AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So Dante had you pretend to draw your grandmother’s portrait…” Vaughn reminded me.
“Um, yes,” I stammered as I realized I’d been staring at where his finger was stroking mine. “So I made her sit at the kitchen table while I was drawing. Dante came in but someone kept coming into the room so he couldn’t take it… I had to keep distracting her. I, uh, don’t know the word...”
“You stalled,” Vaughn suggested.
“Right. I had to stall her. She was afraid her food would burn but I kept telling her I was almost done. Dante was taking the ring right when she said she was done sitting for her portrait. I screamed her name and then jumped in her lap and showed her the picture. It was… it was a terrible picture,” I said with a smile. “Even for being seven, I did a really bad job. It didn’t even look like a person… it looked more like a pig.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I remembered my grandmother’s expression when I’d shown her the picture.
“She finished cooking and when we all sat down to eat, Dante casually asked her when she’d stopped wearing her wedding ring. She looked at the food and let out this cry… Papa had already started eating so she slapped him on the back to get him to spit the food out and made him look through it for the ring. Then everybody had to look through what was on their plate.”
“How did Dante get the ring back to her?” Vaughn asked. His expression was soft and relaxed, which helped calm me even more.
“He left it in the soap dish by the kitchen sink. Beneath the soap. He let me ‘find’ it and our Vó was so happy she gave me an extra helping of dessert.”
“Did anyone ever find out?”
I laughed. “Our Vô… he was always good at being able to tell when me and Dante were up to something. When he asked us about it, I… what’s the expression… sang like a…?”
“Canary,” Vaughn said with a chuckle. “You sang like a canary.”
“I did,” I admitted.
“Did he turn you in?”
“No.” I began laughing so hard it was almost difficult to breathe. When I could finally speak, I said, “Turned out our Vô hated dobradinha too! He kept our secret and whenever our Vó said she was going to make dobradinha, either me or Dante or our Vô would ask her to make our favorite food instead and we’d give her the dog eyes.”
Vaughn’s laughter was a soft rumble in his chest that I itched to feel beneath my fingers.
“Puppy dog eyes,” he corrected.
I nodded. “It usually worked. I never had to have dobradinha again…”
I sobered when I realized the real reason I hadn’t had that terrible dish ever again… because I’d been abducted less than three months later.
The lead weight was back in my stomach.
“Hey,” Vaughn said, and then I felt his fingers under my chin again. “You’re safe, Aleks. Just take deep breaths and focus on my voice.” When I could breathe again, I realized Vaughn had stopped the car again, this time on the side of the road beneath an overpass.
I managed a nod. “Did… did you ever play tricks like that?” I asked.
“No… pranks didn’t go over real well in my house,” he hedged. “But my brother and I did once convince a gardener that the lawnmower was possessed.”
“What?” I asked with a laugh.
Vaughn shrugged and said, “I was always mechanically inclined. A few crossed wires and a few stories here and there about the previous gardener being horribly maimed by the thing were enough… power of suggestion and all.” He winked at me.
Actually winked.
My heart almost stopped.
And I couldn’t stop staring at him.
In case he did it again…
“Aleks,” Vaughn said softly, and I forced myself to focus on his entire face rather than one rogue eye.
“You have a brother?” I asked, hoping to stall.
“I do,” was all he said, then he was grazing my cheek with the backs of his fingers. “You don’t remember what happened back there, but you know what caused it, don’t you?”
I wasn’t sure what “it” was, but I did know what the cause was. I wanted to deny it, but I couldn’t make myself tell the lie. Even if it hadn’t been against the rules, I didn’t want to lie to him.
I may not have trusted him, but God help me, I didn’t want to lie to him… I couldn’t.
And just like with everything else when it came to Vaughn, that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Chapter 7
Vaughn
I was relieved when he started talking, because I hadn’t expected him to. I was still tense about the blackout he’d had while right in front of me. It’d been almost identical to the one he’d had the day before when I’d tried to remove the zip-ties from his hands.
