AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah,” she said, gazing up at me with pure trust. “I’m ready, Rylan. I love you. I know I’ll always love you. I want you to be my first.”
“I will be,” I said, scooting down beside her. “And you’ll be mine. My first and last and only. I promise. I’m going to marry you as soon as we turn eighteen.”
“I promise too,” she whispered. “Thank you for being so patient, for waiting all this time. I just want it to be special, not rushed or when my parents might walk in on us…”
“I know,” I said. “I’m going to make it special. I promise. Your first time will be as perfect as you are.”
I leaned down to kiss her, but we were interrupted by the sound of loud pounding. I jumped, even though the sound wasn’t from her door. Downstairs, the echoes of men shouting filled the house. I frowned down at Gloria, whose eyes had gone wide. “Who is that?”
“I don’t know,” she said, scrambling up and buttoning her jeans. She raked her hand through her blonde hair, trying to untangle it. “Come on, let’s go see.”
“Give me a minute,” I said, though some cold little knot of dread had already settled in my gut, making my balls shrink up into my body.
It only took a few seconds for my raging hard-on to turn to a semi. My heart was beating hard in my chest, and I wanted to pull Gloria down on the bed and pretend nothing was happening.
A sick feeling lurched in my chest, though, and this time, it was Amber on my mind. “Where’s my sister?” I asked, starting for the door.
“Everleigh?” Gloria called down the hall as we started for the stairs. “Eleanor? Amber? Where y’all at?”
Everleigh slipped out of a playroom in the hall, looking pale and scared. “Who’s here?” she asked. “What’s happening?”
“Girls,” Mrs. Beauregard called, her voice high and tight, a tone I’d never heard her use before. “Come down here, please.”
We hurried down the wide, spiral staircase, my grip tight on the gleaming banister as we wound around. I leaned over the railing, trying to find Amber, but the oversized crystal chandelier blocked my view. Men in black suits crawled over the place like cockroaches—a precursor of what was to come.
“Daddy!” Gloria cried. She dropped my hand and ran down the stairs.
Everleigh took my other hand shyly, and I gave her a reassuring smile and squeezed her fingers, even though I was anything but calm. I’d learned to be the protective big brother for Amber, so I put on my coolest expression and tried to look like I wasn’t worried.
I turned just in time to see Mr. Beauregard being led out of the enormous marble kitchen in handcuffs. Three men passed us going up the stairs. Eleanor ran to her mother and threw herself into her arms, sobbing hysterically. Dawson was following his father, asking over and over where they were taking him, his voice laced with fear.
Everything was in chaos.
It felt like a dream.
Or maybe it was the sickening moment when the dream ends, when you wake up and reality takes over. The past year had been too good to be true, and this just proved that something that perfect couldn’t be real life.
“Your friends need to go home,” Mrs. Beauregard said in that same clipped tone.
“Amber,” I called into the cavernous foyer echoing with footsteps and voices. “Come out!”
I was starting to panic when I saw her peeking out from the door to the den. I extracted my hand from Everleigh’s and ran over to my sister. “What’s happening?” she asked, her voice small and her eyes big.
“I don’t know,” I said, my instinct to protect her kicking in. “But we need to leave.”
“Are we going to get in trouble?” she asked. “What if they won’t let us go?”
“Don’t be silly,” I said, trying to make my tone light. “We’re going home. They’re here for the Beauregards, not us.”
I didn’t want to leave Gloria, so I turned back when we reached the front door. She was standing there with her arms hanging at her sides while Everleigh clung to her, crying onto her shoulder. I motioned for her to come with us, but she gave the tiniest shake of her head. I was torn between leaving with Amber right that moment, before anyone noticed or questioned us, and going back for Gloria.
I may have sounded confident, but I had no clue what was going on. I was a good kid. I didn’t have run-ins with cops. But that didn’t mean a bunch of guys who looked like FBI agents didn’t scare me.
“Stay right here,” I ordered Amber, planting her beside a huge potted fern near the front door. “Don’t move.”
I ran back across the two-story foyer to where Gloria stood at the bottom of the stairs. “Come on,” I said, grabbing her hand. “We can go to my house. You can stay with me until… Whatever this is… Is over.”
“Can I come?” Everleigh asked, dropping her arms from around Gloria’s stiff body and throwing herself into my arms. She clung to me, sobbing against my chest. I held her, but my attention was on her sister.
