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"Briar had a good point today. She asked me why don't I just say no to him, and I didn’t have a good answer as to why not, so that's exactly what I'm going to do," he responds, and I raise my eyebrows in surprise.
"You're going to just tell your dad no? But what about—"
He shakes his head, cutting off the rest of my question.
"The rest of it doesn't matter. If he wants to cut me off, he can. I have enough things lined up for myself that being cut off from him isn't exactly going to be a problem. And somehow, I don't see him doing that, considering how much he adores his public image. But if he does, that's a bridge to cross when we get there. Right now, I'm just going to tell him no, because I never have and I'm not sure he's expecting it."
"Well, shit," I say, shocked. He really has never said no to his dad, and the fireworks that are going to come are going to be insane, but I'm glad he's finally stepping up and standing up for himself. Even if it took Briar pointing it out for him to get there.
"It will work out in the end," I say to him, smiling again. "It has to, right?"
* * *
I stand in the kitchen, making breakfast while the others are all getting ready, when Briar bounces down the stairs and announces that she’ll be out for the day. She grabs her keys and runs out of the front door before I have time to even say a word.
The car is pulling out of the drive and she’s gone in the blink of an eye.
I guess she's not spending the day with us.
Cole enters the room, dropping down onto the stool at the island, and I push a cup of coffee toward him and smile as I plate up breakfast.
"She has a life outside of us, I guess," I say with a shrug.
"What kind of life could she possibly have outside of us? We're amazing," Sawyer says as he drops down beside Cole. "I was planning on taking her out today, so that just ruined my plans."
"And did you ask her about going out for the day?" I question, snickering because I already know the answer before he tells me.
"Well, of course not. I wanted to surprise her. That's the fun of a surprise."
"Well, then you don't get to blame her for having plans already."
Sawyer grumbles as he takes a bite out of the pancake that I put in front of him.
When Cole’s phone starts to ring, I glance at the screen since it's sitting on the counter. My eyebrow rises in concern when I see the name on it. He picks it up and answers while I wait silently, because listening to one side of a conversation is never any fun.
He ends up taking the call into another room, which leaves me on edge, and I've drunk way too much coffee already this morning for this.
After twenty or so minutes pass, he ends up coming back and sitting back down in front of his now-cold food and coffee.
"Well?" I ask, pretending to eat my own food that I haven’t tasted since he left the room.
"Well, what?" Travis asks as he comes down the stairs.
"That was what I was trying to find out," I call back to him.
Travis walks into the kitchen and grabs himself a cup of coffee before leaning against the counter.
"That was Wes giving me an update. There's still no news on Serena’s murder in the way of leads or suspects. Obviously, it's been ruled as suspicious, but they're having to let it go cold because there was no evidence on the other bodies that were killed in a similar manner. So they've officially logged it as a cold case."
"Any whispers about Crawford?" Sawyer asks, and Cole shakes his head.
"No, nothing like that. He was just filling me in on something that my dad had him looking into. But that's got nothing to do with Briar, Crawford, or Serena, so she's in the clear for now."
Travis raises an eyebrow in response. "It definitely seems that way. We just need to keep it together and keep acting like nothing happened. Everyone's done a pretty good job so far. We've had enough other stuff to deal with. But when school starts back next week, I think it's going to be a lot harder for her to pretend. Because even though she won't have his class anymore, there are still going to be questions around campus about where he is. Do we have any more information on the email that she got?"
I shake my head in response, guilt slamming in my chest. "No, it came from an IP that's been bounced across the world, and is basically untraceable. There's no way for me to find out exactly where it was sent from. Whoever it was is very good at what they do and wanted to remain hidden. It would take someone with better skills than I have to fully trace them. I have no doubt it can be done; I just can't do it."
I hate saying the words, because I hate feeling like I'm letting her down by not knowing who the threat against her is. But even my skills are limited, and this is something that I can’t do any more than I already have.
