Misguided Truths: Part Two (Misjudged #4)

by Sarah Elizabeth

  “Beautiful,” Nice work. Yeah, just like we planned. She’s gotta figure out that I’m still around with him calling her that. Smart move, Zach, Smart move. There’s a pause before I hear anything else. “You don’t think it is?”

  “I’m sorry … what?” There’s my girl. My throat tightens when I hear her voice. It’s been seven days since I last heard her speak. Since I … since I unwillingly broke her fucking heart. A burning in my lower stomach travels up to my chest, and I have to close my eyes because of the excruciating pain I’m now feeling.

  Do you know how infuriating it is to know that you’re only a few miles away from the only person you wanna be with, knowing that it’s impossible to go to them? Well, if you don’t then I can tell you. It hurts. It’s frustrating, and it’s making me feel helpless. I should be there with her, not stuck out here.

  They’re watching her; they’re watching me. One false move is all it’ll take for them to do what they threatened, and I swear to God, there is no way they’re gonna put me through it. Not again. I already lost Holly. There’s no way in hell I’m gonna let them take Alexis away from me, too. Come on. Get her talking.

  “Beautiful. Here. The View … I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Harry.” Harry? Okay, that works. He could be a Harry. Come on, beautiful. Talk to him. He’s helping us.

  I start tapping my fingers against my cell while I wait for one of them to speak again, “You dropped this.” He’s speaking louder now and I hear footsteps. Shit. She’s leaving.

  Take it. Take the goddamn note!

  “Alex are you okay?”

  “Neil …” Shit! He is not supposed to be there. Once. One time he’s been there to meet her. Once out of the last five. Why now? “I was just head—”

  Dammit. If he recognizes— “Hey. Don’t I know you?” And there it is.

  “No, I don’t think so.” Keep it up, Zach.

  “Are you sure? You look really familiar.” Fuck.

  “I’m pretty sure … I’m Harry,”

  “My mistake.” Thank fuck. “Let’s get back.” Not yet!

  “It was nice meeting you. Alexis,” Yes. Good. She’s gotta figure it out. I’m the only one who calls her those two things. This has gotta make her realize that I never actually left. “I’ll see you around.”

  When I hear a clicking sound, I hold my cell up in front of me before bringing it back to my ear, “Zach? Zach? No. No. Zach! Hey! Zach can you hear me?” I growl with frustration, and slam my cell down on the wooden table. “Son of a bi—”

  “What’s wrong?” I glance over my shoulder when I hear Rachael approaching me. “Is everything okay?”

  I shake my head and run a hand through my hair, “Neil showed up before he had a chance to speak with her, and now the lines gone dead. I don’t even know if he managed to pass her my note.” Breathing a heavy sigh, I step forward, and rest my hands on the black railing that’s surrounding the whole of the cabin.

  “If Neil arrived then surely that’s a good thing, isn’t it? He’s one of your best friends, and I’m sure that he’ll be relieved to know that—”

  “The last thing I wanna do is get anyone else mixed up in this mess. It’s bad enough to have Alexis involved, but after all the help Neil and Rye have already given me since I arrived in Seattle, there’s no way I can put them at risk as well. No fucking way.”

  I look out over the lake that’s just a little further down from the cabin when Rach heads back inside to answer the landline. My problem? It’s the wrong fucking lake. I wanna be back at ours. Mine and Alexis’. Not here.

  I’ve been staying just outside of Seattle since Monday. It’s Rach and Holly’s mom and dad’s cabin. Once I’d explained to them about what I found in my dorm that day, they told me that I should stay here until things calm down. When Rach came to get me on Sunday, she drove us both back to Olympia, and I stayed at her place overnight. During that time, we decided that me being back there wasn’t a particularly great idea. To them, Olympia wouldn’t be further enough away. I knew this. I mean, I thought me being in Seattle was a good enough distance, but, well, just recently they proved me wrong.

  Rach moved out of her parent’s home roughly six months ago, and I don’t think I can tell you how thankful I am about this now. I wouldn’t have been able to step back into her old place, not with all the memories of Holly surrounding it.

