Uncharted (Unexpected Book 3) (11 page)

I slam my hands against my temples. Fury rushes through my body. I forgot to ask for her address. A quick fix. I can call her and get the rest of her information. Pria Walker won’t escape me. My gut tells me she’s important to me; my heart too. I search for my soul but I can’t find it. I think she took it with her.

Everything will work out. I talk myself out of the anguish that not asking for all her information is currently creating inside my heart.

“I think I love you, my Twinkle,”
I whispered before our last kiss.

“Me too.”
Her words came out with a choked agony, only seconds before she stepped on the bus.
“I’m going to miss you, Jace.”

“What now?” I pick up the phone as Matthew calls me.

“Who do we call if we get into a car accident?”

“What? Are you okay?” Worry and panic washes through me. “Matthew?”

“I’m fine; the car isn’t though.” His breathing is uneven. “An old guy ran a red light and hit the truck on the right side. I slammed on the brakes, but the guy behind me didn’t react in time and he hit the back. They’re trying to blame me.”

Going through the instructions our parents gave us when they sent us here, I remember who to call—Mason Bradley. He’s our friend who knows a lot of people in town.

“Text me the intersection where you are, Matthew. I’m taking a cab and calling Bradley.”

He doesn’t respond, but the address pops up almost immediately.

JCDecker: Bradley, I’m texting you the whereabouts of MJ. Some old man crashed against the truck. I’m on my way.

Bradley: You’re lucky I’m in town, and so are your parents. I know cuz my father texted me earlier to announce his presence.

JCDecker: I’ll text my fathers as soon as I reach Matthew then.

Bradley: See you there.

I hail a cab and he rushes through the streets. Matthew isn’t too far from the record company. There are five cars parked on the side of the road, all smashed on the side, the front or, in our case, all around.

“I hope you don’t expect us to replace the car.” I look over my shoulder to find my father. He’s wearing a T-shirt and a pair of dark jeans. “Where were you?”

“At home.” I don’t lie, only hide the truth. “He had an errand to run or something. I’m not his keeper.”

He takes another glance at the car and smiles. The passenger door is crumpled all the way in. If either one of us had been there, we would’ve been severely injured.

“I’m thankful for that, Jacob.” He pats my right bicep and I flinch.

Chris pulls my sleeve up and shakes his head. “And it starts. Remember, don’t ink because it’s cool, ink because it means something, and in the future you won’t regret it.”

Those are the words I told Pria. I recounted how Chris, even in his worst moments, never inked stupidities. Every tattoo he has means something important; a milestone, an anniversary, his children, his husband, some lyrics he wrote for Dad. Against the rules, I told her about Chris and Gabe—my two fathers—and how we lived for years inside a huge property away from civilization; that we have to call them by name when we’re in public. At home, Gabe is Dad and Chris is Papi.

“Hmm, you’re wearing a stupid face. What happened?” Chris questions and I smirk, not wanting to give away any details about my blissful week. “Did you use protection, boy?”

I roll my eyes. How does he know and why does he have to ask about protection?

“Yes, Father,” I say through my grinding teeth.

“Jacob, don’t you dare give me an attitude. Condoms are a serious business.” The sermon begins.
Please, someone help me here.
I scan the area. Arthur and Mason Bradley are with Matthew, talking with one of the cops on the scene. “If I hadn’t used any back in the day, I would’ve fathered a bunch of children or died from some disease. Both a tragedy—the first because I wasn’t responsible.”

“I promise to always use condoms, Chris. Can we change the subject now?”

“Yes we can,” he growls. “Our presence isn’t a coincidence. You skipped an entire week of school. Gabriel is fuming. Wait until things settle down with Mattie and you’re going to be begging for one of my lectures.”

Fuck, I forgot these two act like they don’t give a shit, but man, they are overbearing parents. Saved by Arthur Bradley, Chris’s attention turns toward the accident. Matthew isn’t injured, and all of the other drivers are taking responsibility for the accident, but the car might be totaled.

“I’ll drive them home while you take care of the rest, Arthur.” Dad and I march toward Matthew. “Gabe and I’ll figure out the future of their transportation. Maybe public transport until they can afford their own set of wheels. Gabe’s already at their apartment.”

I continue my way toward MJ, salute him, and let my father gush over his baby. Once Chris makes sure my brother isn’t injured, we hop in the car and head to the house.

Matthew isn’t himself. I can sense the stress, worry, and fear swirling inside him.

