Love's Cruel Redemption

by C. L. Stone

  We Are Who We Are

  Kota walked by my side as we traveled down the road back to his house. When we turned around the bend in the road, I expected bright lights, people scrambling around in the front yard, and the mess I left behind to still be there.

  It was all quiet. The street ahead of us was lit only by dim lamps and what few lights were still on in houses. I wondered how many of the neighbors had gotten up to see what was happening at Kota’s house. How many knew that the principal and Mr. Morris had been here?

  Did my stepmother see what was happening? Did Marie inform her about it?

  Kota’s home was quiet, the porch light turned off. We went around the back, avoiding the still closed doors of the garage. Kota’s sedan was parked back in its usual spot.

  Max greeted us in the hallway. I petted him vigorously for a short moment, glad he was okay. My fingers raked through his golden hair and he lapped at my arm. He seemed to know to keep quiet, as he stepped silently through the house, following us to Kota’s bedroom door.

  Kota urged the dog to go back. “Find Jessica,” he said. “Stay with her.”

  Max huffed once and padded away, as if knowing exactly what he said and was obeying.

  Kota led the way up into his bedroom. It was empty, the bed still made, and a book bag sitting in the chair next to his computer desk. It appeared completely undisturbed by what happened earlier. I imagined he hadn’t even been up here until now.

  I waited by the stairs as he moved further into the bedroom. When I stopped, he paused and turned to me. “Something wrong?”

  “I feel like I should be doing something.”

  “We sleep first,” he said. “I just didn’t want to have to leave again before talking to my mom tomorrow. It’d look really bad if I disappeared again without fulfilling the promise I made.”

  It made sense, especially if he wanted me to be here.

  He went to the closet and passed me pajama pants and a T-shirt. I didn’t know whose they were, but I put them on while standing in his bedroom, too tired to go into the bathroom and change. He threw on similar and urged me to bed.

  He nudged me into his bed, but instead of rolling out the bed from underneath, he got in beside me.

  Kota curled into me, his glasses removed. He had an arm around my waist, his nose pressed into my shoulder.

  I exhaled and for the first moment, I actually started to relax. My body was tense, my mind reeling after all of the events. I’d been so tired, and then once I hit the bed, my brain was fully engaged.

  Until Kota started rubbing a spot on my ear, soft at first, and then more intently.

  From then on, I faded in and out of sleep.

  At every moment, Kota was there next to me, an arm around me, or leaning into me with his face pressed to my body.

  I reveled in it. For a while there, I had been sleeping alone in the bed, but with the guys nearby. Now, sleeping with someone in the bed, someone I trusted and wanted to be close to, made the whole experience something I craved and felt deprived of when they weren’t around. Feeling safe, secure, and able to depend on them. I hoped they felt the same from me.

  His legs intertwined with mine often. And my face pressed to him, his back or chest, depending on how he was sleeping. It was like this the whole night, with me sleeping but then slightly waking when he turned, and then me realizing it was him, and snuggling closer.

  We both needed this.

  The sun was bright in the room before the downstairs door opened and footsteps padded up the steps, stopping at the top. I didn’t move. My body didn’t want to.

  Kota yawned, stretched, sat up and moved to put his foot on the floor. “I know the rule,” he said, his voice thick and gravelly with sleep. “But after last night...”

  “I know,” Erica whispered. “Don’t worry. I trust you.”

  I was aware she was there, but I didn’t want to get up. I pretended to sleep. I was being a chicken, avoiding the conversation but willing to get up if Kota roused me.

  “Let’s go downstairs,” Erica said. “When you’re ready. I need to know some things before someone on the police force comes back with more questions. I’m sure they’ll be here at some point.”

  “Right,” Kota said. I felt him pull the covers back over my shoulder, lean over, kiss me on the forehead before getting up fully.

  I didn’t get up until they were gone.

  Rustling in the room spooked me. I was alone again.