  Yeah, so I’ve moved on, but I’ll never forget her. I refuse to, and that’s what’s so great about Alexis. She understands that I both can’t and won’t, and she would never have it any other way. That girl, the same one that was kneeling on the sidewalk with tears spilling out of her eyes when I did the worst thing I’ve ever had to do in my entire life, well, she’s something else. She’s special. Really fucking special.

  “He’s just pulling up out the front,” Rach covers the mouthpiece on the phone with her hand while peering around the patio doors.

  “Thanks,” I whisper, and slide my hands in the pockets of my pants before heading toward the front of the cabin.

  The guy that’s been watching over Alexis for me while I’ve been out of town is my cousin, Zach. He’s the same age as Rach, and even though he’s only a couple of years older than I am, he thinks he knows a lot more about the world than I do. Honestly, though? He doesn’t. We just let him think that he does.

  He lives out of state, but as soon as I called and told him that I needed him to come and help me out, he was here within a couple of hours. You remember me telling you about my aunt and uncle who live in Florida? Well, that’s their son. We haven’t seen each other since we were sixteen, when he came to visit us for the summer in Olympia. That’s why I was worried Neil would recognize him. Neil, Rye, myself, and Zach all spent most of our time down by the river and just generally hanging out together.

  Zach’s just climbing out of the driver’s side of Rach’s SUV when I make it out onto the porch, “What the hell happened?” I call over, and take the steps two at a time as I head toward him. “Did she take my note?”

  When he shakes his head, it takes all of my willpower not to punch him hard in the face, “One thing! I asked you to do one fucking thi—”

  “I tried! If you’d have told me what a timid little thing she is then I might’ve tried a different approach.”

  “Timid?” I’m not in the greatest of moods, I think that’s pretty evident, but I let out a small chuckle when he describes Alexis as timid. “Are you kidding?”

  “No, I’m not kidding. As soon as I went over to her she couldn’t get away from me fast enough. Which, if you think about it, that’s a good thing. At least you know that—”

  “What do I know? What? I know nothing because you didn’t make her talk to you!”

  “Stop being such a melodramatic woman for Christ’s sake! Brandon? Where the hell are your balls these days?” Melodramatic? My balls? He’ll know where my fucking balls are if he ever says shit like that to me again.

  He walks by me, and I follow him up the steps as he heads inside and through to the kitchen, “We’ll just have to try a different approach.”

  “Yeah, I guess we will,” I shake my head, and go to take a seat on one of the dining chairs opposite to the counter.

  Once he’s poured himself an orange juice, he comes over and sits in the seat beside me. “She’s a pretty little thing.”

  “You keep calling her a little thing. She’s not little, and she’s not a thing.” Alright, I know he’s only trying to make me feel better, but it’s not gonna work. Pretty? That’s a fucking understatement. There are no words to describe how amazingly beautiful Alexis is. Both on the inside and out.

  I throw him a look when he digs me in the ribs, “She’s not very tall though.” He winks, and a smirk crosses over his mouth.

  “Sure she is. She’s just not as tall as your freakish six feet seven.” Digging him back, I rest my elbows on the table and my head in my hands, focusing my gaze on the ground.

  “Are you calling me a freak?”
Yeah. He hates that word.

  “You said that my girlfriend is little and timid.”

  “Who’s timid?” I glance up when I hear Rach walking into the room, and see the puzzled expression crossing over her features. Yeah. She’ll disagree with him just the way I am. She was there the night she called me after I had that run in with Matt at the bar. She heard Alexis scowling down the phone from the other side of the room. Damn, I miss her.

  “His little girlfriend.” If he calls her little one more fucking time …

  “Are you serious? I never thought of her as being timid, not in all the times Brandon talked about her. I always pictured her as being a little feisty maybe. She sounds as though she could certainly hold her own.”

  “Okay then, she’s a feisty little thing!”

  The chair I was sitting on scrapes across the tile flooring when I go to stand, “I need some air.” I tell them, and grab my jacket from the closet in the hallway before making my way toward the back door.

