have a warehouse near North Charleston,” he said. “That’s where I ended up. When I left, I noted the address. Victor tracked down the owners, who also own a couple of restaurants in the area.”

  Dr. Green lifted his gaze from the laptop to North. His eyes were glazed over, lost in thought. “Doesn’t make sense. Taking food from a school to restaurants downtown? Did the food look old? Is he selling old food out the back?”

  “And replacing it with restaurant food?” Nathan asked. “None of that makes sense at all.”

  “Don’t ask me,” North said and lowered his hand from counting off. “There’s so much fucking going on, I don’t even know where to start. Like what the hell was Kota up to last night?”

  Nathan’s face caught between being horrified and trying to calm himself down. He didn’t want to get North riled up about this.

  Dr. Green refocused on Nathan. “Right, what was he doing at Lily’s?”

  Shit. Nathan was hoping to keep that under the radar for the most part. But he’d have to tell them about it sooner or later.

  Did it have to be now? With North?

  Without facing either of them, he swung slowly in his chair. His jaw tensed as he spoke. “Kota went out to talk to her about Sang. We wanted to ask her...to see if Sang was really into...this. We didn’t expect everything to turn upside down like it did.”

  North and Dr. Green were quiet for a long moment. Nathan kept looking at Mr. Blackbourne’s desk, hoping what he’d just said explained itself and he didn’t have to go further.

  North eventually spoke, slow, dark, deep. “What do you mean, really into this?”

  The tense air around them thickened immensely. Nathan dared to look him in the face, trying to be as delicate as possible. “We wanted to be sure Sang isn’t being influenced by us. If she’s really into this idea or if she’s being pressured because we want it.”

  North’s hard face tightened at the mouth, his jaw shifting like he was grinding his teeth. His dark eyes wide.

  Dr. Green snapped up before North took a lunging step at Nathan. Nathan jumped from his chair, backing away but not looking at his face any more. He was afraid of this.

  North barked at him “What the hell are you fucking doing to us?”

  Dr. Green put a palm on North’s chest to stop him from lunging. “Stop.” His voice drew in power, a lot like Mr. Blackbourne did. “Not here. Those cops will hear and will come in.”

  “Let them,” North growled. “Before I tear his face off.”

  Nathan didn’t take the threat seriously. North’s barking worried him more. Like Dr. Green said, they didn’t need attention. This was the wrong time and place for this. Not with everyone up in arms about what was going on.

  “Calm down,” Dr. Green said. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation.” He kept a palm on North’s chest and slightly turned his head so he could look at Nathan. “Tell us. Why didn’t you tell us what you were doing?”

  Nathan glared at North across the room. “I don’t know why you’re angry about it. Don’t you want to be sure?”

  “I’m angry because you did it without asking us.” He pointed to his own chest. “You went behind our backs for this?”

  “I wasn’t going to risk you all telling her about it,” he said. “Warning her. Or trying to influence her. Kota understood that.” He told them about the diary, how he read it, how Sang had wished to be normal and talked about getting married and having a normal family. “We needed to be sure. So Kota went to ask Lily to talk to Sang about this and be absolutely sure we aren’t influencing the decision. That’s all we wanted. To be sure.”

  There was a long pause. Nathan sensed he’d probably not said it all right, but how could they not understand this? They even talked about this in the very beginning, not pushing Sang into any relationship, to let her approach them if it was going to happen.

  Dr. Green’s face twisted. He dropped his hand from holding back North. “No. I change my mind. Go ahead and punch him.”

  Nathan jerked back as North raised a fist, but he held back. He used it to point at Nathan’s face with a knuckle. “Give me a reason not to, Nathan. Just one. Because what you did was ask Lily to dissect Sang and not trust what she was telling us herself. You don’t trust her?”

  Nathan wasn’t totally sure this wasn’t just North being tired and angry with him. What hurt was that Dr. Green was taking North’s side on this. It made him question everything he’d done up until this point. “I can’t do this unless I know,” Nathan said, taking a defensive stance against the wall. “And I can’t let all of you do this to her without knowing for sure she wants it.”

  “She can leave whenever she wants to,” Dr. Green said. “And she will if she thinks we’re fighting over her, among ourselves.”

  “I’m not trying to fight over her.”

  “You don’t think we won’t?”

  Nathan looked down, not responding. He knew he would, if he had to. Finding out what she really wanted without any pressure from them...

  Dr. Green continued. “We’re all tense over Erica finding out about it, giving her another reason to not proceed. She’s seeing the sacrifice we’re all making for this and what we might have to go through to keep it together.” He paused. “But I don’t think this is about Sang at all. It’s like you’re looking for anything possible to make sure this doesn’t happen.”

  “That’s not true,” Nathan said.

