Misguided Truths: Part Two (Misjudged #4) (22 page)

Slamming myself against the seat, I struggle to catch my breaths
, and the tears immediately start to fall, “Are you okay?” I vaguely hear Rach, and feel her rest her hand on top of mine.

“Drive.” I say flatly,
keeping my eyes on the road ahead. I daren’t turn back around, or look through the side view mirrors. She’s gonna hate me. She’s always gonna look back on this day and remember that I was the first guy that ever broke her heart. Mine? Mine stopped beating as soon as I knew I had to leave her behind.

“You need to eat,” I hear Rach say, and watch her as she places a bowlful of something down in front of me. I have absolutely no idea what it is, but the smell alone is making me wanna hurl again.

“I’m not hungry,” I tell her while checking my watch for what must be the twentieth time in the past …
oh, apparently five minutes.

She lets out a sigh
before slumping down in the seat opposite to mine, “You’ve been saying that every time I’ve asked you.”

“And my answer isn’t gonna be any different to any of those other times.”

“You’re going to make yourself sick if you carry on like this,” she sits forward, and I see the worry etching over her features. “Did you manage to get any sleep last night?”

“Not a wink,” I say when I stand
, and start pacing the length of the room while balling my fists by my sides. “Why is it taking him so long?”

“Maybe she decided not to go there today,” Rach sure as hell knows how to make me feel a whole lot worse. “Or, she could have joined a night class or something.”

Ring! Ring!

I snatch my cell
phone from the arm of the couch, and see his name flashing on the screen.
Finally.
I immediately place the phone to my ear, “You see her?”

“Yeah, I see her.”

“Is she on her own? Have you checked to make sure there’s nobody else around? Zach, you’ve gotta make sure there’s no one there before you go anywhere near—” he cuts me off before I get a chance to stress how important it is for him to be vigilant before he approaches her.

“Relax. I’ve checked. Listen, I’m going over there now. Do you still want me to leave m
y cell on so you can hear us?” He’s speaking quieter now, so he must be pretty close to her.
It should be me there with her, not him.

“Yeah, yeah. I need to hear her. I need to make sure she’s okay and—”

“Brandon, you need to calm the fuck down!”

Though I know he can’t see me, I nod and take a deep breath while covering my free ear with my index finger. As I walk over to stand on the wooden decking outside
, the line goes a little muffled, and I’m guessing that he’s already placed his cell inside his pocket.

“Beautiful,”
Nice work.
Yeah, just like we planned. She’s gotta figure out that I’m still around with him calling her that.
Smart move, Zach, Smart move
. There’s a pause before I hear anything else. “You don’t think it is?”

“I’m sorry … what?”
There’s my girl
. My throat tightens when I hear her voice. It’s been seven days since I last heard her speak. Since I … since I unwillingly broke her fucking heart. A burning in my lower stomach travels up to my chest, and I have to close my eyes because of the excruciating pain I’m now feeling.

Do you know how infuriating it is to know that you’re only a few miles away from the only person you wanna be with, knowing that it’s impossible to go to them? Well, if you don’t then I can tell you. It hurts. It’s frustrating
, and it’s making me feel helpless. I should be there with her, not stuck out here.

They’re watching her; they’re watching me. On
e false move is all it’ll take for them to do what they threatened, and I swear to God, there is no way they’re gonna put me through it. Not again. I already lost Holly. There’s no way in hell I’m gonna let them take Alexis away from me, too.
Come on. Get her talking.

“Beautiful. Here. The View … I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Harry.” Harry? Okay, that works. He could be a Harry.
Come on, beautiful. Talk to him. He’s helping us.

I start tapping my fingers against my cell whil
e I wait for one of them to speak again, “You dropped this.” He’s speaking louder now and I hear footsteps.
Shit.
She’s leaving.

Take it. Take the goddamn note!

“Alex are you okay?”