  Halfway down the hallway, I slow my pace when I hear the two of them whispering, “Did you have to wind him up? He’s having a really rough time and you were sitting there making juvenile comments.” Oh yeah, she’s mad. She’s not whispering, she’s practically hissing at him. Go, Rach, Kick his freakish ass!

  “Well, it worked didn’t it?” I stop walking and lean closer to the door when I hear Zach answer her.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Rach, you know him as well as I do, if not more so these days. The next thing he would have asked was how she was. How she looked. How she seemed. The truth is … I didn’t have the fucking balls to tell him.”

  “And, how is she? Honestly?”

  “Honestly? She looked devastated. Completely heartbroken, and like her whole world had been crushed. I just don’t think he needs to hear it. She was pale. Her eyes were all bloodshot, and her face was drawn. I think it would’ve actually killed him if he were to see what I saw earlier. She’s hurting just as much, if not more than he is.”

  I try and swallow past the huge lump in my throat, and then blink a couple of times because my vision has just turned a little blurry. Hearing him admit this is making everything ten times fucking harder to deal with.

  Taking a deep breath, I make my way past the open doorway, just as Rach is walking through, “Brandon. We didn’t realize you were standing there … Talk to me, please?”

  I shake my head, and attempt to smile while walking right by her. I feel her place her hand on my arm, but I shrug her away, and don’t turn back around.

  I need to get outta here and be on my own for a while.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It’s mid-semester break this week, and what I’d really like to know is why in the hell are there so many goddamn students around campus? Here I am, hiding between the music and arts building while Zach works his charm. Well, the charm he seems to think he has.

  Come on, Zach.

  Do I seem a little anxious to you? Well, that’s because I am. Extremely.

  Alright, I know I shouldn’t be here, and Zach made it clear that he didn’t think it was a good idea, but you see, I had to come. After what happened in Salem this weekend, I can’t stay away, at least not until I know she’s okay. I wanna be close to her. No. I need to be close to her.

  Because Neil interrupted what was supposed to have been my way of making sure Alexis knew that I didn’t leave her, we had to come up with some other way of getting through to her. When I overheard Rach and Zach talking in the kitchen back at the cabin, about how bad she was and that she didn’t seem to be handling things too well, I knew that I needed to make it clear to her in no uncertain terms that I didn’t have a choice in doing what I did. But, at the same time, I had to be careful not to tell her any details about what happened when I got back to my dorm last week.

  They made it pretty damn clear in both the threatening note they left, and the messages they sent that under no circumstances was I to speak to or see her again. Well, if they thought I’d listen then they were fucking wrong. But, I’m being smart about this. I know they meant what they said, but like I said before, no one, and I mean no one is gonna keep me away from her.

  Our new plan was to try and catch her on Saturday morning. I would’ve preferred that Zach had come here the day after he saw her down by the lake, but he said it wasn’t possible. Looking back, I know he was right this time.

  He said that if he’s seen around this place too often then it’s highly likely that he’ll be seen by the wrong people. So, Saturday it was. That was until she came out of her building with a case by her side, making our new plan fold right there on the spot.

  Zach called me right after he approached her, and he told me that she was headed to her fathers. The problem with that though was that she wouldn’t tell him how long she was staying out of town. Now, by all means call me crazy, but I needed to know. How would I know if anything had happened to her while she was away otherwise?

  I made sure Zach followed her out there, mainly to make sure she got there safe and though she had some issues with her car on her way out of town, she did get to where she’d planned, eventually.

  Anyways, that’s not the worst part. Nope. The worst part was when Zach called me on the Sunday and told me someone had broken into her father’s home while they were out for the day. I mean, yes, of course, it’s better that it happened while they weren’t at home, but he told me that she looked pretty shaken up over the whole thing.

  “Hey, how did it go?” I ask when I see him walking briskly down the alleyway toward me. “Any luck?”