  “Sure feels like it,” Dr. Green said. He stepped around North to get closer to Nathan. His eyes and face wilder than even North appeared. “You don’t ask our opinion, the ones who are working so hard in keeping ourselves together. For. You. For us. Instead, you ask the only other person in the group who is also unsure about it. You didn’t even tell Owen.” His voice rose. “And you don’t think there’s a chance in hell Owen, of all people, wouldn’t make absolutely sure Sang would be okay with this?”

  Nathan winced, pressing himself harder against the wall. “He didn’t ask Lily to ask Sang.”

  “He doesn’t have to!” Dr. Green’s voice rose again, waving a hand
around. “Because he knows she’ll never be okay with this with the state we’re in now. And you...” He snatched up a notebook off the desk, and he took a few swats at Nathan around his arms. It didn’t hurt, but it shocked Nathan enough to try to block it. “Stop pointing at Sang and making her your scapegoat, and have her break it off if that’s what you’re looking for. It wasn’t about Sang. It was about you.”

  “You just said she was okay with it,” Nathan said. “To trust her. I want to trust her but I don’t know for sure.”

  Dr. Green smacked his chest again with the notebook. He was seething. “She’s okay when we’re okay with it. Don’t you get it? Sang’s even said she wouldn’t go through with it unless we’re all happy with this. And she can’t be if you’re going behind our backs to try to pull it apart.”

  “I didn’t try to do that,” Nathan said.

  “You asked the wrong question,” North said. He turned away from them, looking at the door. His hands were in fists and he was shaking. “You asked Lily to prove Sang was into this. You didn’t ask Lily to help you keep us all together.”

  “There’s a difference,” Dr. Green said. “We have everyone else in the outside world who is going to try to do the same thing to us. Question our loyalty. Test our commitment to this. Erica. Possibly Uncle whenever he finds out. The Academy. And Sang.” He threw the notebook at Nathan’s legs, and it slapped against the linoleum floor. “Sang is always asking. Every moment. We don’t need Lily to ask. Sang asks herself. Did you not read her new damn journal?”

  “No,” Nathan said quietly.

  Dr. Green sighed, shaking his head. “Maybe if you were in with us, I’d see it differently, but everything you’ve said until now has me believing you’d break it all up the moment she showed any doubt. You wouldn’t even try. Do you want to see us broken up? The team split?”

  “No,” but he said this weakly. Nathan crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at the desk. Kota telling him to go talk to Lily, his change of attitude when he returned, and the way they were talking to him now twisted his heart.

  He wanted to believe he had the right intention. How could it be wrong to make sure Sang wanted this?

  But perhaps they were right. Were they? Wasn’t he supposed to question it all? They’d all done so before. What made this different?

  When Nathan didn’t respond, Dr. Green threw up his hands. He snatched his messenger bag off the desk without the laptop and he went to the door. “If I didn’t love the hell out of you, Nathan, I’d kill you. Now I have to go find Kota and figure out where the hell we are now. Hopefully he didn’t say anything to Sang about this yet.” He slammed the door on his way out.

  North still had his back turned on Nathan. Nathan remained where he was, crushed up against the wall. He glared at the notebook at his feet.

  Was he right? Sang wasn’t going to be okay with this unless they were all sure and okay with it?

  Eventually North spoke. It wasn’t the same angry tone as before. It was something sad, dark and it hurt Nathan more than anything else just from the depth of despair it carried. “We can’t stay together if she’s not with us,” he said. He turned slowly, his eyes glistening and his face contorted. “Do you get it now? Without her...this is over. We’re too far in.”

  “You’d leave if she won’t stay?”

  “She won’t stay if we can’t do this.” He turned to the door and opened it, glaring out into the hallway. “She’ll do it to spare us. It’ll just kill us.” He walked out, closing the door behind him.

  Nathan slid down against the wall, practically hiding behind the desk. He rolled his head back, glaring at the ceiling. He inhaled in a long breath, holding it enough until his lungs burned before releasing.

  He did it again.

  And again. Causing his already high heart rate to increase, his lungs to ache. His body was tight, tense.

  He couldn’t get them to understand. He’d done it to be sure. For her sake. He needed to know.

  What he hadn’t realized was what they’d told him.

  She wasn’t sure.

  Because they weren’t totally together on it. Kota. Himself. Perhaps a couple of others. The doubt woven around them all.

  Compounded by Erica and her questions.

  It would just get worse.

  Would she leave?

  But he knew that answer. Sang would do whatever she could to ensure they were all happy and safe, like they tried to do for her. If it meant she left so they could find some sort of happiness without her, she would.

  He didn’t need to be the reason.

  When in Doubt, Doubt

  Nathan avoided the others all afternoon. No one completely ignored him, but he sensed they all knew.