  Luke sat up from a sleeping bag, rubbing his eyes. His blond hair was wild, static lifting it in a wild way. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him, but I imagined a lot of us stayed on this side of town, at least last night. I wondered where the others were.

  He signed to me with one hand. “He’s telling her about us?”

  I nodded.

  I jumped out of bed and silently slipped down the steps. At the door, I leaned in close, listening to what was being said.

  Luke was behind me instantly. His warm breath fell on my shoulder. His hand touched my lower back. “Whatever she says, it won’t matter,” he whispered. “Not to us.”

  I wasn’t so sure. Would Kota not care if Erica said she didn’t accept it?

  I knew I was being a coward letting Kota do the talking, but I wanted to be able to step in for support if he needed it, too. He knew his mother better than I did. Maybe he should start without me there.

  Erica kept it simple. “Tell me what’s been going on,” she said. “Tell me why Sang’s out at late hours with Nathan. Tell me where you’ve been. And why people were looking for her and willing to attack us to get to her. And why the police arrested those two men and don’t ask a word about Sang when you tell them not to include her in any of it.”

  It was a long list.

  Kota started by explaining to her that the Academy sent them to the public school not for a special academic program, but to investigate and be part of a team that would root out Mr. Hendricks and some problems going on there. He didn’t get into details, but he did say that at some point, I’d learned about it, joined them, and unfortunately that resulted in Mr. Hendricks coming after me, mostly to get to them.

  “I don’t know how much he knows about her real situation at home,” he said. “There were things going on there, which is why she hasn’t been back. But somehow, he must have learned she wasn’t staying at the house much. Perhaps through her sister...”

  Erica tapped her fingers repeatedly in various drumming patterns on a table, or at least I thought it was her as Kota didn’t normally tap at anything so randomly. “I can’t believe your school would ask you to do something like this.”

  “You’ve known for a while it isn’t a normal school,” he said. “You’ve asked questions before.”

  “I know,” she said. “I can’t say I’ve always...liked what they ask you to do, but I can’t believe they’d get teenagers to get involved like this.”

  “We weren’t aware of how drastically they’d lash out. We were meant to observe only. Information gathering. Last night, that was the result of them being cornered. We weren’t the only ones trying to figure out what was going on, but someone else drew the attention of the police to them, causing them to react like this. Somehow they thought getting to Sang, to use her, they could get us to talk to the police to get them to back out of their search, or perhaps something else. We don’t know fully.”

  He was talking about Volto, but I understood he probably didn’t want to complicated things by talking about a masked guy chasing us around.

  Luke leaned in closer to the door. We were face to face, nose to nose almost, and listening.

  His hand took mine, squeezing gently as we waited for more.

  “So Sang and Nathan...they are a part of this?” she asked. “And that makes them need to spend time together?”

  “Along with the rest of us, yes,” he said. “Silas, North...all of us. It’s why they spend time here often, or together somewhere else. We’re a team. Sang joined us in th
e middle of everything but she’s now part of the team.”

  “And why wasn’t I allowed to know?”

  “To protect you,” he said simply. “Sometimes it’s better when others don’t know.”

  “So I don’t worry?” Her voice rose. “Are you kidding me?”

  Kota fell silent.

  More finger drumming, faster now. “Tell me something, then. Tell me the incident in the bathroom was something dramatically different than what Jessica saw.” The drumming stopped shortly, breaking the pattern she’d produced. “Kota, you tell me what’s going on there. How is it Sang isn’t upset with him, or you aren’t as mad at him as you pretend to be? It wasn’t like him at all.”

  Kota sighed. My cheeks radiated with heat, even though I wasn’t in the room.

  Luke squeezed my hand tighter, leaning in. He pressed his forehead to mine.

  We stayed like this, eyes closed, close. Waiting.

  Hoping this wasn’t the wrong thing. That after all this turmoil, after all of this we’ve been through together, that someone outside of it would understand.

  If Erica couldn’t accept whatever he’d say, then who else could? Did we have any chance at all?