  “One set of keys to dorm one zero five, my cousin,” his smile is wide, cringe worthy even. “That chick working on the desk in the Student Hall is fine!” Every woman to him is fine. He needs to be a little pickier. The chick he’s talking about, if it’s the same one that I think it is, reminds me a lot of that Lisa chick. Yeah, exactly. Not. Good. At. All.

  “What did you do? Tell her you’d call her?” I ask, and he shrugs his shoulders while raising his eyebrows. Yeah, of course he did. Will he? I wouldn’t count on it.

  “Any movement out here?”

  “Not a thing. So as far as I know, the whole dorm is empty. I should be able to sneak up there and let myself in before anybody spots me, and then, well, I guess I’ll wait.”

  He nods, and then I notice that his whole demeanor has become more serious, “Just don’t tell her everything. She just needs to know for the both of your sakes that you love her and you’ll be back soon.” He passes me the key, and I slip it inside my pocket before pulling the hood of my black sweater over my head to hide my face. “I’ll stick around for a little while in case something happens. Let me know when you’re inside.”

  “Will do, man, and thanks.” I turn on my heel, and place my hands in my pants pockets, walking with my head lowered to make sure that I don’t get spotted.

  When I make it up onto the fourth floor, I knock the door a couple of times. I know we both said that there shouldn’t be anyone inside, but I just wanna be sure.

  I twist the key in the lock, and push the door open slowly before quickly glancing over my shoulder to make sure there’s no one in the hallway behind me. Once I step inside, I take a peek around, and see that there’s nobody home. I close the door back up and head straight for her room. For our room.

  The smell of her perfume hits me as soon as I step inside, and when I look around, I see all my things still placed around the room. A framed picture on the nightstand by Alexis’ side of the bed grabs my attention first. It’s the one I took of the both of us on her birthday, right after I gave her the necklace. We were both lying on the bed, and I held my cell above us when I took it. We looked as though we didn’t have a care in the world, and actually, we didn’t. Yeah, that was taken a couple of days before I had to leave, though it feels like it was a whole lifetime ago.

  I sit down on the bed, and try to steady my breathing. I need to think. I need to focus on get
ting this right so we can be like that again. And, I know that someday we will be. Not being is not an option.

  When I see the time, I realize I’ve been here for almost an hour already, but just as I go to lay back on the bed, my cell phone vibrates.

  Z: She’s outside the building.

  That thudding sound? Yeah. That’s my heart kicking up a notch, pounding the shit outta my chest. Should I be shaking? Yes. I’m sure it’s normal for any guy to react in the same way as I am, especially when this could go one of two ways. She could tell me she’s over it and scream at me to get out before even giving me a chance to explain things. Or, she might, and this is a long shot, she might be happy to see me here and let me kiss her. Damn, I need to kiss her so bad. Not being able to taste her lips is like having my oxygen supply cut off.

  See, I placed a note on the pillow in my old dorm room before I left. It wasn’t just any note, it was a coded one. I couldn’t risk writing what I wanted to say in case they came back. Let’s face it, they knew where I was living or they wouldn’t have been able to leave theirs for me to find. They somehow had access into my room, so what’s to say they wouldn’t go back in there again once I’d left? The only thing that’s been plaguing me is if she hasn’t figured it out yet. From the way Zach described how she looked when he saw her down by the lake, I think it’s most likely she hasn’t worked it out.

  Z: She’s headed into the building. GL.

  One more deep breath later, I stand back on my feet and then walk over to the closed bedroom door. Okay, just relax. It’ll be—yeah, there’s no way I can relax right now. I clench my hands tight so I can try and stop them shaking by my sides, I hear the main door closing from the other side, and take a step toward the wall so that I’ll be standing right behind it when she first walks in the room. Zach didn’t mention that she was with anybody else, but that’s not to say she didn’t bump into someone on her way up here.

  When the door opens, I hold my breath, and watch as she walks right in. It’s so tempting to reach out and touch her, but I know that I can’t. Not until I know there’s no one else here. As she walks over to her desk, I slowly take a step around the door, pushing it closed without making a sound when I see she came back alone.