BETRAYAL | JJ Maybank Fanfic [outer banks]

THIRTEEN

Pope, JJ and I ran after John B. He was throwing the documents and boxes from his father's office into the backyard. I didn't quite understand what he was up to, but his "burn everything" expression didn't give me a good vibe. Did he intend to make a bonfire in the garden?

"John B, hey, hey." I approached him before he threw one of the pictures with compass information into the rest of the piles of stuff. "Don't you think you're jumping the gun?" his look was hard and aggressive, he was really pissed off and I could make out hints of disappointment.

"Fuck it all, JJ give me the gas can." JJ without arguing complied with his orders and within seconds the strong smell was flooding our nostrils.

"Dude, don't be so radical." Pope tried to hold him back.

"Radical?" John B annoyed threw the gas canister to the side. "This fucking shit is driving me crazy and endangering us all...so just...I'm going to burn it all down."

Unable to argue any further John B pulled out a pack of matches and lit one by tossing it into the pile of things that would form the bonfire. Seeing tears rolling down his cheeks I reached over and grabbed him around the waist. He took a few moments to reciprocate but ended up wrapping his arms around me.

We stood in silence staring into the fire that had been created and as each of the flames burned all the memories and works of Big John and my father, everything they had ever fought for, everything that made us be in this situation. At the thought, a couple of tears escaped, which I quickly wiped away with my right palm.

Suddenly John B lets go of my grip and with a stick approaches the bonfire. In one motion he pulls out a board with names and pictures of his family's ancestors and crushes it with his foot several times to extinguish the remaining flames.

"What is that?" I asked as I saw him stare at it for a few seconds.

"That's..." he muttered more to himself than to the rest. "Let's go find Kie." without another word he headed for the van to set our destination in motion.

"Dude you can't just go back and forth without explaining anything to us." complained JJ as we followed in his footsteps. "You're a fucking chamber of secrets buddy, share some."

"I think I have a clue." with that he hopped into the driver's seat and shut the door.

"Come on, not again." almost pleaded Pope, but it didn't do him much good because we were already mounted up towards our new course.

~•~

"She says she's not coming!" exclaimed Pope from the doorway of Kiara's parents' restaurant.

"What? Why not?" JJ turned to John B. "What the fuck did you do to her?"

"Shit." he cursed in a shaky voice like he was nervous about something.

"Is everything okay?" I asked confused. Kiara not being up for coming with us was pretty strange unless something had happened on her excursion to the lighthouse that made her avoid us.

"Yeah, yeah...I'll go talk to her...I..."

"You know, I'll go, we women understand each other much, much better."

I wouldn't know how to describe the look on John B's face that he was giving me, but I knew from the way he was wiping his cuticle cuticles that he was nervous about something. I wanted to put that strange feeling that was creeping up on me aside because we had more important things to do, however I couldn't help but be annoyed.