by Wendi Wilson
“Are you ready?” Wyatt asked, standing from his seat by the door.
“Yeah, just let me get my shoes on.”
I looked around, panic spearing through me. I’d left my new boots at Dr. Patton’s when I changed into the party-wear. I didn’t even bring my old black ones, because I was trying to pack light. My lips turned down, mourning the loss of my gift from the Madsens.
I bent over and grabbed the silver ballet flats. A throat clearing stopped me and I looked over at the boys. Wyatt was grinning as Beckett pulled a hand out from behind his back.
“Looking for these?”
“Oh my God!” I yelped, throwing the flats over my shoulder as I lunged forward. “My Docs!”
Beckett laughed as he handed them over. “Your mom grabbed them before they left last night. She knew you’d want them.”
I smiled as I pulled them on. My mom hated my old Doc Martens. She probably hated the new ones too but saved them for me anyway. I’d have to thank her for that.
We left the room then and found everyone else waiting in the parking lot for us. I hugged them all, one by one, so happy to be all together again. Silas and Slade seemed happy to see me, not holding onto any anger they may have had toward me for persuading their best friends. Lizzie seemed a little quiet, but I couldn’t get a read on the reason. I’d have to get it out of her later.
We climbed into the two vehicles and drove to a chain breakfast restaurant, one of those that served waffles and pancakes and omelets of every variety. A waitress took our orders and before I knew it, a steaming cup of coffee was sitting in front of me.
“Thank you,” I said to the waitress, wrapping my hands around the warm cup and breathing in its heady aroma.
“Okay, we’ll start,” Silas offered after the server left us alone.
“When we got home from practice, you were gone,” Slade said, hurt shining in his eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” I responded, realizing I’d never apologized to them.
Silas shook my words off. “We know why you did what you did. We can move on,” he said, nudging his brother.
Slade smiled at me with a slight nod. “He’s right. Anyway, the guys were acting weird. When we asked them where you were they just shrugged and acted like they didn’t care if you were even coming back.”
“We didn’t care,” Jett stated, his face carefully blank.
Before I could respond, Slade continued, “I was just about to punch one of them in the face when our parents got home. Silas took them into the other room to explain what was going on. They called the Pattons into the kitchen and talked to them without us there.”
“They got nowhere,” Silas added.
“So, I decided to try punching them in the face,” Slade said, lowering his brows.
“You didn’t,” I replied, feeling my anxiety rise. I couldn’t take it if they fought because of something I did.
“No, he didn’t,” Lizzie said, cutting in. “I showed up and told them what happened.”
“You knew what Savanna had planned?” my mom asked. “And you didn’t stop it?”
“Mom—”
“No, Savanna, it’s okay,” Lizzie interjected, cutting off my defense of her. “I already got my butt handed to me by those two,” she said, pointing at the Madsens.
As mad as I knew they must have been, anger was not what I saw in their eyes in that moment. Quite the opposite, actually. Interesting.
“I tried to talk Savanna out of it,” Lizzie said, meeting my mother’s eyes, “but you know your daughter. I’m just learning exactly how stubborn she can be.”
She shot me a smile to soften her words. I smiled back, letting her know I wasn’t offended. I was stubborn. It was a simple fact.
“So, you walked in. Then what happened?” I asked, hoping to get the conversation back on track.
“I got Rocky and Rocky Jr. here to back off,” she said, jerking her thumb toward Silas and Slade, “and I tried talking to them.” She motioned toward my boys. “They were so… cold and nonchalant about the fact that you’d run off, I got mad. I started talking about how you could die, and even that didn’t faze them. It was like… they were broken.”
My heart clenched at her words and I gasped, guilt washing over me once again. Beckett was sitting beside me in the oversized booth, and his hand reached over to squeeze my knee under the table. I grabbed his hand as it pulled away, interlacing our fingers as I shot him a thankful smile.
“This is where it gets good,” Slade added, rubbing his palms together.
