“Anyway, shower time.” I force myself up the stairs two at a time, and I hop in the burning hot water. I’m hoping it will wash away everything that’s happened since I left Chloe. I want to start over again.
Chloe Smith… Her name floods my mind over and over again. Even after all this time, I still love her.
Once I’m out of the shower and I’m waiting for the washing machine to stop spinning, I take a look around Chloe’s home, noting everything that’s the same and all that’s changed as well. There are pictures dotted around the house from back in high school when I was in her life, but also from parts of her life that I don’t know as well. There are friends I don’t recognize, people I don’t know, people who know parts of Chloe that I don’t.
I’m jealous of every one of them. I could have been there.
“I shouldn’t have run away.” I’m falling for Chloe all over again. Not that I ever fell out of love with her, I know that now, but I can feel myself tumbling. “I shouldn’t have left.”
Just as I am about to switch the wash, the sound of my cell phone blasts and scares the shit out of me. This is the moment that I have been dreading, but I knew that it was coming.
“Fuck.” I tremble all over. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”
I grab it… well, sort of. I reach for it and nearly drop it, but luckily, it doesn’t fall. The moment that I see the name on my screen, I don’t know whether to jump for joy or scream like crazy.
“Hello? Dad?” My father. What the hell does he want? Ever since I left, things have been frosty between us, we don’t talk a lot which is my fault as much as theirs. So, this could be anything.
“Oh my God, Ted, you’re alive.” Those words chill me to the bone. I can already tell by the sound of his voice that he knows too much. “Thank God, you have no idea how worried I have been. The news… oh God, what happened? Stix and your uncle… both of them dead. Their friends as well. I thought it was going to be you…”
“Uncle?” My blood runs cold. I didn’t know that my uncle was dead too.
“What do you know, Ted?” he snaps. I can’t tell if he’s scared or angry. Or maybe relieved that I haven’t been killed as well. Probably a combination of all of it. “And where are you right now?”
“I got away, Dad.” I can’t give him more details than that. “I’m okay. I got out. I don’t really know what happened …”
“This is where a life of crime always leads people, Ted, that’s what I always tried to tell you.”
I don’t so much appreciate the life lecture, but I keep my lips shut, he’s right. I was just too stubborn to hear it.
“Your mom tried to get your uncle out of it a million times, but he wouldn’t listen. He refused. And then the same happened to you and Stix as well, falling down the rabbit hole. And now Stix is gone, and… well, we don’t know what’s going on. You can about imagine how your mother felt when she got the call, can’t you? It’s been awful.”
Guilt washes over me. My poor mother has already been put through so much.
“She is crying right now, convinced that she has lost you too. It’s a relief that I managed to find you…”
He continues on with his rant, but I drift off in my own thoughts, wondering what this means for me. I thought that it was just Stix who had been shot, but it seems like this ran deeper than just some stolen money. I couldn’t really hear everything in my hiding space anyway, but it has to be something bigger. Everyone that worked for my uncle is dead That can’t be a coincidence. There’s no way that they don’t know that I am affiliated. This means they really might come for me…They are going to want me dead too.
“Are you listening to me, Ted?” The harshness of my dad’s tone drags me back to the present. “I want to see you. Your mother does as well. You have to come here so we can take care of you. Keep you safe.”
Immediately I’m flooded with horror. This isn’t good. My parents are a link to me. Much as I would love nothing more than to hop on a plane to see them, I can’t put them in that position. I don’t even know who I’m up against here, never mind what they are capable of. I can’t bring them in to this.
“I don’t have the money,” I jump on the first excuse that I can think of. “I can’t afford a flight.”