by Blair Young
Damon had masked his emotions when he saw Dean, making it appear as though nothing was wrong, but with the way he walked up the stairs heading toward his room, I knew he was fighting the anger that had risen inside him.
I wasn’t sure why Chad was able to get him so worked up, but then, I wasn’t going to ask questions. If there was one thing I had learned about Damon, it was that he didn’t like to be asked questions about anything by anyone. He would put up with the questions I had more than anyone else, but he still liked to keep things closer to the vest.
I knew it had to come from the hard times he had experienced when he was younger, and I didn’t blame him for it. It was nearly impossible for me to open up to people at first, though I was very open with them once I got to know them.
Damon was even more reserved, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
He headed for his room, and I was about to turn to head into mine when he suddenly stopped.
“Sutton?” he asked.
It was the first he had spoken to me since we’d walked out the door at Molly’s, so I paused. “Yeah?”
“Will you spend the night in my room, with me?” he asked. “I could really use you.”
I hesitated. Susan knew that we were dating, and she wasn’t happy about it, but she hadn’t addressed it again, either. I knew she hated that we were romantically involved at all, and I didn’t want to even think about what she might do if she were to find us in the same room.
But, Damon didn’t care. And, as though he could read my thoughts, he pointed that out.
“Susan can screw off, just like the rest of the world. She doesn’t have control over who we can love, and she can’t tell us that we can’t be together. I don’t care if she finds us together, if she says anything about it, I’ll tell her what I told her the other day,” he said.
It didn’t take much to convince me. I did want to spend the night with him. It sounded a lot better than being in my own room alone for the night. There was still a lot running through my mind after the party, and I could use the company.
I might not like the idea of it turning into an argument with Susan after the fact, but I would take the chance for Damon. I wanted to be there for him, more than anything.
“Just give me a second,” I said. I headed into my room and turned my lamp on the lowest setting. Then, I pulled my door closed when I walked back into the hall. When Dean and Susan walked by on their way to her room they would see the dim glow coming under the door and think I was still in there.
Neither of them ever bothered me at night, so I knew they wouldn’t check to see if I was in there. Then, I slipped into Damon’s room and pulled the door closed behind me. I undressed, joining him in bed and lying on his chest. it was comforting to be so close to him, as always, and I could feel him relax a bit as soon as I settled into bed alongside him.
There was something about my touch that just brought out the gentleness in him, and I was happy for that. Anything I could do that would make him feel better I did. He spent so much of his time trying to make me happy, I wanted to do what I could for him, too. And if that meant I spent the night with him risking getting caught by Susan, that was good enough for me.
He was right. She didn’t have any room to tell us what to do anymore. We were nearly adults, and Damon was bold enough to tell her just how he felt about that. No, we were going to do what we wanted, albeit discreetly. And I was okay with that.
I wasn’t sure how long we stayed up talking, but we spoke in hushed tones so Susan and Dean wouldn’t hear us when they walked by on their way to her room. We talked about the party and what happened with Chad, and I knew Damon was trying to express himself without going into too much detail. I did my best to listen to him and offer as much support to him as I could, but it was hard not to tell him I thought he should have punched the guy in the face.
I knew it would have been the worst thing to do in the moment, and the rational side of me agreed it was better that he hadn’t, but still, knowing that it was one of the only things that would have made Damon feel better, I halfway wished that he did.
Eventually, however, I started to drift off. It started slowly at first, but before I knew it, the darkness of sleep swept over me, and there was no fighting it any longer. I was worn out after the long day and the stress at the party, and I was comfortable and safe in Damon’s arms.
It felt good to know that he had me, no matter what, and the relaxation that swept over me made it hard to stay away in the comfort of the moment.
Slowly but surely, I fell asleep to the hum of his whisper. I knew he wouldn’t mind. He just wanted me to be there with him, to enjoy the warmth of my body pressed against his under the sheets and to know that I was there for him just as much as he was there for me.
There wasn’t anything so wonderful in the whole world than to know that he had me, and I was there for him, too. We were meant to be together, and no one, not even Chad or Susan, could tear us apart.
I drifted off to sleep with a smile on my face, hoping that the next few months passed quickly for us. I wanted to be through this part of my life. I wanted to move on with Damon into bigger and better things. I wanted to start our adult lives together. I wanted to be with him.
More than anything, I just wanted him.
Chapter 12
Sutton
I woke up in the bed alone. Damon’s door was still closed, but he wasn’t in the room. Confused, I got up and slipped to my room, quickly getting dressed and turning off the lamp before heading downstairs looking for him.
Dean and Susan were still in her bedroom. The door was closed, and I figured they would take their time getting up. They always did on the weekend, and that was fine with me. I wasn’t eager to see either one of them, and I really had no intention of sharing any details of the party with them, either.
He wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen, so I checked the garage.
