One Family

by Smyth, R. A

  “Yup,” he wheezes, sounding about as good as I feel right now.

  “We gotta go,” I say, trying to look out the back window to check if that fucker on the bike is still on our tail. I’m secretly hoping he lost control too and died in a nice fiery explosion.

  Unclasping his seatbelt, he pulls on the door handle, pushing open the door and climbing out. Following his lead, I try to open my door, but it won’t budge. I push against the door more firmly, but it’s jammed. Shoving my shoulder against the door with more force, I hear it creak, but still the damn thing won’t open.

  “Hurry up,” Barrett hisses at me, his eyes training behind us.

  Ignoring him, I repeatedly bash my shoulder into the door, trying desperately to get it to open.

  “It won’t open,” I hiss back, drawing Barrett’s attention. His skin is pale, sweat dotting his brow, and his eyes dilated with shock. I don’t imagine I look much better right now.

  “What? Doesn’t matter, climb over the seats.”

  A noise or something must catch his attention cause he whips out his gun, aiming it at something behind us as I attempt to climb over the center console. The problem is, this is a sports car. A very tiny sports car. With my broad shoulders, I already know it’s not going to be a quick task to wriggle my way from one side of the car to the other, never mind with my hands shaking and body aching.

  “Hurry the fuck up, he’s coming!”

  I growl an unintelligible response, trying to use my feet to propel me forward, but my shoulder is stuck, unable to squeeze past the side of the chair.

  “I can’t, I’m stuck.”

  “What?” Barrett’s eyes widen with worry, his pupils fully blown now as panic takes over. Coming back over to the car, he bends down, grabbing a hold of my upper arms and trying to yank me across, but it’s no use because I’m fucking stuck.

  A noise catches both of our attentions, the rustling sound of heavy boots stepping over twins and leaves.

  “Go, man.” I tell him. “Get outta here. I’ll be fine.”

  “No way, I’m not leaving you.”

  “I just need another minute. I’ll be right behind you.” Barrett looks at me, indecision in his eyes. “We’re both sitting ducks if you stay here any longer,” I growl, using my one free arm to shove him out of the car.

  “Go,” I hiss when he hesitates a second longer. With a final nod, he takes off into the undergrowth. I watch him go and when he’s out of sight, I maneuver myself back to my side of the car, attempting plan A again, banging my shoulder into the door, hoping this time it will release for me.

  I’m so lost in my frantic efforts to get out of the damn car, I don’t hear him until it’s too late.

  “Well, well, what do we have here?” The asshole from the motorbike sings, a malicious grin on his face as he takes in my trapped position. “Looks like your friend bailed.”

  I reach under my jacket for my gun, but it's only when my fingers tighten around nothing but air that I remember…I was holding the gun when we crashed. It must have gone flying. I’ve no idea where it is.

  I dart my eyes around the car, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible all while glaring at the biker.

  “And you’ve dropped your little weapon,” he chuckles. “Deary me pretty boy, don’t look like you're cut out for this life of crime.”

  “Fuck off,” I snarl, forgetting about my search for the gun as I scowl at him. Taking in his worn leather jacket and torn jeans, I notice a shiny wet patch down his left arm.

  A dark grin crawls across my face. “Looks like I’m not a half bad shot,” I smirk, gesturing with my chin to the bullet wound in his arm.

  He snarls at me, pissed off at the fact some rich kid like could get one over on him. It might have been a lucky shot, but I’ll take it right now. “Aye, ya might have hit me once, but I can promise ya, when I shoot ya, it won’t be in the arm,” he sneers, lifting his weapon to tap the butt of his gun against his head, letting me know exactly what he means. “It’ll be to kill ya.”

  I lift my chin as he turns the gun, pointing it right at me. In this enclosed space, there’s not a hope in hell that he’ll miss. I’ll be dead in the next thirty seconds. My pulse thunders, every muscle screaming at me to move, to fight back, but I refuse to let this fucker see me looking weak. I won’t show him any fear.

