AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Four
Ace
I’m nervous about seeing Raven again. The guys are a mess. I guess in our own individual ways, we all are. I don’t know who to be most concerned about. I’m not buying Jax’s indifference or Thorn’s anger. Rebel’s desperation I can relate to though. The secrets that I’ve been keeping have been driving me crazy. I may have watched her walk away, but I never truly let her go.
I’ve spent so long wondering where she went, how she is, what she’s doing now…I think about that final meeting at the airport all the time. Did she have the baby? Was it a boy or a girl? What would they be like now? Was Baxter really the father and she just denied it to stop me from killing him?
Thinking of that, of course, brings on the worry. I’m worried about what will happen when the truth comes to light. Which it inevitably will; it always does. What will happen when my brothers find out that I not only kept things from them, but that I lied about finding her at the airport that day in October four years ago? I know that they’ll feel the sting of my betrayal as sharply as I felt the loss of her leaving.
I need to get out of my head. It’s day two on campus and we’ve not seen much of her so far. Glances here and there. Flashes of that long dark blue-black hair. I swear I thought I heard her laugh yesterday, but it might just be shadows of the past haunting me. It’s like she appears and disappears at will; vanishing without a trace.
Rebel assures us that we’ll see her on campus today; he plans to stake out her Literature class. He wants to follow her afterwards to discover where she lives. So far all our on-campus digging hasn’t been fruitful. No one seems to have considered the possibility that she might not be living on campus, but I don’t know how to go about suggesting this, so I keep quiet.
We all traipse across campus after Rebel as he leads us to the Literature building. I’m surprised, because I always thought Raven was on track to becoming the doctor that her family wanted her to be, but I guess a lot can happen - can change - in four years. Besides, she always had a passion for Literature anyway, so I’m glad she’s following her dream.
Rebel points to the room she’s supposed to be in, and one by one we take turns peering through the small glass window in the door to try and catch a definitive look at her. I patiently wait my turn while my nerves jiggle and bounce. The guys grumble about not being able to see her clearly, Thorn moans that we should just confront her directly. I’m not sure if he means when she comes out of class, or storming in there and causing a scene. Either way, Rebel calms him down. Now I know the world has gone crazy, and she must really be real, if Rebel is the voice of reason.
When it’s finally my turn to look, I approach the window slowly. I’m eager to finally see her of course, but I’m nervous too. Trepidation, cold and sickly, slithers down my back as I peer through the small square glass and wait with bated breath to see if it’s really her…
It is.
Of course it is.
My shoulders sag with relief as hope, triumph, excitement somersaults through my veins. My heart leaps and races, and I can’t help the smile that stretches across my face.
“Oh man, did she turn around?” I hear Thorn ask. To me it sounds like he’s far away, in a tunnel or underwater, and I’m only half aware of his presence. No, I’m captivated by Raven. She’s looked up from her notebook and is laughing at something the professor has just said. She’s beautiful. Exactly how I remember her. Better in fact.
I’m quickly shouldered out of the way by Thorn. “Kreten,” I grumble at him under my breath as I begrudgingly move away. He pays me no mind though. “Kurac,” it makes me feel better at least.
And then we wait. The guys take it in turns to stare at her through the window, each demanding their turn and keeping time on the others. Yeah, I’m not buying Thorn and Jax’s attitude at all. They’ve got it as bad as the rest of us.
Luckily, Rebel warns us before the bell goes, so we’re able to move further down the corridor, deeper into the building and away from the door. It prevents the risk of being seen, as the students file out. Somewhere during the waiting game, it was agreed that we wouldn’t ambush her, we’d simply follow at a distance to see where she keeps vanishing to.
I thought following Raven would be hard because she’d rush off-campus, jump into her car and go tearing off. I figured it would be difficult to keep up. But that’s not the case at all. No, it’s a challenge to follow her because she doesn’t jump in a car, and four tall, large guys trying to be quiet and inconspicuous is suspicious, at best.
Luckily, Jax is pretty good at following people, so he takes the lead and we follow him. At one point Thorn whines loudly about how far we’re having to walk and I worry that she might hear him, but a swift punch in the gut from Rebel has him keeping quiet. Ish.
He has a point though. We walk a long-ass way. Well over a mile - maybe even two - and as we go we see the less shiny, touristy parts of Edinburgh. I don’t mean to be rude, but some parts look…rough. Downright dangerous in fact.
“Ne maram tega,” I mutter under my breath. I don’t like this at all.
We’ve followed Raven to a small block of flats in a seedy, run-down part of town. They’ve definitely seen better days. The building needs tearing down before it falls down. I wonder why she’s come here? Visiting someone perhaps?
We watch from across the street as she approaches the small cluster of ground floor doors, stops to remove a key from her bag, and then lets herself into the first door on the left. Not visiting then; not if she has a key to let herself in. I frown. I can’t figure this out. Surely she should be living on campus? Or at the very least, close to campus. And why would she be in a grotty little flat in a dingy part of town? She wasn’t a stranger to money at school.
I glance at my brothers and see the same confusion etched on their faces.
“Well?” I ask.
“Weird,” Rebel mutters. “Really weird.”
“It’s strange alright.” Thorn adds. “This place is a dump.” He’s not wrong there.
“What do we do now?” I look to Jax for answers. It’s probably stupid how I still view him as the leader of our group, but he’s had my back since day one and it’s easy to defer to him when it comes to decision making. “Shall we knock?” I add.
“No,” Jax replies, thinking. He pauses for a moment before continuing. “If we knock now, she’ll know we followed her.”
“What should we do then?” Thorn asks.