Lizzie rolled her eyes, but there was a spark of humor in them. “I started yelling at them to snap out of it and Jett told me to be quiet and go away. He tried to shoo me away like a bug. I lost it in true Savanna James style,” she said, the creamy brown skin of her face growing a little darker. “I slapped him.”
“Oh, yeah,” Silas cried, laughing. “It was awesome. Rocky, the third.”
“Anyway,” Lizzie said, cutting off Silas’s humor, “I was so angry, I was shaking. I’m sorry, Savanna, I know you wanted them safe and to not be worried about you, but I couldn’t stand it. Knowing you were out there somewhere, in danger, and they were sitting around playing video games? It was too much. I screamed, ‘She persuaded you, you assholes, now snap out of it and remember!’”
“Then what happened?” I asked when she didn’t continue.
“We did,” Wyatt answered, leaning back in his chair. “As soon as she said those words, it was like a fog lifted. We remembered everything.”
I squirmed a little in my chair, not really wanting to face how they must have felt when they remembered. So, I latched onto the obvious mystery.
“But, how is that possible? How could Lizzie have broken the persuasion? She’s a norm.” I shot her an apologetic look for calling her that.
“But she’s not,” Beckett said, squeezing my fingers. “Not really. She has your blood inside her. It gave her your immunity to persuasion. Maybe it gave her something else, too.”
“The power to persuade Alts?” I asked, my free hand flying to my chest.
“No,” Silas said. “We tested that and she can’t persuade anyone. But she can reverse persuasion. It’s amazing.”
“It was just one time,” Lizzie uttered, still blushing.
“We haven’t really been able to test it,” Slade replied. “We pretty much had to tie these three down,” he said, pointing at each of my boys, “to keep them from running out the door and hitchhiking here.”
“We knew you weren’t meeting Dr. Patton until noon, so we talked them into waiting until morning. We could get there early and intercept you, without having to stay up all night,” Lizzie added.
“Like we slept,” Jett mumbled.
“We left at dawn, but the van got a flat,” Silas said, ignoring Jett. “We were sure we would still make it, but you weren’t at the statue. We were running around, searching, but we didn’t find you until it was too late. Dr. Patton shoved you into the car and you were gone.”
“So, how did you find the safe house?”
Jett laughed but there was no humor in it. “Our uncle is an idiot. He left your phone on.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out my phone, passing it across the table to me. “You have a lot of missed calls and texts,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized, shoving the device into my own pocket. “I was so out of it, regretting what I’d done and worrying about what was to come, I forgot my ringtone was silenced and didn’t even check it until Dr. Patton demanded I give it to him. If I had seen your calls, maybe things would have happened differently.” I looked back at Jett with a brow raised. “How did my phone being on help you find me?”
“I went to the police station and persuaded an officer to ping your phone. He called your carrier and got it done. That house is all alone out there, so we knew that had to be it.”
“So, what? You just went and busted down the door? Putting yourselves in the line of fire, literally? Those guards had
guns!”
Beckett’s hand released mine, rubbing a path up my thigh in a calming manner. “No, Savanna,” he said, “we didn’t just go busting in.” He chuckled. “Lizzie did.”
“What?!” I exclaimed, swinging my glare toward her.
“Relax,” Lizzie grumbled. “I’m fine. I took a chance that I would know some of the guards, and I did. They were members of the church. I claimed to need Brother Earl’s help and got them to let me in. Fortunately, he was gone and didn’t think to let them know of my traitorous actions.” She smirked. “I got them relaxed and when I told them I was stepping out for some air, they didn’t bat an eyelash.”
“She came out and told us how many there were and how they were armed,” Wyatt said. “We knew we wouldn’t be able to persuade them, but there were six of us and only four of them. Easy peasy.”
“It was still dangerous,” I complained.
“You’re worth it,” Wyatt declared, disarming me with a wink.
I just shook my head. We all made our own choices and there was no use rehashing them over and over again. We were all safe and together, and that’s all that mattered.