AJ: Everything okay?

JC: Yeah, why?

AJ: My stomach is queasy, what happened?

JC: MJ was in a car accident, he’s fine, but I think he’s scared. He’s not talking.

AJ: That’s not a good sign. Call the parents.

JC: They’re here. Gabe’s at the apartment waiting for us.

AJ: Gabe’s not with his new fake girlfriend? Shocks!

JC: AJ, don’t start. There’s a new girl?

AJ: Yep, I hate them right now. Try not to mention me because I’m dodging our fathers’ calls. Tell MJ that I love him. I love you too.

JC: Love you!

Chris parks the car in front of the building and we all go down. When we enter the apartment, Gabe scans Matthew from head to toe twice and hugs him tight.

“I’m going to bed.” He lowers his head and walks with the biggest hunchback I’ve ever seen on him.

“Hey, Dad.” I hug Gabe quickly and follow Matthew. “Dude, what happened?”

“They were calling me a junkie and trying to blame me for the accident because of how I look.” He lets himself fall on the bed and covers his eyes with his arm. “If Bradley Senior hadn’t been there, I’d be in jail. I swear. It’s college. I’m having fun, and yet, it sucks. It’s not just them; it’s also the teachers, and it sucks.”

My brother’s sensitivity isn’t known to many, and his “I don’t give a fuck” look deceives most, except his family.

“Dude, they can go fuck themselves.” I kiss the top of his head. “You have fun and if they don’t like it, it’s not our problem. Our parents understand. You want me to stay with you?”

“No, but don’t go far. I wish my Ainsy was around.”

I hand him my phone and after he’s done reading it he smiles and hands it back.

“You think she’ll come back to us?”

I shrug because I have no fucking idea what’s in her mind. Neither one of us can tell her what to do; only support her and hope she’ll call when she needs us.

“Night, bro.” I close the blinds in his room and head to check on my parents.

“Totaled?”

“Yes, and they’re trying to blame him. Arthur threatened to sue them and shit.” Chris talks to Gabe. “I think we should drag the three of them back home. Our baby-girl is too far away and these two aren’t close enough.”

Gabe laughs and I notice both are holding plastic bags and cleaning the place. They’ll never change. Well, Chris won’t— he’s a neat freak.

“Papi, we can clean.”

“You can?” Chris shows me the plastic bag. “This is the fourth bag. You live in a fucking pigsty. If you can, then I suggest you do it.”

Parents. Love to hate them. Gabe and Chris head outside the apartment, each holding bags and boxes. Instead of worrying about Chris’s house-cleaning habits, I start searching for Pria’s phone number. I remember putting the scrap of paper on top of the hockey table; or was it the piano? Nope, the counter top of the kitchen. Maybe I put it inside the drawers? Everywhere I look, there’s nothing. The fucking house is free of debris. Not one piece of paper in sight.

“Everything okay, son?” Gabe enters the house and gives me a
you look lost
glance.

Yes, I am lost. My heart stops. Cold shivers run through my back.

“There was a piece of paper with a number,” I explain while my hands mimic the rectangle-shape paper I’m searching for. “More like a scrap of paper that had a number and a name, ‘Pria.’ Where is it?”

Twinkle is being ripped from under my skin. An ill sensation burns my entire body. I stand still next to the piano, the music I played for the past week replaying while my mind tries to recall the digits she wrote down for me. Or perhaps the place where I put it. Otherwise, I will have no idea how to find her. I punch the wall several times. My fucking phone ran out of battery. Saving it on there would’ve been better. Why didn’t I get her to text me her number? Or save my number on her phone?

“Why do you have to clean my house?” I grimace as my bark releases an aggressive tone I immediately regret. My fathers don’t deserve my rage.

“This is our place, Jacob. You are borrowing it.” Gabe takes his fucking pose as master of the house and raises his voice. “My house, my rules. You clean the place and you go to school. My sailboat isn’t for you to borrow without permission. This isn’t home. You can get into an accident. Grow up. One more absence and we push back your next record for as long as we want.”

“I know everyone.” Chris gives me his typical shrug. He has to side with the husband. “Believe me, not one soul is going to help you if I say something. There are rules and no one breaks them.”

“Porter did.” I bring out my ammunition.

“We love Porter, but he’s not our child. There’s only so much we could demand from him. The moment he became an adult and left the house, he stopped being our responsibility. If you want me to treat you like an adult, behave like one.”

“Yeah? What if I leave?”