  I knew what Kota would say before he said it. I only hoped she’d understand. “Because... we’re both dating her.”

  “You’re...what?”

  “We both like her, so we decided between us that we’d...both date her. He wasn’t doing anything behind my back. I mean...I don’t mean to make it sound like Sang didn’t have a choice. She agreed to it. I’m probably making this sound worse than it is.”

  Erica made a strange noise as she exhaled quickly. “I...don’t even know what to say. First, your school has you mixed up in a weird undercover operation, and now you’re saying you’re allowing...that Sang couldn’t decide between the two of you so you agreed to this?”

  “We didn’t ask her to pick,” Kota said. “Nathan openly confessed to having feelings for her. He didn’t want it to cause problems. He was asking for solutions so he didn’t make a mistake like that. I talked to her about it. We were worried about it splitting up things or causing problems between us. Nathan wasn’t even interested in doing this. I suggested he give it a try, with Sang in agreement with it.”

  Half-truths about how it happened.

  I wondered why he wasn’t talking about the others, but I realized maybe that was a bit too far. If she couldn’t accept Nathan and Kota dating me at the same time, it’d be impossible for us to explain the whole real situation.

  Baby steps. One thing at a time.

  I couldn’t wait any more. There was no reason to let him sit through this alone any longer.

  I kissed Luke on the nose quickly, releasing him.

  He stared at me, his face paler than I’d seen it before. His usually happy face serious. Now determined.

  I was, too. I straightened up, fixed what I could of my hair by getting it out of my face, and then opened the door.

  Luke stepped away, hiding, and I closed the door for him.

  They were sitting at the table. Kota turned around. Erica looked up, her eyes wide, her face strained with questions and concerns.

  “Morning,” I said, hoping they assumed I’d just gotten up and hadn’t heard anything. Kota needed a break, and Erica needed time to think about what Kota was telling her.

  Kota remained seated but stretched out an arm to me. I went to him, unsure what he wanted. He wrapped an arm around my waist and looked up at me. “Morning,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

  “Are you?” I asked. “I can make some eggs and toast, perhaps?”

  “Sure,” he said. And he looked over at his mom. “I was just telling her about what happened with Hendricks...and Nathan. About you, me and Nathan.”

  “Oh,” I said. My face was still hot, the blush deepening, but she wasn’t outwardly protesting. Maybe he just wanted me to confirm what he was saying was true. “Yeah,” I said. “We didn’t mean to lie about it before.”

  “We just weren’t sure you’d be okay with it,” Kota said. “Nathan made himself the bad guy until we were comfortable enough to talk about it.”

  “He didn’t attack me,” I said. “I know what Jessica saw...that she probably didn’t understand the situation. We were talking about something else when I was saying things like no and whatever else. To Jessica, it probably sounded awful.”

  Erica’s face had frozen. I thought she was looking at Kota, but her attention had altered to someplace distant, drifting into her own thoughts. “I want to be supportive of what you’re doing,” she said. “I think I’m having more problems trying to figure out how you came up with this, and why you thought to do it.”

  “We sort of stumbled into the idea,” Kota said. “I know it’s weird, but for some reason, it works for us.”

  She shook off her thoughts and refocused on us. “I think I need to hear this from him, from all three of you together. But let’s put it aside, for now. We need to figure out what to say to the police as well. He may need to be here. We’ll need to focus.” She looked at me. “Maybe you can go get Jessica and walk over and get him?”

  “I’ll go see if she’s up,” I said, eager to do as she asked. She wasn’t yelling. She wasn’t demanding Kota get out of the Academy, that it was too dangerous. After all the lies, after all the craziness she’d experienced, I wondered how she was able to absorb it and deal with it. Did we not give her enough credit?

  Part of me wondered if she hadn’t suspected the Academy to be more than what was on the surface. She’d told me before some suspicions she’d had about it, after the Academy changed Kota so drastically and helped them in their lives. Hopefully what she saw from that outweighed what happened last night. It wasn’t always dangerous like that.