  Instead, I look him right in the eye, refusing to do so much as blink as he gives me a final smirk, his finger moving to rest on the trigger. Time slows down, every noise around me emphasized. I can hear the birds chirping up in the trees, completely oblivious to the carnage going on down here on the floor of the forest; smell the dank scent of sweat from the fucker on the other side of the car who clearly hasn’t had the fucking decency to shower in the last twenty-four hours. This is it. My final moments.

  I watch as—in slow motion—his finger pulls back on the trigger, his forearm muscles bunching from the weight of the gun in his hand, his eyes sharpening with concentration as he focuses on the center of my forehead.

  I tell myself I’m not going to close my eyes. I won’t look anywhere but in the eyes of this fucker who’s going to kill me, but as the loud blast of the gun firing rings out, my eyes involuntarily slam shut, my ears booming with the noise in the small confines of the car.

  Time suddenly seems to fast forward, whizzing past me, but the expected sharp pang of being shot doesn’t come. I don’t feel cold or unfocused. I don’t feel like I’m dying.

  Whipping my eyes open, I find Barrett standing a few feet away from the car door, his gun pointed in my direction. Between us, on the ground, lies a now dead member of The Feral Beasts, his glazed eyes staring unseeingly up into the canopy above us.

  Relief floods through me like a tidal wave, my whole body sagging from the weight of it. Holy fuck. I take several deep breaths, trying to comprehend how the fuck I’m still alive.

  “You didn’t seriously think I’d leave you alone, did you?” Barrett smirks, tucking his gun away and stepping towards me.

  “Maybe for just a second,” I breathe, a sharp, disbelieving chuckle whistling between my teeth.

  Closing my eyes, I take another deep breath. Fuck me, I’ve never wanted to hug that asshole more than I do right now.

  Feeling the lurch of the car moving, I open my eyes, watching as Barrett climbs into the vehicle and begins kicking at the edge of the windshield, putting all of his force behind the move as he drives his knees up, his feet connecting with the glass.

  “Feel free to chip in whenever you’re ready, Princess,” he grouches, using my nickname for Sophie as he repeats the action again. Small splinters radiate out from where he’s kicking, but it’s clear it’s going to take him some time to break the whole thing so I can get out of here.

  Mimicking the action, I hunker low in my seat, driving my feet up into the corner of the windscreen on my side of the car. Every ounce of strength I have left goes into the move, as I repeat it over and over again, Barrett doing the same beside me until the cracks span most of the glass and we’re both panting heavily.

  With one final slam of our feet against the window, the whole thing shatters, breaking apart from the seal round the edges. Pushing it outwards, until it falls against the hood of the car, I scramble up onto the dash, climbing through the newly vacated front window.

  Jumping down onto the ground, I stretch out my aching limbs, breathing in the fresh air, feeling fucking lucky to be alive, even if everything hurts.

  “We better get moving, I think the warehouse is several miles in that direction,” Barrett says, pointing vaguely in the right direction.

  It takes us well over an hour to trek through the forest, avoiding any main roads, to get back to the warehouse. By the time we do, it’s late in the day, the sun low in the sky. Thankfully, our phones survived the crash okay and we text into the group chat earlier to let everyone know what had happened so they weren’t worrying about us.

  Aiden offered to come pick us up, but given all that
’s happened today and the likely possibility that Kirk’s men are out on the roads searching for us now, it was safer for them to stay put, and for us to make our way on foot back to them.

  By the time we walk through the front door, we’re both a sweaty, exhausted mess. I don’t know about Barrett, but I feel completely wrung out, both physically and mentally.

  ________

  Walking into the bedroom after my shower, I find Sophie and Barrett lying on their backs on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Before I can ask what they’re doing, Sophie glances in my direction, lifting her hand for me to come to her. Doing just that, I lie down on the bed on the other side of her, stretching out so all three of us take up the whole thing. Her fingers intertwine with mine and the three of us lie there in silence for a while, each lost in our own thoughts.