“Neil …”
Shit!
He is
not
supposed to be there. Once. One time he’s been there to meet her. Once out of the last five. Why now? “I was just head—”

Dammit.
If he recognizes— “Hey. Don’t I know you?”
And there it is.

“No, I don’t think so.”
Keep it up, Zach.

“Are you sure? You look really familiar.”
Fuck.

“I’m pretty sure … I’m Harry,”

“My mistake.”
Thank fuck.
“Let’s get back.”
Not yet!

“It was nice meeting you. Alexis,” Yes.
Good
. She’s gotta figure it out. I’m the only one who calls her those two things. This has gotta make her realize that I never actually left. “I’ll see you around.”

When I hear a clicking sound
, I hold my cell up in front of me before bringing it back to my ear, “Zach? Zach? No. No. Zach! Hey! Zach can you hear me?” I growl with frustration, and slam my cell down on the wooden table. “Son of a bi—”

“What’s wrong?” I glance over my shoulder
when I hear Rachael approaching me. “Is everything okay?”

I shake my head and run a hand through my hair, “Neil showed up before he had a chance to speak with her
, and now the lines gone dead. I don’t even know if he managed to pass her my note.” Breathing a heavy sigh, I step forward, and rest my hands on the black railing that’s surrounding the whole of the cabin.

“If Neil arrived then surely that’s a good thing, isn’t it? He’s one of your best friends
, and I’m sure that he’ll be relieved to know that—”

“The last thing I wanna do is get anyone else mixed up in this mess. It’s bad enough to have Alexis involved, but after all the help Neil an
d Rye have already given me since I arrived in Seattle, there’s no way I can put them at risk as well. No fucking way.”

I look out over the lake that’s just a little further down from the cabin when Rach heads back inside to answer the landline. My problem? It’s the wrong fucking lake. I wanna be back at ours. Mine and Alexis’. Not here.

I’ve been staying just outside of Seattle since Monday. It’s Rach and Holly’s mom and dad’s cabin. Once I’d explained to them about what I found in my dorm that day, they told me that I should stay here until things calm down. When Rach came to get me on Sunday, she drove us both back to Olympia, and I stayed at her place overnight. During that time, we decided that me being back there wasn’t a particularly great idea. To them, Olympia wouldn’t be further enough away. I knew this. I mean, I thought me being in Seattle was a good enough distance, but, well, just recently they proved me wrong.

Rach moved out of her paren
t’s home roughly six months ago, and I don’t think I can tell you how thankful I am about this now. I wouldn’t have been able to step back into her old place, not with all the memories of Holly surrounding it.

Yeah, so I’ve moved on, but I’ll never forget her. I refuse to, and that’s what’s so great about Alexis. She understands that I both can’t and won’t, and she would never have it any other way. That girl, the same one that was kneeling on the sidewalk with tears spilling out of her eyes when I did the worst thing I’ve ever had to do in my entire life, well, she’s something else. She’s special.
Really fucking special.

“He’s just pulling up out the front,” Rach covers the mouthpiece on the phone with her hand while peering around the patio doors.

“Thanks,” I whisper, and slide my hands in the pockets of my pants before heading toward the front of the cabin.

The guy that’s been watching over Alexis for me while I’ve been out of town is my cousin, Zach. He’s the same age as Rach, and even though he’s only a couple of years older than I am, he thinks he knows a lot more about the world than I do. Honestly, though? He doesn’t. We just let him think that he does.

He lives out of state, but as soon as I called and told him that I needed him to come and help me out, he was here within a couple of hours. You remember me telling you about my aunt and uncle who live in Florida? Well, that’s their son. We haven’t seen each other since we were sixteen, when he came to visit us for the summer in Olympia. That’s why I was worried Neil would recognize him. Neil, Rye, myself, and Zach all spent most of our time down by the river and just generally hanging out together.

Zach’s just climbing out of the driver’s side of Rach’s SUV when I make it out onto the porch, “What the hell happened?” I call over, and take the steps two at a time as I head
toward him. “Did she take my note?”