“Tell us what happened on your end,” Jett said.
I started talking, the whole story spilling out of me. I stopped when our waitress arrived with our food, then picked the story back up where I had left off. I glossed over what President Worth tried to do to me and ended with the ride back to the house and Dr. Patton telling me he had a meeting at the White House that day.
“I don’t think we can stop him,” I said. “I mean, it’s the freaking White House.”
“Wait,” Jett ordered, frowning. “Back up. Why did the president want you to go up to a private room?”
I groaned. “It’s okay. I took care of it.”
“Savanna,” he asserted, impatience and warning lacing his tone.
“Savanna?” Beckett asked, more of a concerned question.
Wyatt nodded with encouragement, and I groaned again. Taking a deep breath, I tried to explain.
“Dr. Patton told me that the president uses his Alts for things beside political gain,” I said, pinching my lips together. Thinking about what happened was raising my ire. “He told me that Worth likes younger women. Like, a lot younger. When I got the invitation to go upstairs, he made me go by threatening my parents. I was to do no less than secure him the ear of the president.”
“What happened, Savanna?” my mom asked, looking worried.
“Nothing happened,” I promised, hoping to soothe her fears as well as everyone else’s. “Nothing happened,” I reiterated when my boys each shot me skeptical looks. “He used one of his Alts to try to persuade me. Of course, he had no idea I couldn’t be persuaded. It was a girl, younger than us.” My eyes burned at the thought. “She looked me in the eyes and ordered me to let him do whatever he wanted. That I was to do whatever he told me to do and enjoy myself the whole time. Then to forget the whole thing ever happened.”
“That son of a bitch.”
“Dad,” I said, shocked by his outburst. “It didn’t happen. I’m okay.”
“Did he touch you?” Wyatt asked, his voice cracking with emotion.
I shook my head but answered truthfully. “He kissed my neck. It was disgusting and I lost it. That’s when I persuaded his Alts to leave. I made him be still while I slapped the shit out of him. He’s been raping girls and they don’t even know. It’s sick. But he won’t be doing that again. I made sure of it.”
“Did you chop his penis off?” Slade asked, his voice sincere.
I laughed, and some of the tension surrounding the table eased. “No, but I persuaded him to never use his Alts to sexually assault anyone, ever again. Then I told him to set a meeting with Dr. Patton and I left.”
“So, we’re too late,” Lizzie said. “He’ll have his meeting and the president will do what he says.”
“Which is… what?” Silas asked.
“I don’t know the specifics, but isn’t it obvious? Brother Earl wants to eliminate every Alt on the planet. If he needs the ear of the president, that means he’s going to make sure it’s legal to persecute, imprison, possibly even assassinate anyone who’s an Alt.”
Her eyes landed on the Madsen brothers. They returned her stare, taking in the enormity of what she said. I watched them, briefly wondering exactly how close they’d gotten over the last few days, when it hit me.
“Wait,” I said, drawing everyone’s attention. “It’s not too late. I persuaded President Worth to make the meeting, but that’s all. I never told him to do what Earl says. I wanted to keep that ace in my pocket, so my parents and I wouldn’t become expendable.”
“If he depends on his Alts as much as you say he does, he’ll never agree without persuasion,” Beckett argued.
“Exactly,” I said, smiling. “We don’t have to try to break into the White House or stop him from making the meeting. It will crash and burn without me there.”
“Then he’ll come looking for you, again,” Lizzie predicted.
“And we’ll be ready,” Jett answered, an eerie, almost sadistic smile on his face.
“He’s not taking you again,” Wyatt vowed.
“Never,” Beckett added.
“We’re in this together from now on,” I said, looking at each of them, then to the Madsen brothers, Lizzie and my parents.
“Together,” Slade avowed, raising his glass of chocolate milk.
“Together,” everyone else chanted, raising their glasses to toast.
I smiled. This is my family. All of them. And no one will come between us again.