  It feels fucking good to lie down after today. The hot water from the shower worked wonders on easing the ache in my shoulder, but now I’m fucking drained.

  “Aiden phoned Oliver. He’s going to get rid of the car and, eh, everything else, so it doesn’t raise any questions.”

  Her words are said into the silence of the room, neither Barrett nor I having the energy to respond.

  My eyes are half closed when Sophie speaks up again. “Tell me about your mum,” she says softly, breaking the silence and pulling me out of my semi-sleep.

  Licking my lips, I take a moment to bring my mom’s image up in my head. Thinking about her always brings up this mix of emotions I don’t understand or know what to do with.

  “She was beautiful,” I simply say, remembering how her long hair flowed effortlessly around her. She always had her hair sitting perfectly, no matter what time of the day it was. Her eyes were always so bright, sparkling in the light, except for when my father was around. Then they became a muted gray color, like all the life had been washed out of them. “I dunno if I’ve just blown her up in my head, put her on a pedestal that she could never have lived up to in real life, but I swear the light around her glowed.”

  “No, you’re right, it did,” Barrett agrees, lost in his own memories of my mother. He spent so much time at my house growing up, she was as much a mother to him as she was to me. Hell, she was more of a mom to him than his own. I know he felt her death as much as I did. “She had this life about her, a warmth that just sucked you in and made you want to be in her presence.” Yeah, that's exactly how my mother was. Everyone in the room gravitated towards her.

  “What was her name?”

  “Sarah.” I haven’t said her name in years. I’ve barely even thought it.

  “She used to make us snacks after school. She made the best cookies,” Barrett says wistfully. “Remember how she would sit with us while we ate? She’d ask us about our day, laughing along at whatever crap we’d gotten up to, sharing in our wins and telling us everything would work out when things didn’t go our way….she was the only person to ever really give a shit about us.” The heaviness in Barrett’s tone has us falling into silence again, my chest aching at the memory. She always wanted to know what we were up to, what was going on in our lives, at school, with our friends. I missed those chats after she died. No one was around to give a shit anymore. There were no more after-school snacks, no cookies, no one to talk to.

  “She never got angry with us,” I start, before Barrett interrupts me.

  “Except for that one time.”

  “When?” I ask, scrunching my face up, trying to remember ever seeing my mom angry. It just wasn’t in her nature, though.

  “Have you forgotten that day we were convinced if we dug deep enough, we would pop out in China?” He says, laughing at the memory.

  “Oh, yeah,” I reply, my mind drifting back to that day while Barrett re-hashes the story for Sophie.

  We were dead set on going on an adventure, but mom had said we couldn’t leave the property, so Barrett had said we could dig our way through the earth to the other side. It sounds ridiculous now, but we were like seven at the time. It made perfect sense to us.

  Of course we hadn’t been able to get into the shed to get any tools, so armed with rocks and a bucket we found somewhere, we hid in a flowerbed and started digging into the soil with our hands. It didn’t take long before we were covered in dirt with a relatively shallow hole in front of us that would never be deep enough to get us anywhere.

  Then the rain started. Not one of those fine drizzles that you hardly noticed. It full on, bucketed out of the heavens, soaking us in seconds and making the soil cling to us. Ditching our tools, we raced back to the house, traipsing through the kitchen with our dripping wet clothes and muddy shoes, not even realizing the mess we were leaving behind us. At least, not until my mother called our names.

  Her voice was like nothing I’d ever heard before. All deep and growly. It literally froze us in our tracks as we looked at one another, trying to decide if we were better to face her or run and hide. Before we could make a decision though, she appeared in front of us, absolutely furious, fuming about the muck we’d left on the floor and how we were going to catch a cold, demanding to know what we’d been up to.

  After telling us off and punishing us by promising we wouldn’t be allowed dessert that night, she made us go back to the laundry room and change, showing us how to wash our clothes before making us wipe up the dirty footprints we’d tracked through the house.

