IN TOO DEEP || Liam Dunbar [3]

TWELVE

After spending the rest of the night hanging out with Brett, the two of them had driven to the nearest lookout and talked about Owen and Liam while eating the doughnuts Trudy had brought them when they were leaving. Stiles hadn't been mad when she woke him up at 6:30 that morning after getting home, later on explaining it was because she looked so much more relaxed and calm than she had when she'd left the house.

She looked emotionally lighter.

She'd spent the rest of her day studying for her exams that were taking place the next week, but by the time the sun was beginning to set her eyes ached and her head hurt from trying to understand physics. After sitting there and staring at it for another fifteen minutes, she gave up.

Without a word, she barged right into Stiles' room — ignored the way his head popped up from behind what almost looked like a castle of cardboard boxes — and grabbed the Jeep keys before leaving again. "You literally don't have your license!" He called after her.

She pressed the panic button so it honked repeatedly, and snickered to herself when she heard him shriek and drop several things. She stopped the noise and slid into the passenger seat, and sighed.

In the keep was the only quiet place she could think of right off the bat, but Katherine knew that it would never feel the same without Stiles in it. Things wouldn't be the same without him, and as happy as she was that he'd gotten into the FBI training program, she was going to miss him a whole lot more than she ever would admit to.

With her arms folded over her chest she stared out the windshield, lips pursing. Truthfully, all she wanted to do was call Liam to come over and talk her through the fact that she hated the idea of her brother leaving.

But he was with Hayden.

As the school year had wrapped up and exam prep was starting, she had sat them both down and explained that her and her sister were both leaving beacon hills. Katherine had understood, after taking the time to listen to her reasoning — she wanted to keep her sister safe and she couldn't do that here — but she knew full well that Liam still felt guilty for the way he'd treated her.

The three of them had talked about it, all of them admitting they were unbelievably stupid teenagers for letting things play out the way that they had. But she had agreed to let Liam and Hayden have a more in-depth conversation by themselves, as they both did deserve it.

So there she sat, in the passenger seat of the Jeep in the midst of a existential crisis, not knowing what the hell she was supposed to do to calm herself down.

Absentmindedly she switched on the Police Scanner and immediayelt felt her heart lurch as one of the officers reported a vehicle with no permit sitting stationary in the parking lot across the street from the grocery store a five minute walk from her house. That wasn't abnormal, as there was the occasional person living out of their car that passed through Beacon Hills, but it was the license plate that caught her attention.

Theo's truck.

Immediately, she flipped the scanner off and sat in silence.

She knew that Liam had brought him back to help deal with the Hunt, but she hadn't actually seen him since being back. But he had explained that he'd saved his life in the hospital and had used himself as bait for the Hunters in order for Liam to escape, which she knew the old Theo would never had done.

Whatever he had gone through had changed him, and she didn't know how he was going to handle it. Chances are, if he was living out of his truck, things couldn't be going the greatest for him.

Katherine thought about it briefly, after a split second decision, she went back into the house, tossed the keys onto her brothers bed, grabbed twenty dollars from her wallet and left the house again. Her phone was in her pocket so she didn't bother yelling that she was going out, just texted the family group chat that consisted of her Dad, Stiles, Melissa, Scott and herself.