“I’ll take this, thank you very much.” She grabs a Dr. Pepper. I take one too. We go back to the couch and finish the current movie. We’re ten minutes into The Greatest Showman when the bell rings, and I nearly jump out of my skin.
“I’m sure it’s just the pizza,” Amelia says, getting up and going to the door. “Yep, definitely pizza.”
She unlocks it and pulls it open, taking the food from the blonde woman and then locking it back up. She puts the boxes on the coffee table in front of us, and I get up to get plates and napkins.
“I can’t believe we haven’t done this before,” I comment.
“Well, no offense, but you seem to keep people at arm’s length.”
“Yeah…” I hand her a plate. “It’s not you.”
She shrugs, opening the box. “I figured, but I didn’t want to push you either. I know I can be a lot—”
“It’s not a problem.”
“I wasn’t apologizing for it.” Her southern accent is heavy with that sentence, and I laugh a little. “I was just saying I know I’m not for everyone, and that’s okay.”
“Well, you’re definitely for me. I appreciate you coming here.”
“We should do it more. It’s nice being here instead of that loud ass dorm.” She looks around. “I could actually get homework done here.”
“You can come here whenever you want from now on.”
She smiles at me, then takes a huge bite from her pizza, the cheese stretching as she breathes funny because it’s too hot.
When the movie is done, and most of the food is gone, I go to my bedroom. But even with Amelia guarding my living room like a watch dog—her words not mine—I still can’t sleep.
All I can think about is Jaxon. If he was here, if he was the one in my house today… and the fact that the thought of him being here like that, even after everything that has happened, doesn’t bother me like it should.
In fact, it gives me more relief than having my best friend asleep on the couch.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jaxon
I watch all of it like a movie. Starting from her pulling into the driveway, afraid to walk in, panicking because the door was unlocked, checking her house while carrying a knife, inviting her friend over, not being able to sleep…
I message her as Shadow, but she doesn’t answer. I feel the wall she has up, and I’m not sure how to break it. I don’t know how to pretend to be someone else, and I’m worried that if I’m too much of myself, she’ll notice and pull away even more. I’m doing my damn best with what I have. Maybe the answer is not pretending to be someone else… maybe I need to be myself… as myself. This Shadow thing could be a bad idea, but at least she talks to him. I’m not sure she’d talk to me if I texted her as me.
I heard the entire phone call between her and Amelia, and it made me fucking furious.
I hate how scared she is to be in her own home, and I can’t tell if it’s from me—because of what I did, or because I’m not there to protect her. I so badly want to go in there, make sure she knowsI’m still here, still watching her, still making sure nothing will happen to her. Protecting her, no matter what it takes.
Maybe this is discomfort from being taken by Mindy. There are so many things that could be the cause of her fear, and all I want is to make it go away. I could if she’d let me.
The plan was so clear in the beginning, but now it’s all blurry, and I don’t know what the right answer is. It seems like the safest bet is to keep being Shadow, rather than showing up as me. She’d panic. Lose her mind. What if she calls the cops? She can’t prove anything with Mindy, but I don’t want to create a mess, and I certainly don’t want to put her through something like that. And it’s not the best time to have to cover something up, not now when all this shit with the organization is up my ass.
I have absolutely no idea where my mother is, what she’s doing, or who she’s with. No one seems to know either. I’ve called a shit ton of people. There’s one left, one I don’t want to deal with, but it seems he’s my only option. There’s an order here, a way in which I have to do things. Dealing with my mother has to happen first. Only then can I put my full attention on Sailor. If she isn’t gone, she’ll constantly be a thorn in my side. It’s best to get this over with and just move on from all of this.
So when the sun comes up, I push up out of my chair, my eyes gritty and a headache coming on from not sleeping a wink. Sailor finally fell asleep around four, and she doesn’t have an early class, but she does have to be at school for ten. I’m sure she’ll get up when she needs to.
I hop in the shower and dress in a casual pair of grey slacks and a black T-shirt. I can’t make it obvious that I’m trying to impress my father because then he’ll only get pissed off. But showing up there in a pair of jeans and a band T-shirt, like I normally would, will only piss him off. And I need him on my side this time. As much as I can’t stand the fucker, he’s my only option. He’s all I have left.
Well, maybe there is another option, but I’m not sure how much Orville could help me when I have nothing to go by. If I happen to get a hint of something, like where my mother is or who she’s with, I’ll go to him and see what he can give me. Right now, the most obvious option is my father. Because I’d bet my left nut that she’s gone to him already. Because like me, he’s all she has left too.
He may not know where she is, but he knows something. I wouldn’t be surprised if my mother tried bribing him or made promises to get him out if he helped her. I truly have no idea what he would have said to that. He’s kind of an idiot and may have believed her. I don’t know if he’ll turn on her if he knows something, but all I can do is try. He’s my last fucking resort.
I haven’t been on campus in months, ever since I went to Oregon. Like Sailor, all my classes switched to online, and it wasn’t a coincidence. I’d told my father to approve her change, or he’d regret it. At the time, he didn’t know what had gone down with my mother, and so he probably thought I would sic her on him. He listened and made sure the request was approved for both of us.