When he shakes his head, it takes all of my willpower not to punch him hard in the face, “One thing! I asked you to do one fucking thi—”

“I tried! If you’d have told me what a timid little thing she is then I might’ve tried a different approach.”

“Timid?” I’m not in the greatest of moods, I think that’s pretty evident,
but I let out a small chuckle when he describes Alexis as timid. “Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not kidding. As soon as I went over to her she couldn’t get away from me fast enough. Which, if you think about it, that’s a good thing. At least you know that—”

“What do I know? What? I know nothing because you didn’t make her talk to you!”

“Stop being such a melodramatic woman for Christ’s sake! Brandon? Where the hell are your balls these days?” Melodramatic? My balls? He’ll know where my fucking balls are if he ever says shit like that to me again.

He walks by me, and I follow him up the steps as he heads inside and through to the kitchen, “We’ll just have to try a different approach.”

“Yeah, I guess we will,”
I shake my head, and go to take a seat on one of the dining chairs opposite to the counter.

Once he’s poured himself an orange juice
, he comes over and sits in the seat beside me. “She’s a pretty little thing.”

“You keep calling her a little thing. She’s not little, and she’s not a thing.” Alright, I know he’s only trying to make me feel better, but it’s not gonna work. Pretty? That’s a fucking understatement. There are no words to describe how amazingly beautiful Alexis is. Both on the inside and out.

I throw him a look when he digs me in the ribs, “She’s not very tall though.” He winks, and a smirk crosses over his mouth.

“Sure she is. S
he’s just not as tall as your freakish six feet seven.” Digging him back, I rest my elbows on the table and my head in my hands, focusing my gaze on the ground.

“Are you calling me a freak?” Yeah. He hates that word.

“You said that my girlfriend is little and timid.”

“Who’s timid?” I glance up when I hear Rach walking into the room, and see the puzzled expression crossing over her features. Yeah. She’ll disagree with him just the way I am. She was there the night she called me after I had that run in with Matt at the bar. She heard Alexis scowling down the phone from the other side of the room.
Damn, I miss her.

“His little girlfriend.”
If he calls her little one more fucking time …

“Are you serious? I never thought of her as being timid, not in all the times Brandon talked about her. I always pictured her as being
a little feisty maybe. She sounds as though she could certainly hold her own.”

“Okay then, she’s a feisty little thing!”

The chair I was sitting on scrapes across the tile flooring when I go to stand, “I need some air.” I tell them, and grab my jacket from the closet in the hallway before making my way toward the back door.

Halfway down the hallway
, I slow my pace when I hear the two of them whispering, “Did you have to wind him up? He’s having a really rough time and you were sitting there making juvenile comments.” Oh yeah, she’s mad. She’s not whispering, she’s practically hissing at him.
Go, Rach, Kick his freakish ass!

“Well, it worked didn’t it?” I stop walking and lean closer to the door when I hear Zach answer her.

“What are you talking about?”

“Rach, you know him as well as I do, if not more so these days. The next thing he would have asked was how she was. How she looked. How she seemed. The truth is … I didn’t have the fucking balls to tell him.”

“And, how is she? Honestly?”

“Honestly? She looked devastated. Completely heartbroken
, and like her whole world had been crushed. I just don’t think he needs to hear it. She was pale. Her eyes were all bloodshot, and her face was drawn. I think it would’ve actually killed him if he were to see what I saw earlier. She’s hurting just as much, if not more than he is.”

I try and swallow past the huge lump in my throat, and then blink a couple of times because my vision has just turned a little blurry. Hearing him admit this
is making everything ten times fucking harder to deal with.

Taking a d
eep breath, I make my way past the open doorway, just as Rach is walking through, “Brandon. We didn’t realize you were standing there … Talk to me, please?”

I shake my head
, and attempt to smile while walking right by her. I feel her place her hand on my arm, but I shrug her away, and don’t turn back around.