  He didn’t get a chance to see Sang before he left in the afternoon before school was over. He’d asked Kota to take Danielle and Marie home.

  He took Silas’s car home. He really needed his own car. He sent a text to Silas to let him know, and to feel free to pick it up later.

  He told Mr. Blackbourne in a text he wasn’t feeling great. It was a bad time to be out but he thought having crashed in a car into the lake the night before warranted a little down time.

  He just didn’t want to be around the others right now.

  Not with the way they looked at him.

  Maybe he was more paranoid, but he couldn’t help it. He was in his own head, consumed by what Dr. Green had said, but mostly about what North said at the end.

  This might kill us.

  The weather had warmed slightly with the sun bright overhead. He’d built a static charge in the car, and he zapped himself on the metal doorknob of his house before he stuck the key in. It caused his hand to shake and he dropped the keys to the ground.

  He grumbled to himself, looking down at his keys and not reaching for them.

  What a week. Maybe he needed the weekend off. Or a month.

  “Nathan?” Erica’s voice came from behind him.

  He considered banging his head against the door. Not now. Instead, he grimaced and turned slowly.

  Erica was in her nurse’s uniform. She was either home early or on her way out. Her car was parked in her own drive and she was heading over, halfway into the yard.

  “Hi,” he said, trying to mask his dour mood.

  She walked closer, looking at him and then his keys on the ground. “Did you drop them?”

  “Yes,” he said and stooped to pick them up quickly. “The door zapped me.”

  “Oh,” she said. She crossed her arms over her stomach, with her purse hanging over his shoulder. She stood there, looking at him, her face stressed.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m sorry about what happened yesterday. It was a really bad day. And this morning, we really needed to get going...”

  “I don’t know what I should do with all of you,” she said quietly. She looked up the road and then back at him. “Could we talk inside for a moment?”

  Nathan couldn’t recall the last time she’d been inside his house. Not that she wasn’t welcome, but he was always the one to hop over to her house. “Sure,” he said. He jammed the key into the door, unlocking it quickly and stepping aside. “Come on.”

  Erica walked around him, going inside the house. Nathan closed the door behind them.

  They met up in the kitchen. The space was clean, just a few leftover dishes sitting out on the counter. Erica put her purse down, pulling out a chair and sitting in it. Nathan pulled out one next to her for himself. He pressed his elbow to the table, waiting, unsure what he should say. They hadn’t gone over what to tell her. Kota wanted to talk to her himself, but he avoided her this morning. Did he manage to talk to her sometime today, perhaps over the phone?

  “Did something happen between Kota and Sang recently?” she asked.

  Nope. He didn’t. “I don’t know,” he said. He had to guess they were still not supposed to be talking to him after the incident earlier that week. “I haven’t seen much of them. Just Sang last night w
hen you picked her up.”

  She pressed a palm to her cheek. “I just don’t know what’s going on. She’s out there in the middle of the night, at a grocery store alone. He’s lying to me, coming in only during the god-awful hours and then leaves before I get a chance to talk to him. I know you all have school, and he’s usually so responsible.” She sighed. “It just feels like something is very wrong here.”

  “Whatever it is, maybe it isn’t as bad as you’re thinking...” Vague. Keep it vague. Let Kota come up with something on his own.

  “I think they broke up,” she said. “Maybe he doesn’t want to tell me about it.”

  Nathan made a face, struggling to stay composed and not groan or grumble. “Maybe...but I think he’d say something.”

  “I don’t want to put the blame on you,” she said, “but he’s been strange since that time with you and Sang in the bathroom. Do you think it triggered something between them?”

  Nathan put a hand over his mouth, rubbing slowly. “Maybe you should ask Kota...”

  “I know I should, but he’s never here.” She sighed and combed some of her bangs away from her forehead. “I’ve a confession to make, too. I meant to tell Kota, but...” She reached into her purse and pulled out a pink-encased phone. She held it up for him to see. “I found this in the car. I went to get something out of it and found it sticking out under the seat.”

  Oh no. Volto didn’t take it. He wasn’t sure this was better or worse. No wonder he hadn’t tried to use it to manipulate one of the others.

  She placed it on the table, face down. She pressed her fingertips to the back of it, sliding it around the wood surface. “I thought about looking at it. I didn’t, but I considered maybe I should.” She groaned and then pressed her palm to the phone, lowering her head. “I know her parents are going through a bad time, and it feels like she needs us to be supportive. But if Kota’s trying to make a clean break and she’s hanging around, maybe...”

  Nathan held on to his breath, swallowing shortly. He hated seeing her struggle like this. After the craziness last night, she still picked them up, took them home, made sure they were safe and fed. His insides shook, regretting lying to her so much. She didn’t deserve it.