ELLIOT
Present Day
I was tired.
I was tired of driving, of the tension in the car, and of hearing Scarlet’s fucking snores for the past five hours.
“Doctor will be there first thing in the morning,” Tristan whispered into the silence of the car. We didn’t even have the music on so that the precious thing could sleep.
I nodded at Tristan and continued staring straight ahead. I could hear him hesitate, wanting to ask me what was going on in my head, but he thought better of it. Good for him. I wasn’t in the mood.
Truth was, I didn’t really blame Scarlet for this shit. Well, not completely anyway. Would we have been in the mess we were if we had never taken her in? Probably not. But was it actually her fault that Mel was gone? I didn’t think so. I was just having a really hard time keeping my emotions in check.
Her absence had broken something between all of us. We ended up taking all of our shit out on each other instead of letting it bring us together. I didn’t know why we had reacted like that. It should’ve been something that banded us together, but it hadn’t, and that had also pissed me off.
It was like this thing that we had worked to build with each other over so many years was so easily threatened, all because none of us knew how to charter these new waters. So I didn’t know who to blame.
Did I blame her family for treating her so badly that she ran away, giving us the opportunity to track her down? Did I blame her for convincing Seb and Tristan to keep her? Did I blame myself for leaving her that night?
I sighed and gripped the steering wheel as I made our way through the quiet neighborhood.
“Thinking awfully loudly, El,” Tristan said, never lifting his eyes from his phone screen. I glanced back at Seb and Scarlet in the rearview. They were both still sound asleep, Seb holding on to her like a life raft. It was going to take the force of God himself to get him to let her out of his sight now. That sick feeling of jealousy rolled through me. I hated feeling jealous of what they had with her.
“A lot to think about,” I finally answered.
“That there is,” he sighed, stuffing his phone in his pocket as we pulled up to one of my old family safe houses in the middle of suburbia. The papers were signed over to a random no-name when my father passed, and the paper trail burned. It was all of our hopes, especially mine, that the assholes wouldn’t think to look right under their noses for her.
I had somehow convinced the other two that this location also needed to be kept a secret from Scarlet. Because even after I saw how beat to shit she was, I still couldn’t shake the doubt. The doubt that maybe she wasn’t one hundred percent innocent in all of this. It had made Seb go psycho on me last week when I brought it up. My jaw was still sore from where he had sucker punched me.
I didn’t care what they thought of me for suspecting her. I was the only one thinking with the head up top and not the one below the belt. It would suit her father perfectly to have her on the inside with us, sleeping her way through each one of us, gaining our trust and secrets. And I wouldn’t put it past her dad to let them kick the shit out of her to make it look real.
“Hey, princess,” Tristan murmured to her, leaning between the seats and stroking her thigh. She jumped awake and then let out a scream at the pain that movement caused. Seb was instantly awake and shushing her while rocking her in his arms as she cried.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she kept saying over and over again through her tears. Tristan glanced over at me, worry etched clearly on his face. I hid mine by rolling my eyes and climbing out of the parked car.
I breathed deeply, the icy cold air waking me up. I stretched and rolled my neck before opening the boot and pulling out all of the duffle bags, letting them hit the concrete with dull thuds. The house was relatively well stocked, but there definitely wasn’t anything there for Scarlet to wear. Seb had packed her a bag filled with brand-new clothes he just had to buy for her. I picked up my own two bags, deliberately leaving the rest out of spite.
“Let’s go,” I said through the boot and then closed it quietly, hoping not to wake anyone at the neighboring houses. They weren’t connected, but it was a small cul-de-sac in the middle of nowhere, and it was well before dawn. I figured it might be a good idea to not draw attention to ourselves by pissing off the neighbors.
I unlocked the front door and walked in, turning off the alarms and flipping on the lights as I looked around. I did a quick sweep through the house while Seb carried Scarlet into the foyer.
Scarlet gripped onto Sebastian’s neck so tightly I could see her knuckles turning white. Her face was pale and slightly green. In the dim light of the front hallway, she looked even worse than I remembered. Her hair was extremely matted, to the point I wasn’t sure we would ever get the knots out. She was absolutely covered in blood, and as they walked past me, I could smell the sweat and urine on her.