  I left them alone, trusting Kota to continue to talk with her about this, and headed to Jessica’s room.

  Even though the truth was partially out, I wasn’t sure I felt totally comfortable.

  But Nathan was no longer going to be an outcast. I wanted to be sure of this. No matter what happened now, I wouldn’t allow him to go through anything like that again.

  Vulnerable

  Nathan

  The early morning broke over the trees, and Nathan was in his house, at the kitchen table with Diego Ramirez sitting across from him. They were both still wearing their clothes from the night before, Ramirez in jeans and a black shirt, and Nathan wearing a red hoodie and jeans. Nathan’s clothes were torn in places. He imagined his face was bruised. Parts of him were scraped and discolored where Hendricks had kicked or hit him.

  His whole body ached, making sitting upright in the hardwood chair difficult.

  Ramirez’s dark brows were high on his forehead as Nathan rattled off what happened. Nathan had been granted permission to talk about his dive into the lake, and onward.

  Ramirez shook his head slowly as Nathan wrapped it up with the fight at the Lee house. He leaned forward, writing notes in a small notepad he’d pulled out for this. “I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know why you didn’t call in someone else sooner.”

  Nathan shrugged. “Who is going to believe we’ve been chasing around a guy in a mask? And what we knew about Mr. Hendricks? We can’t submit the video we’ve got.”

  “You can’t,” he said, and he stopped writing, putting his pen down. “I can. Someone can.”

  “How do we explain the cameras?” Nathan asked. “We set them up, not the school. And Hendricks had never gone as far as he did last night. That was crazy.”

  Ramirez smirked. “Okay. You’ve got me.” He pointed a knuckle out toward the street, beyond it to the Lee house across the way. “But I don’t want to see this shit happening again. You’re lucky David and I are on the same page when it comes to you-know-what. He’ll do his best to marginalize your exposure with the police, but we could have taken care of this well before if you’d let us in.”

  “We can’t always do that,” Nathan said. “But outside of Volto, H
endricks and McCoy were the people we needed to put aside. And well, Morris. Only we didn’t know it before.”

  He shook his head looking down at his notebook. “It’s likely more people were in on this and you don’t know it. Morris isn’t going to talk to me now. It’s going to take time to get information out of him or McCoy about who they were working with. Maybe once they start ratting on each other.”

  “So they’ll be in jail?”

  “Last I heard, they were awaiting lawyers and for bail. At so early in the morning, they’ll just wait for a judge. I doubt they’ll get bail. Not after attacking a minor in her home.”

  “Not Sang...”

  He shook his head. “Jessica Lee. And you. You’re willing to take this all the way to a trial, right?”

  “Anything,” he said, and he felt sure he could do it. Sang needed to stay out but he didn’t have to. “We’ll get lucky if they don’t mention Sang at all.” He was sure they could manipulate the lawyers and get Academy lawyers involved.

  It’d require far more favors. More than he had.

  Diego tapped at the table. “You’re lucky I went out to check up on Morris. I didn’t know he’d lead me right back to you.”

  “You got on this quick,” Nathan said.

  “You got driven off the road and you all looked terrified. Sounded dangerous. I wanted to get a good grasp on the situation quickly before anyone else was hurt. I showed up a little late but I couldn’t really get an idea of what was going on until it all started happening.”

  Nathan couldn’t disagree with that. And they were lucky he was willing to get out there so quickly. “You threw the lights?”

  “Nope. That was Mrs. Lee, I think. That’s how I realized something horrible was going down. Smart of her to do it.” Ramirez stood up, taking up his notebook and stuffing it into a sling bag he’d brought in, throwing the pen inside as well. “I’ll probably be back. I want to find this Volto.”

  “We’ll take care of him,” Nathan said.

  Ramirez smirked and shook his head. “This is off the clock. I’m curious. I love a puzzle.”