“You’re still ours. Babe, what’s going on?” Chris asks, giving me that soft fatherly look and taking his anger down a few notches. “You want to move closer to home? School isn’t what you want? Clue us in here. You’re usually the responsible one out of the three, when you’re away from home, and now… Child, I protected you for eighteen years, and now that you’re on your own, you’re making wrong choices.”

There’s a knock on the door and Chris opens it. The Bradleys enter the room. Arthur explains that they towed the truck to the shop; the insurance company wanted an estimate before declaring it totaled. Mason watches them and I head to my room—the other place where maybe I left the piece of paper. My heart holds out hope, but as I enter, I find my bed made with clean sheets and not one piece of trash anywhere. Not one trace of her scent. I have lost all trace of her.

“You okay?” Mason is one of my closest friends. We know each other’s shit and try to give a hand to one another, like when he needed money to buy his computer equipment because his stepfather broke it. “Something I can do?”

“Can you find
anyone
?”

“Most people, yes,” he responds, sliding his finger on the screen of his phone. “Who?”

“Pria Walker.” I scratch my head. “She lives in Redmond.”

“An unusual name.” He states the obvious. “Any date of birth or other information you can give me?”

“That’s her nickname, and no.”

“Dude, you’re not going to find anyone with such little information. I can try but there’s no promise. You might as well head to Redmond and start knocking on random doors.”

Shit.
Shit, my Twinkle.
How could I have lost her phone? What the fuck am I going to do?

The motorcycle skids; I lose control of it, and I’m speeding toward the black truck that’s spinning toward me. The bright lights flash at me and then everything goes black.

Beep-beep-beep.

I fight the lead that is weighing my eyelids down, but it’s useless. My arms feel like they’re covered in concrete, the stench that assaults my nose is unfamiliar, and that beeping noise won’t stop.

“I think he moved a finger.” That’s AJ’s voice. “Jacky, wake up!”

“Babe, wake up, we need you here.” That’s Matthew. “What if we tickle him?”

My eyes open—I hate when they tickle me. They both laugh. AJ taps the wall. My eyes can’t follow all the way to where her hand is and as I try to ask, I notice the tubes in my throat.

“You had me worried sick, Jacob Christian.” She sniffs and hugs me tight.

“I told you not to take the bike. It was raining and dark.” Matthew uses his gruff voice.

I scan the room. My parents aren’t here and I’m wearing a funny-looking dress. My right arm has a cast and my legs are covered in plaster too.
Fuck!
They’re going to kill me. It’s been two weeks since Pria left my house and I thought that going to Redmond would… Stupid idiot. That’s what I am. Blinded by my feelings, I took Chris’s bike and headed to a place I’ve never been before in the middle of a stormy night.

I’ve no clue about what my parents are going to do now. They threatened me after they found out I took their sailboat without permission. It was about safety. This proves them right. I took something that I had no fucking idea how to drive and now my body is battered. My eyes go back to AJ. Why is she here? I frown as I stare at Matthew. Even if I can’t speak, one of them has to have an answer for me.

“It’s been three days since the accident.” My brother sits down on the edge of the bed. “AJ jumped on a plane the moment I called her.”

“You’re going to be okay.” AJ takes my right hand. “I’m already asking my counselor about deferring the semester. You come first. Always.”

I close my eyes briefly and think about Pria. My sister makes sense of what I couldn’t understand before. You take care of your family—that’s why she agreed to go back home and care for her ill sister.

“You broke a couple of bones.” Matthew touches my cast. “They didn’t have to do any major surgery, but they believe you’ll have to have some physical therapy to recover your strength. You’ll be immobile for the next eight weeks, and in PT another eight to twelve weeks. So, thank you—we’re going back home. Online classes and we’re graduating from home.”

My brother starts doing a silly happy dance. AJ tries to join in, but she can’t fake a damn thing. There’s something wrong. It’s as if the broken bones only touch the surface. They both stop when a couple of nurses arrive with a tray.

“The doctor will be here soon.” The blonde middle-aged woman scrunches her nose as her green eyes scrutinize me. “I’m going to take the tube out of your mouth. Don’t try to speak right away and drink sips of water to rehydrate your throat.”

The nurses pull the plastic from my mouth, one of them hands a Styrofoam cup to my sister, and leave the room without giving me a second glance.

I lift my left arm and look at the bracelet. J. Bradley. AJ gives me a tight smile and her eyes divert toward the door. My blood freezes thinking that our parents are going to walk in and start lecturing me.

