AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Tyson fired up the Rover and backed out of the parking space without saying a word. The less he talked, the angrier I became. It wasn’t until he pulled up to a drive thru window at a fast food joint that I realized it wasn’t anger I was feeling, but hurt instead. Really, really hurt.
He had loved Annabell at one time, and she had used him and tried to break up his family. I knew he didn’t love her now, but I didn’t understand why he’d see her, or why the secrecy.
Apparently, I had spaced out on him longer than I had planned to, because I missed him ordering and paying for the food. The next thing I knew, he was shoving a bag in my hand and pulling out onto the road once again. He’d completely taken control of the situation, and I didn’t have it in me to fight with him over it.
“Eat,” he ordered in a quiet but firm voice. There was no mistaking it was an order.
Blindly, I dug around in the bag and pulled out the first thing my fingers touched. I unwrapped it and took a bite without bothering to look at the stupid thing. Who cared about food at a time like this? Tyson, that’s who. My stomach felt like it had been stuffed full of a bag of rocks and if I were to be thrown overboard now I would most definitely sink. Not a fun feeling.
The food was delicious. It was a chicken sandwich on a toasted bun, topped with crispy lettuce, dill hamburger pickles and loaded up with mayo. He’d remembered how I liked my chicken sandwiches from one of the first times we’d eaten lunch together at school. It was Tyson, of course he remembered. Tyson remembered everything, all the guys even said so.
We ate in silence as he drove us out of town, back towards Dash’s cottage in the woods and my current home.
“It’s not what you think,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Mmhmm…” I muttered and stuffed a french fry in my mouth. It tasted like cardboard, and I almost choked on it. There was no drink to wash it down with, and I mourned the loss of the coffee that I had been forced to leave behind at the restaurant.
“She’s staying at the Motel with The Council,” he said. Like that was any better? It wasn’t. “She called me the day after we went out there and you met them for the first time. She said she wanted to apologize and make things right with me. That’s why she’s with The Council right now and not her coven, she’s going through some type of therapy with them right now. I agreed to meet her at the restaurant, in a public place, because I didn’t want to chance her showing up at the house, but I also didn’t want to be alone with her. We had lunch, she said she was sorry. I didn’t tell her I forgave her because I don’t think I’m capable of it and, honestly, I think she only used the apology as an excuse to get me to see her. I don’t believe for a hot second she’s sorry about anything she did, except for the getting caught part. She wasn’t even really there to see me.”
I trusted Tyson, I really did, but this was all a hard, bitter pill to swallow.
“Does Quinton know you went to see her?” I asked, knowing just how furious Quint would be if he’d been left in the dark on this. “Does he know she’s staying at the Motel with the Council? If you’ve kept this from him, it’s not good, Tyson.”
Just how many peopledidthe Council have staying at the Motel with them? My stomach churned at the possibilities. The list was growing, and I was not impressed with the occupants.
Tyson inhaled sharply before saying, “No. No. And I don’t want you to tell him, either. I don’t want you to tell anybody.”
I fisted my hands in my lap, making them into tight, angry balls. He wanted me to lie to his Uncle for him. For fucking Annabell. Unbelievable. For Tyson, I might have considered it. I owed Annabell nothing, and neither did Tyson. This was a position I never thought to find myself in and I didn’t like it.
I had promised Quinton, no lies between us.
“She asked a lot of questions about Damien. She wanted to know what was going on with his life, and she wanted to know about your relationship with him. She hadn’t picked favorites before between the three of us that she’d picked to play with, so I don’t understand her singling him out now. Why Damien and not Julian? Why Damien and not me? I’d almost rather she picked me to have a special interest in again, it would be better than her trying to fuck with my brothers again.”
“What?” I asked in a quiet voice, not liking for a second that she’d singled out Damien, either. He wasn’t one of mine, yet, and a lot of the time I found him to be intimidating, but I knew one day he would be mine just like the rest of them. That was where we were going, the direction they wanted our relationship to go.
First, she’s meeting in secret with Tyson and then she’s focusing on Damien? Who was next? Would she be wanting another piece of Julian as well? I fought off the urge to pull out my phone and call them both immediately to make sure she hadn’t already gotten her hooks into them, they needed to be warned to be on the lookout.
But Tyson didn’t want me to tell anyone. And I had to trust him. So, for the moment, I left my phone where it was. But I wasn’t promising him not to tell anyone, that wasn’t a promise I was sure I would be able to keep, or even wanted to keep, for that matter.
“I think therapy is a bullshit lie she’s spouting to make herself look better to all the other little witches. The Council is eating it up, literally.”
He sounded disgusted.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked suspiciously.
“I saw something today that I could have gone my whole entire life without seeing.” Now he just sounded defeated. I was left more than curious.
Curiosity, they said, killed the cat. I understood exactly whattheymeant (whoever they were), but I still couldn’t help myself.
“What did you see?” I asked as I started to stuff the food wrappers back in the now empty bag.
“You don’t want to know,” he mumbled. Then, louder, “I know if you decide to leave with the Council, I will probably kill someone. And I don’t want you going out to the Motel by yourself. I want you to promise me, Ariel, that you won’t go there alone, and you won’t be alone with any of them unless you are at my house and there are other people in the house. They have ways of making you do things, things you don’t want to have to do. Things none of us will ever be okay with you doing. I know I’m not explaining it right, and you probably don’t understand everything, but I still need you to promise me. It’s important.”
He sounded so serious, so sincere. I promised him I would, under no circumstances, be going to the Motel by my little ole lonesome. Not that I was planning to before he’d made me promise, or anything. There was a reason Adrian came to the Alexander house to visit with me, and his name was Quinton. I had already promised I wouldn’t be going it alone, and I wouldn’t break my promises to Quinton lightly.
We were quiet the rest of the ride to Dash’s. For me, it wasn’t uncomfortable, I wasn’t sure if he was uncomfortable or not. His hands were gripping the steering wheel tighter than was necessary for driving, and his eyes never left the road. I figured he was thinking over his words carefully and coming up with just the right thing to say to me so as to smooth things over for himself. Frankly, I wasn’t sure he was up to the task.
As for me, I was going over everything he’d said so far, memorizing and picking it apart.
