Crushing (15 page)

I went upstairs to shower off all the sand and salt. I was so relieved that the weight of the truth was off my shoulders and Dom was okay that I felt like singing. I put my iPhone in the dock and cranked it. I was singing and dancing like a fool, but I didn’t care. The truth
shall
set you free, and I was happy. Maybe things would go back to the way they were. At least somewhat. Gage was mad, but the pressure of a decision and walking on eggshells around them both was off for now.

I had made a decision. If Gage and I started speaking again, I knew what I was going to say. I had a simple, no-nonsense way to handle these boys. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought about it before.

I was on my way back to my room in my tank top and boxers I had stolen from the new packs my mom had left for my brothers, when I heard the front door open. The alarm beeped. I figured one of my brothers had gotten home. I was about to call out to them, when the alarm started going off.

No.

My stomach hit my feet and I froze. I couldn’t hear anything except the blaring of the alarm. I knew my brothers had the new code, so it couldn’t be them. Was someone really in the house?

I wasn’t going to wait around to find out. I sprinted for my room, phone in hand. I could hear feet pounding up the stairs. I flung open my door and slammed it behind me. My whole body was shaking. Crap. Where do I go? I didn’t have a lock on my bedroom door. Our parents wouldn’t allow it. The balcony?

I got out onto the balcony, closed the doors behind me, and tried to think. What should I do? Dial 911? The alarm was already going off. Out of the house and into yard had to be better. I stuck my phone in my mouth and climbed over the edge of the balcony. I reached out for the drainpipe. At least I had had lots of practice lately. I was halfway down, when I heard the
snick
of the balcony doors opening.

I looked up and saw a guy in a sweatshirt with the hood pulled low leaning over the edge. It was dark, and I couldn’t see his face. My hands went numb, and I almost lost my grip on the drainpipe. I was sliding. I grabbed hold again, and when I looked up next he was gone. Was he going to grab me at the bottom? I pushed off with my hands and feet and hit the ground running. I got to the gate and pulled it open, terrified that any second I was going to feel a hand on my neck or in my hair.

I came through the back gate and hit something solid. Someone had me by the arms. I started screaming and thrashing.

“Let go. Let go!” They held on tighter.

“Rory, stop. What’s going on?” I looked up into the person’s face. It was Gage. I burst into tears. I couldn’t catch my breath. I needed to tell him.

“There’s someone . . . someone . . . in the house. The alarm. I ran, and I saw him on the balcony.” I was huffing and trying not to hyperventilate, but it was difficult. I felt something brush my leg and looked down. Bailee was pacing around us in circles, whining.

“Bailee, quiet,” Gage said. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” He was rubbing up and down my arms as if checking for injuries.

“No, I don’t think so. I came down the drainpipe, but I’m okay.” I could hear the sirens in the distance, and the alarm was still going off. The alarm company must have alerted 911 when I didn’t pick up the phone.

He looked down at me, rolled his eyes, and huffed. He stepped back and pulled his shirt off. “Here. Put this on.” He looked away while he held out his shirt. I looked down at what I was wearing and blanched. I forgot I was wearing one of Jackson’s tank tops with no bra. Crap. I grabbed his shirt and pulled it over my head, fast.

“Sorry.”

“Let’s go get my uncle.” He brought me around the front of the house. We were looking around to see if we saw anyone, but the street was empty. There were only a few houses on our block, and they were spread out pretty far to take advantage of the view. We crossed the street to his house quickly.

As soon as we got through the front door, Gage was calling for his uncle. Nathan came down the stairs in pajama pants, pulling a T-shirt over his head. Wow. Gorgeousness ran in this family. A rumpled-from-sleep Nathan Elliott was hot. It might have been the shock or the scare, but I was pretty sure it was the overdose of shirtless males in the room that left me speechless.

Nathan was running a hand through his hair. “Rory, are you okay? Gage, what’s going on? I heard the alarm.”

“Someone broke into her house. No one else is there. We have to go meet with police out front.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

It was a relief to have Gage’s uncle to deal with everything. He was very businesslike and efficient. Even in his pajamas he had a commanding presence. I could tell that Gage got a lot of his take-no-prisoners personality from this man.