“They’re at the apartment.” She climbs on the bed. “You’re Jaden Bradley. Neither one will come, but I’m here. You won’t be alone inside this room.”

“What am I, a piece of meat?” Matthew protests, but both laugh. “AJ, we were kids when you were in a similar situation, but believe me when I say that we begged them to take us to see you.”

“Hey, I’m okay. Right now is all about our friend Jaden here.” She smirks and looks at Matthew. “What’s your fake name?”

“Gideon Bradley.” I choke as I try to laugh at that name. Too strong for a softy like Matthew. “Yo, you can call me the
G
.”

“Mr. Bradley, I see you’re feeling better.” A man wearing the typical white labcoat enters. Arthur Bradley is behind him. Tall, with that broad frame, buzz cut and dark grey eyes that make him one of the scariest people I’ve ever known. “Celebrating your actions. A more remorseful posture is what I expect. Your actions killed two people.”

My breathing stops with those words.
He must be mistaken.
Killed people? Matthew’s face turns white. AJ’s turns red. This can’t be happening. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.

“Shut up!” AJ screams at him as my heart explodes and I begin to tremble.

“Sir, I’m going to ask you to leave the room.” Arthur uses that stern voice. I can’t hear the rest because the monitors start going out of whack. My entire body is shuddering and nothing is making sense inside my head. I killed two people. “Now.”

The same nurses arrive and the blonde—G. Walker, I read on her badge—has a syringe in hand. She pinches some valve next to the drip bag, pushes it, and then leaves without giving me a second glance.

“It was an accident, Jacky.” AJ rushes to my side. “We’re going to get through this, I swear. We will, baby brother.”

“Jacob, stay strong dude. We’re here for you.” Matthew’s words are the last I hear before my heavy eyes shut once again.

PRIA

“Staring at it won’t make him call, Pree.” I look up at my sister, who isn’t tucked inside the bed, sleeping. “Sorry, shit happens.”

I stare at the stars wishing for him to call. As of now I haven’t received any calls from Jacob. I have no idea what happened to him. He promised to call, but hadn’t in the past three weeks. Last Monday I woke up from a bad dream, his voice calling my name. For a moment I worried, but it was just my imagination playing games.

“
We’ll figure out a way to keep seeing each other,”
he had said.
“We’ll at least call each other often.”
I wrote down my number for him and he lied.

“You’ll always have Paris, Pria.” Maeve’s words are meaningless.

I fidget with the guitar pick he gave me while thinking Paris was utopia, and in fact, never happened. Paris is now light-years away. His musky smell has disappeared from the sweatshirt I smuggled inside my house and haven’t washed. My mind continues rehashing those nights we shared. His voice plays different melodies inside my head over and over again. Maybe he was right—our souls attached to each other, mating in another dimension no one, not even we, could see.

Love doesn’t happen so fast
, I repeat. My hollow words don’t convince my heart or the empty soul that misses Jacob’s heartbeat.

“Have you ever been in love, Mae?” I close my eyes listening to the night, hoping to catch the strum of his guitar. “Do you believe love can happen to you this fast?”

“Once, in college, before Mom decided I should study online.” Mae’s silent voice makes me open my eyes and watch her eyes shed a few tears. “Best months of my life. I…it didn’t work out. He didn’t love me. Relationships are messy as it is, and with me… it’s a hassle. Hugs, kisses—you know the rules. Affection carries germs. If anything, Satan might drag me down with him if I defy Mom.”

We hug each other, our eyes overflowing with emotion, either for what we have lost or what we lack because of so many rules. Mae’s right. Living like this sometimes feels as though it isn’t even worth living. We hug in silence for a long time, letting each other release the sorrow we carry within our souls.

“Hell isn’t waiting for us as Mom says, Pria. Hell is right here, in Redmond.” Maeve sniffs. “Did you hear that Mr. Preston and his son died last week?” I shake my head. “A tragic accident. I wanted to tell Mom that life can end for anyone, but I can’t fight her anymore. Promise you won’t do this again—let her manipulate you with my health. Swear the next time, you’ll defy her and continue living your life.”

“I’ll try, Mae.” My new goal is to balance my mother’s desires with mine.

A hell of a challenge, but this is the last time I let my mother take something away from me. My freedom is to choose where to live, what to do, and maybe who to do it with too. At the end of the day, my sister’s health will always come first for my mom.