ONLY ANGEL | JJ MAYBANK

TWENTY-THREE... getaway car

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

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It feels like Collins has been riding a rollercoaster against her will and has no way of getting off any time soon.

The past few days had just been a series of highs and lows, the highs mostly thanks to JJ, the lows due to things seemingly out of her control. The gold had been theirs, but then they'd been nearly robbed with their friend group threatened to be torn apart when emotions hit an all time high. Things felt like they would be okay when Collins and JJ were finally able to act on their feelings for each other that had been building up a tension that couldn't be suppressed any longer. Then the gold was taken from them, and John B had discovered the truth behind his father's disappearance with the culprit being the murderer and the robber in one, knocking them down like bowling pins in disarray. Despite it all, they'd had hope that their one chance to steal the treasure would end in a high that they could never come down from— but of course, when the rollercoaster ends, it takes you from its peak and brings you back down to earth.

Collins was feeling that drop in her stomach like she'd just gone 100 to 0 in seconds, and her body was struggling to adjust to the change in gravity. With the absence of John B, who they'd begrudgingly left behind, the Pogues had taken hiding under a shed full of junk that was a good distance from the runway, and far from the eyes of the police whom were the reason they'd fled in the first place. They paced the small area, not quite sure what they were waiting for, but waiting nonetheless until a sign appeared to hopefully tell them what to do.

Unfortunately, the only sign they got was the sound of a plane engine whirring, and soon enough, the aircraft they'd been chasing after was soaring across the sky above them. "And there goes the gold." JJ sighed as they all squinted up to look at it.

Defeat weighed down upon each of them as their last hopes of having 80 million dollars to solve all of their problems went thousands of feet high above the ground while their problems stayed right there with them.

Collins tore her eyes away from the sight and bit her lip while trying to come to terms with the fact that it was really over; they'd lost. After everything they'd done, all that they'd risked, they failed. What was she supposed to tell Charlie? Should she be saying her goodbyes to JJ, Pope, Kie, and John B? Because there was no way Charlie was going to let her see them again when she finally came clean to him.

That was the only way for her to fix things with him, wasn't it? Avoiding the truth had clearly gotten her no where, and lying more wasn't going to clear her conscience, nor was it how she wanted to repair her relationship with her brother after their most awful fight to date. Honesty seemed to be the only route that Collins could stand to go down. Charlie wouldn't be happy with all the chaos she'd managed to stir up since befriending the Pogues after a clean track record, so it went without a doubt in her mind that he would forbid her from ever seeing them again.

She looked around at her friends like it was going to be the last time she ever saw them, at least for a long time, because it very well might be. She felt even more deeply saddened by the whole situation when she saw the expressions on each of their faces. They were filled with such sorrow.

Pope was probably the saddest of them all. That sadness quickly turned though as the two boys turned and a slew of curses escaped their lips. JJ kicked a broken chair and dismantled it into smaller pieces with the force of his punt. Pope turned and dragged his hands over his face and cried out in anguish. He managed to pick up a discarded bat alongside the pile of rubbish and started taking his anger out onto whatever he felt like smashing at that moment. It was a sequence of glass shattering, metal denting, and wood splintering as the boy put every shred of energy that he had into destroying everything in his path.