The police questioned me about exactly what I had heard and seen. I hadn’t seen much. I only saw Hoodie Guy for a split second. The hood had been pulled so far down that his face had been totally in shadow. Even with the full moon there was not enough light to have gotten an idea of height or anything. There was no sign of forced entry. So had I or one of my brothers left a door unlocked? I could swear I locked the front door when Dom dropped me off. Had someone picked the lock? Could the guy that stole the cash at the school broken into my house?

They brought me my phone, which had fallen out of my mouth on the way down and broke. Great. No phone until my parents got back in a week. When we were still talking to the police, I saw Nathan’s friend Wilson was there. What was he doing here? Odd. I asked Gage.

“Oh yeah. He lives in the apartment over the garage.”

“Oh. Huh.” I still thought it was weird. I saw him lurking while the police were questioning us. He kind of gave me the creeps.

Jackson got home before the police left and spoke to them also. He assured the police and the security company that he would inform my parents, who had flown out this afternoon to the medical conference in Atlanta. I didn’t get to speak much to Gage. It felt very awkward anyway since we hadn’t even spoken all week. His uncle made sure I was all right, and they headed home once he told Jackson to call if we needed anything.

I didn’t know what I was going to do with the rest of my night, but it wasn’t going to be sleep. I was pretty shaken up. I figured I would stay up and watch movies. Jackson made a big show of locking up and setting the alarm. He talked to Jeremiah, who was “out” for the evening. He told him to stay where he was and not come home until morning so as not to scare me in the middle of the night. Even though technically it was already the middle of the night.

He had called my parents and given them a rundown of what had happened. He was light on the details. My dad was one of the big presenters at this conference, so Jackson played it down. I was glad. I didn’t want to be the reason my dad missed out on the opportunity. I knew it was important.

Jackson came into my room when everything had calmed down.

“You doin’ okay, Sassy?” He came and sat down on my bed, where I was wrapped up in the blankets flipping between MTV and TLC.

“Yup.” I tried to smile, but I didn’t think it was too believable.

“Want me to sleep on the floor in here?” He looked concerned. Jackson took his big-brother job very seriously. He was much less of a caveman than Jeremiah, but he was just as overprotective.

“No, it’s fine. I don’t think I’m going to sleep for a while. I’ll just watch TV.” I shrugged.

“I’ll stay with you for a bit.” He made himself comfortable. We watched a couple of reruns of those horrible teen reality shows. These shows were so awful, they always made me feel better about my life. After an hour or two I told Jackson that I was going to sleep and he should too.

“Shout if you need me.” He yawned and shuffled out.

The wind was blowing, and every little creak and crack in the house made me nervous. I turned up the volume on the TV hoping to block them out. I tried to focus on what I was watching, but I kept having visions of Hoodie Guy staring down at me from the balcony. He had been so still. It was freaky. He hadn’t moved—just stood there. Then when I had looked up again, he was gone.

What did he want? Why would he brave the alarm like that? Was he after something? Was he after me? And worse than that, was this all connected to Lindsay? All this was adding up quickly. One or two incidents I could ignore or pass off as coincidence, but now it was serious. These things kept tumbling around and around in my head. I didn’t want to fall asleep and wake up screaming. The nightmares had tapered off a bit, down to every other night, but I was pretty sure they were going to start again between scary guy in the SL room and this. My sleep cycle was definitely going to suffer. Again. It was no wonder I had been having trouble making good decisions. I hadn’t slept decently in a couple of weeks.

I turned off the TV and turned on my stereo. I decided just to close my eyes and pray. If nothing else, it would get my head in the right place.

#

I must have dozed for a bit. When I woke up, my room was just starting to get a little light. I must not have slept deep enough to have had a nightmare. I went to open my drapes and almost screamed. There was something on my balcony. Before I could let out a sound, I saw Bailee was curled up on top of a sleeping bag that contained Gage. I couldn’t see anything but his brown hair sticking out the top. What in the world was he doing?

I went out into the hall and disarmed the alarm system. I grabbed a blanket, wrapped it around myself, and opened the doors. Bailee was up in a flash wagging her tail and jumping all over me.