  Of course, by the time dinner rolled around, her foul mood was long gone, and she’d totally forgotten she wasn’t supposed to be giving us dessert. Instead, she made two huge ice cream sundaes for us, letting us eat them while we watched The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the television.

  Sophie’s light laughter draws me out of the memory, back to the bedroom with her and Barrett. “It sounds like she was an amazing mum,” she says, giving my fingers a gentle squeeze.

  “She was,” I sigh, my heart clenching. Even after all these years, I still miss her.

  “How come she ended up with your dad?” Sophie asks tentatively. I can’t blame her for being curious. My mom and dad as a couple makes zero sense. They were nothing alike.

  “You know how I said my mom drew everyone in a room towards her? Well, my dad was no exception. Apparently he saw her one night at a party and he just had to have her. He put on the charm, made her fall for him, then he proposed and they got married. It was only then that the fairytale started to crack, and he showed his true self. By the time she discovered who he really was behind closed doors, she was already pregnant with me.” A sinking pit forms in my stomach. Would my mom still be alive today if she hadn’t had me? Would she have escaped my father and lived a happy life?

  We lapse back into silence, no one knowing what to say.

  “Do you ever worry you’ll end up like your father?” Barrett asks after a few minutes. There’s a note of insecurity in his voice, like that’s something he’s thought about frequently. He’s nothing like his father, though. If anyone needs to worry about turning into their dad, it’s me. I’m much more like my father than Barrett is.

  “All the time,” I admit in a rare moment of honesty. Any other time and I’d never openly admit to that, but I’m feeling raw after nearly dying today and talking about my mom. I may as well lay all my cards out on the table. If I can’t do it with my brother and the girl I’m in love with, then who can I do it with?

  “None of us are like our parents,” Sophie growls out, her hand tightening around mine. “Barrett, your dad was a sleaze. He got off on having all this power over helpless girls, of taking girls without their consent. You’re a naturally flirty person, but when we’re...you know...you’re constantly checking to make sure I’m enjoying myself, that I’m still with you. You couldn’t be any more different from your father. It’s not in your nature to push someone to do something they don’t want.”

  Rolling over onto his side, lifting his head so he’s hovering above Sophie, he looks down at her with so much admiration and love. I never thought I’d see him so happy with a girl. He’s al
ways been flighty, jumping between chicks. I honestly could never have pictured him settling down before Sophie arrived, but since the first moment he met her he’s been captivated.

  “Thank you,” he murmurs, pressing his lips to hers in a quick kiss. I keep expecting this jealousy to roar to life in me when I see him or one of the others touching her, but it never does. Yeah, I want it to be me wrapped around her all the time, but she has the same light in her eye, the same easy smile when she’s with me, as she does when she’s with Barrett, Ty or Aiden. All four of us make her equally happy. I can tell she really doesn’t like one of us more than the other and knowing that settles any jealous urges.

  “As for you,” she says, turning towards me. Mimicking Barrett’s move, she rolls onto her side so she’s facing me. Barrett moves in behind her, his hand clasping her hip as she smiles at me. “You’re nothing like the manipulative asshole your dad was. Sure you’re dark and broody,” she says, a soft smile lifting at the corners of her mouth, almost as though she finds those qualities endearing, although I’ve no idea how she could. Lifting her hand, she places it on my chest, likely feeling the steady thumping of my heart beneath her palm. “But your heart is true. Underneath your tough exterior, you have your mum’s kindness. Her love flows through you, making you a better person.” She looks deep into my eyes and all I can see is sincerity. “You could never be your father.”

  Rolling over, I run my hand along her cheekbone, threading my fingers through her hair as I tilt her head, my lips meeting hers in a passionate kiss similar to the one Barrett gave her only a moment ago. I’ve no idea how she manages it, but somehow Sophie makes all the doubt and heartache fade away, filling the space with my love for her, my desire for our future.

  Chapter 23

  After Barrett and Preston made it back to the warehouse on Friday, we’ve spent the whole weekend holed up there, trying to come up with a game plan.