And that’s where I found him.
He was beside himself with anger, walking back and forth muttering and shaking his head. He clenched his fists then unclenched them, swearing and threatening the world. But, he didn’t hold my attention for long. It was what was behind him that really caught my eye and made me feel sick to my stomach all at the same time.
There, on the floor, was what was left of his bike. It was mangled, completely destroyed. It looked like someone had taken a sledge hammer to it before stealing parts and making sure it was ruined beyond repair. I wasn’t a mechanic and I knew very little about motorcycles, but I had a feeling it would be cheaper to buy a new bike than to try to fix that one.
And, to make matters worse, I knew it wasn’t just any bike that mattered to him. He had had this bike for years. He loved that bike, and the fact someone had broken into the garage overnight and wrecked it was just a punch in the stomach to him.
But, who could have done it? The garage was attached to the house, so it had to be covered by the security system. And no alarm had gone off overnight. Anyone who had tried to get in would have triggered the alarm, and no doubt would have woken up the entire house.
But, there was no sign of forced entry, and no one had heard a thing the night before. Even when I was tired and comfortable in bed, I always woke up easily. It had started after my parents were murdered. I wasn’t the sort of person to sleep deeply, no matter what.
I could even take sleeping medication and still wake up at the slightest noise.
However, I knew none of that mattered now. Right now, I had to focus on Damon, who was very upset with the situation.
“What happened?” I breathed, unsure of what else to say.
“How the heck should I know?” he shot back.
“Well, I mean, do you see any clues to who did it?” I asked.
“No! Sutton! I don’t see any clues to who did it! And why would that matter anyway? It’s done, and even if I know who did it, nothing is going to fix this bike!” he snapped.
“I’m sorry,”
I said. “Can I help you?”
“How the heck are you going to help me? Do you know anything about putting bikes back together? I’m not even sure all the pieces are here! And how did they get in here and do this without triggering the alarm?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I was thinking the same thing, but there’s got to be some way we can figure this out. We can fix this.”
“No, we can’t fix this!” he said. “We can’t just fix everything. My bike is in shambles, and nothing is going to bring it back!”
“You can get another one,” I suggested. “One that looks just like this one. I’m sure Susan”-
“Susan won’t do crap! She can buy me another one, but that’s not going to fix this. Nothing is going to bring this bike back, and that’s what I want. I don’t want to just go out and get another one! I don’t want to have just a replacement. I’ve had this bike for years. I knew how it worked. I knew the kinks, I knew what to expect. I knew everything about it. I don’t want to just find another one and act like everything is going to be just fine! Reality has to set in sometime!” he ranted.
I felt a lump forming in my throat. I was upset that I couldn’t help him, but I was also hurt by the way he was talking to me. It wasn’t my fault that the bike got destroyed, and I was just doing my best to make things better. I didn’t want to see him hurting, and I was doing everything I could think to make it a little less painful for him.
“Can I give you a hug?” I asked.
“No, Sutton, I don’t want a hug right now,” Damon snapped.
“I’m just trying to help,” I said softly. “Sorry.”
“Do you really want to help?” he asked with an angry smirk on his face. “If you really want to help me like you say you do, then you need to leave me alone. I want to think about this and you’re distracting me right now. Just give me some time to process what’s going on with this, okay? Can you do that for me?”
“Yes,” I said with a small shake of my head. I didn’t know what else to do, so I turned and headed back inside. I walked straight up the stairs and right to my room, closing my door behind me. I was glad Susan and Dean were still in her bedroom, I didn’t want to be the one to break the news to them, and I really didn’t want to be down there when Damon told them what happened.
Considering the mood he was in, I was sure it wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation for anyone involved, even if Susan and Dean didn’t have anything to do with it.
At the same time, I was also hurt. I knew it was the fact that his bike – one of his favorite things in the whole world – was wrecked that made him snap at me like he had, but it still stung. I wanted Damon to turn to me when he was hurting, not push me away.
Sure, he had been a fighter his whole life. He had to grow up under the hand of an abusive father during some of the most formative years of his life. No wonder he was on the fight now. But, it was still me he was talking to, and I cared about him very much.
It hurt that he pushed me away when he was angry, and it hurt even more that he had snapped at me the way that he did. I’d never done anything to hurt him, and I never would, even through the pain that I’d dealt with in my own life, I had been there for him as much as I could when he would let me.
It was no excuse to talk to me the way that he did, that was for dang sure. But, I tried to be understanding. I knew what it was like to have someone try to soothe me when I really wasn’t in the mood to be comforted. It wasn’t easy to take the comfort when it wasn’t wanted, and I was sure Damon felt the same way.
I fell back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, trying to make sense of what had happened the night before. We had come home, we had put the bike in the garage like always, then we had gone to bed. Nothing was out of the ordinary. No one was creeping around the house, and no one had appeared to have broken in.