“Bailee, down. Off,” I whispered. I bent down to pet her, and she rolled over with a thump so I could rub her tummy. I complied of course. Who could resist that much cuteness? There was rustling coming from the sleeping bag. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gage’s head and arms pop out in a huge stretch. When I looked over, his eyes were barely open. He was squinting, looking around like he had no idea where he was. Ugh. Too much cuteness in such a small area.

“Hey,” he said, sounding gravelly. Why, even when I was mad at him, was he so appealing? Not fair at all.

“What are you doing up here?”

He sat up and shook his head a bit to wake up. “Uh, I thought I would just, you know…” He paused. “Actually, can we talk about this later? It takes time for my brain to turn on, and I need to take Bailee for a walk.”

Hmmm. “Coffee?”

He perked up a bit at that. “Yeah, okay. Want to go with us?”

“Sure, take her downstairs, and I’ll meet you in the yard in a minute with coffee.”

He started rolling up his sleeping bag, so I went inside to grab some clothes to change into. I had slept in his shirt. I hoped he hadn’t noticed.

As I headed off to the bathroom, I pointed him in the direction of the stairs and motioned for him to be quiet. Waking my brother up right now was not a good idea. I didn’t want to know what Jackson would do if he saw Gage coming out of my room at this hour. Even though Jackson wasn’t as volatile as Jeremiah, there were times when he acted first and asked questions later.

I changed into yoga pants and a hoodie quickly. I made two quick cups of coffee in the Keurig and put them in travel cups. I stuck my head out the back door and asked what he wanted in it and he just shook his head. I took that to mean I should leave it black, so that’s what he got.

When we headed through the gate toward the beach, Bailee was doing her usual routine of running back and forth and barking. Trying to hurry us along. It was barely light out, and she was so perky.

It was going to be a beautiful sunrise. There were some low clouds, and the crisp morning air made me wonder why I didn’t do this every day. Between last night’s surf in the moonlight and this morning’s sunrise and coffee, I was awed at God’s creation. I didn’t really want to spend this time thinking about what was wrong between Gage and me, what happened last night, or the fact that Lindsay had been missing for so long, so I just kept quiet, walked in the surf, and enjoyed the time. Gage and I kept a pretty big distance between us. It seemed appropriate. We walked sipping coffee and watching Bailee chase the birds.

“Coffee’s good,” he hummed into his cup.

I had to laugh. He was very grunty in the morning. As if stringing words together was such an effort. “Glad you like it.”

A few more minutes went by while we walked. I could tell he was getting ready to say something.

“So, I, um…sorry if I freaked you out this morning. I had planned on being gone before you got up. I actually had my alarm set for about fifteen minutes after you found me.”

“What were you doing?” I didn’t really understand what was going on here.

“I thought it might be a good idea to hang out on your balcony just in case. It sounds a little crazy, I know, but I tried to sleep at home, and I couldn’t, so we just camped out. Sorry.”

“How did you get Bailee up there?” I had been curious.

“Put her in my sweatshirt. She’s getting a little big for that kind of thing, but we made it okay.”

“Why would you go to all that trouble? You’re mad at me. You aren’t even technically speaking to me.” I was starting to get kind of annoyed. He blew so hot and cold, I didn’t get it.

He was obviously irritated by my question. “I was worried, okay? I know you want me to say it. I was worried about you.” He gave me a glare.

“I don’t want you to say anything you don’t want to, Gage. Nobody is making you do anything you don’t want to do.” I huffed and looked out at the ocean. He was infuriating. He was the one who had been on my balcony. You’d think I’d dragged him there.

We walked in silence for a minute, and then I spoke up. “I’m going back. I don’t want Jackson to worry that someone grabbed me while he was sleeping. I don’t have the energy for this anyway.” I turned and started back.

“Rory, wait.”

I looked back at him and waited.

“I’m sorry. I’m a crab in the morning, if you hadn’t caught on to that. I haven’t slept very well in a few days, so I’m sure that doesn’t help, but it’s no excuse. I’m sorry about the match. I was such a jerk. I . . .” He looked down at his feet and then back at me. “I was so mad that you were going out with him. I was being stupid. I’m sorry.”