Chapter Sixteen
My parents asked to see me alone once we got back to the motel, so everyone else crowded into the other room to wait while the three of us entered the one I stayed in the night before with the boys. I plopped down on the bed and stared at them expectantly, my eyes flitting from Mom to Dad and back again.
“Tell us what happened last night,” Mom said, her expression serious.
Her “no kinky four-ways” lecture popped into my head.
“Nothing,” I said, the timbre of my voice a little higher than usual. “We talked it out, they forgave me and we went to sleep. That’s all, I swear.”
“That’s good to know, Savanna, but I was talking about the party with the president.”
“I told you what happened,” I mumbled, confused.
“I heard what you said,” she replied, “but it’s what you didn’t say that bothered me. I know you, and you were holding back for the sake of those boys.”
“Mom, I promise, I told you guys everything he did.”
“And what about Earl? What did he do when you told him what the president tried to do?”
“Did you think he would try to avenge my honor?” I asked, a humorless laugh barking out of me. “No, he shrugged it off, saying it was for the greater good and only proved he was right. Alts need to be destroyed because they upset the natural order of things.”
“I’m going to rip him apart.”
“You’ll have to get in line, Dad,” I said drily.
“So, about the sleeping arrangements,” Mom added, shifting gears.
“Mom, I’ve been living with them for months. We don’t have any kinky group sex or anything, and I’m eighteen.”
I left it at that, purposefully leaving out any mention of individual sex. I was not having that conversation with my parents.
“You may be legally an adult, but you’re still our daughter,” Dad said.
“And I always will be.” I stood up and hugged him. Pulling back so he could see my face, I continued, “I love you. Both of you.” I shot a quick look at Mom. “But no one is tearing me away from them again. Not for any reason. Bad things happen when we’re apart.”
Mom opened her mouth like she was about to object, to argue further, but something in my face must have told her it was a winless battle. She sighed, her shoulders slumping, and gave me a nod.
“Thank you,” I sa
id, wrapping her in my arms. “Thank you for trusting me and treating me like an adult, even though I don’t act like one sometimes.” As I pulled back, she arched a brow at me. “Okay,” I amended, laughing, “most of the time.”
We joined the rest of the group in the other room then, all nine of us crowded into the small space. It was late morning and none of us had heard anything from Dr. Patton. I assumed there would be threats. There were always threats.
“Maybe we should just leave. We could go back home and forget Earl Patton ever existed,” Mom said.
Home. I wasn’t sure where that was anymore. Was it in Savannah? Where I could finish high school and continue like nothing ever happened? Or was it Greenwich, where the boys had their family and were happy?
I only knew one thing for certain. My home was with Jett, Wyatt and Beckett. No question about it.
“We can’t do that,” Lizzie said, drawing my attention away from my internal dialogue. “We have to finish this. Pretending he doesn’t exist doesn’t solve anything. He’ll still be there, doing everything in his power to rid the world of Alts, including your daughter.”
“How do we stop him?” I asked. “He has an army of Purists ready to do whatever he says. How can nine people overcome those odds?”
Wyatt reached out and squeezed my shoulder, his fingers massaging away some of the tension. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Wyatt’s right,” Jett said, standing from his seat on one of the beds. “We will figure it out.”
“We have no other choice,” Beckett added, standing next to his brother.
He and Jett both moved to stand in front of me. Jett held out his hand, palm up, and I pressed mine against it. Beckett laid his on mine and Wyatt put his hand on top.
“Don’t forget us,” Slade said, jumping up to join our circle.
He added his hand to the pile and Silas followed suit. Lizzie stepped up and placed hers on top of Silas’s and, I swear, his cheeks went a little ruddy.
That’s it, I thought. I have to get that girl alone and find out what’s going on.
Mom and Dad each placed a hand on my shoulders, opting not to try to squeeze into our tight-knit circle. My stupid eyes started burning as I studied their faces, each of these people as devoted to me as I was to them. I bit back the tears that threatened to stream from my eyes. I knew at least five of them would tease me for being a sap if I let them flow.