But, there was no denying that his bike had been destroyed, so someone had to make their way in at some point. But how? How did they get in the house without triggering the alarm, and why did they target Damon’s bike, and only Damon’s bike?
Susan’s car was also in the garage, but there wasn’t even so much as a scratch on that. It was just sitting right where it had been the night before, nothing unusual about it.
Not to mention there didn’t seem to be any tool left behind by the attacker, either. There wasn’t anything in the garage that looked like it could have inflicted such damage on the bike, and it did look like there were several parts missing from the bike, too. As though whoever had destroyed it had always been thorough enough to take pieces along with it to make sure Damon wouldn’t be able to have it put back together.
Not that it looked like that was going to happen anyway. There was just too much damage done to the piece for there to be any hope of it coming back together, I knew that, and from the way Damon had reacted to me trying to comfort him, it was clear that he knew that, too.
But how did this happen? How did someone do that much damage to the bike without anyone hearing it happen? That was pretty intense, there had to be a lot of banging and clanging going on downstairs.
Sure, it might have been in the garage, but we were out late, and Susan and Dean were up later than we were. They would have certainly heard it happen if they were still downstairs when it took place. Then again, if someone had deliberately wanted to destroy the bike, were they watching the house to make sure no one was awake when they came in to destroy?
And how did they manage to get in the garage without anyone actually hearing them? Or how did they pull it off without the alarm sounding. There has to be more to this than what meets the eye. Do they have a code to the alarm system and are they hacking it?
Is that even possible?
Is there a way they could be getting into the system and disarming it before they are coming into the house to steal and break things? Think about it. The same thing happened when the file was stolen, and now again with the bike. Someone has to be getting in somehow without people noticing – and without tripping the alarm.
It would be silly to think that the two incidents weren’t related. How could two different people break into the house and not set off the alarm? No, there has to be one mastermind behind this, and they have to have something personal against me and Damon.
But who would it be, and why would they be doing this?
The only person I could consider to be an enemy in my life was Molly, but she didn’t have the code to the place, and she didn’t seem like the type who would go to such extreme lengths on her own. Not to mention, she didn’t look strong enough to me to be able to smash his bike to that degree.
No, as much as a suspect as she seemed to be on the outset, I had to admit that it couldn’t feasibly be her. Not on her own, at least. Plus, the fact she was drinking at the party the same night it happened led me to believe she would have been too clumsy to pull off something like that.
Chad, too, was far too drunk to have the coordination to pull off something so delicate in the state of mind he was in. If he tried to break in, even if he knew how, he would have definitely set off the alarm. This had to be the work of someone else completely. I had no idea who it could be, but I knew that it had to be something with far more skill than either Chad or Molly.
Trent crossed my mind briefly, but I was convinced that this had to be the same person who stole my file, and Trent hadn’t been in school when that was taken out of my room. So, that ruled him out as well.
But, the more people I ruled out as suspects, the harder it was for me to wrap my mind around who it could actually be. After all, these were the people who made sense in my mind. These were the people I felt were true candidates to take the blame.
They just didn’t fit the actual profile of someone who would be able to pull off such a crime on their own. As much as they might hate me or Damon or both, there was just no way for them to be the ones behind the crimes.
Suddenly, I had a new thought.
What if this is the same perso
n who has been leaving those notes in your locker? If they were able to break into the house twice without setting off the alarm, then there’s a good chance they were also able to break into the school without getting caught by security.
If they really know how to break and enter without getting caught, that would explain everything. Getting my file, getting into school undetected, getting into my locker undetected, getting into the garage undetected. Not to mention the threatening nature of the note they left would be in line with the destruction of the bike.
Maybe this is a clue, at least, a common thread that brings on person together. Not that it brings me any closer to who this person might be. All I really know about them is that they aren’t afraid to be destructive, and they clearly know how to get away with breaking and entering.
I sighed. It bothered me that I didn’t have a suspect. Sure, it was nice to think Molly or Chad or Trent wouldn’t be able to pull off such an elaborate thing, but at the same time, if I knew it was one of them, I would be able to better prepare for getting rid of the problem.
Not knowing who could have done it only drove me crazy. It could be anyone, and I didn’t know how to even begin searching for the culprit.
A sickening thought ran through my brain. If they threatened me physically, and said that they knew my real mother, then were they also responsible for the death of my parents? Was this all one person just out to get me and ruin my life? I’d never done anything to anyone intentionally, and even if I did make someone mad in my life, I couldn’t imagine that I would make someone mad enough they would go to such extremes to make my life a living Hell.
But, it didn’t make sense otherwise. This was clearly someone who knew what they were doing, someone who wasn’t the sort of person I wanted to mess with.
But who on Earth could it be?
Chapter 13
Sutton