The Lonely Hearts Club

Chapter 50: Racing Minds (Hades)

"Run away?" Bree echoes slowly.

"Yeah." I shrug.

Joey isn't fucking off about his ultimatum and I don't want Bree getting caught up in the work I'm associated with any more than she already is.

Besides, Winterville is plagued with horrible memories for both of us. Running away is the only way to get out of this mess and get away from everything.

"We can even take the cat." I say just as a black fur-ball sprints into the room, meowing erratically.

"When would we leave?" She asks, frowning a little, pulling Acorn onto her lap when he jumps on the bed.

"We can leave now."

We don't need to take anything, I have more than enough money to make a brand new life somewhere extremely far away from here.

"That's too soon!" She says, sounding panicked.

"Then we'll leave later."

Bree looks down at her lap.

"It's pretty bad here." I say.

"I know."

"And every time things are going well, something has to fuck it up." I continue.

"I know."

She still seems uncertain, which I understand.

She doesn't know what Joey said, she doesn't know about what I actually do.

Right now, she's made friends, and running away would ruin those friendships.

"If we hate it, we can come back." I add.

"We can?" She asks.

"Yeah, we can think of it like a vacation in the meantime."

Bree can never be truly happy here, so it's time to go.

I'm mad at Joey and Nicks is pissing me off, I'll miss Angelo and the others, but I can't do it anymore.

I don't like hurting people, it's merely a means to an end.

Coming home to silence was therapeutic, I'd freeze everything out of my mind with a shower in the coldest setting then sit in the dark alone.

But Bree...she's in my life now.

My life isn't cold and dark anymore and I crave the opposite of that.

"Do you like it here?" I ask.

"Not really." She says quietly.

I turn on the bedside lamp and we sit in silence for a few moments.

"I want to go out with Lana, Coco, and Savvy just one more time." She chews the corner of her mouth. "Then we can go for a little bit."

"That's fine, it'll give me time to sort out a proper plan." I say.

I'll need to get a new car, I don't trust that Joey doesn't have some tracker implanted in it.

Bree runs a hand through her hair.

"Sometimes things feel like they're going so well," she says. "But then I have this feeling that it's...all gonna come crashing down."

If only she fucking knew.

"I love the girls, but when we're together I get this feeling that they're all in on something and I'm not."

She frowns.

"It's like at school when you'd be hanging out with a group of friends and no one would say anything, but you could tell something was up and then, the next day you'd figure out that they'd all had a sleepover without you."

Fuck, I think Bree's got good intuition.

"You know, now that I'm thinking about it...." She trails off.

"Yeah?" I prompt.

"All the times I've hung out with them, there have been little things that I've decided to ignore, but seem weird now I'm thinking about it."

"Like what?"

"I'll see Lana and Coco exchange looks and whispers when they think I'm not looking, like why are they doing that? I think it's because they secretly don't like me there." She fiddles with the hem of her shirt...well my shirt technically, but she likes it so it can be hers now.

"Nah, they like you." I say.

"They don't." She says firmly. "Even Savvy, don't you think it's suspicious that she did a complete turnaround? Like she hated me, she threatened to kill me and she meant it, but now she's hugging me and wants me to be her first aid person, that's just suspicious."

"That's the definition of Savvy," I say. "She'll either kill you or kill for you, there's no in-between."

"Right." She sighs.

After Bree's sleepover thing, I asked her to tell me what happened to Savvy's arm. Bree told me Savvy sliced herself open and got her to fix it, then sat down and talked to her for hours.

"Savvy likes to put people through tests," I say. "You passed yours."

"I still think it's weird, because how can you change up that fast?" She shakes her head. "Actually, I don't know if I want to even go out with them one last time, I want to go now, I have this feeling Hades, somethings not right."

Uh...no. No, it's not.

"And I feel like I'm being watched," she whispers. "But I don't think it's from Rowan, because honestly, I think his obsession has moved onto someone else, it's not me anymore."

I don't know about that, but I do know that Angelo tried to find some information about him, but there was nothing.

He's off the grid.

"He hasn't found me here, and I think we need to leave before he does." She says, sounding more confident about the matter.

"We have to go now," she says firmly. "I feel like if we don't go now something really bad is going to happen."

She's right about that.

"We'll take Acorn," she adds. "And we don't have to go back to my apartment ever again, Lotta will probably break in and find my money stash, I don't have to worry about any new tenants moving in, because no one wants to live where I live..."

She's rambling now, probably talking about all the things that have been racing in her mind but she hasn't been able to say aloud.

"I have my emergency savings card hidden in my kitchen," she says. "We can stop by and get it."

"We don't have to," I promise. "I've got this covered."

"And I don't like that Nicks has a key card." She adds randomly.

"I don't either."

Acorn yawns.

"He could have come in at any time."

"He could have."

Bree breathes in sharply.

"Are we actually going to do this?" She asks.

"Yeah."

I feel like sleep deprivation is partly to blame here, but that's Nicks' fault.

Don't fucking harass me at 5 in the morning.

I need a fucking break, and this is it.

Now I can really tell I've lost my edge.

Every other time I've run away, I never told anyone, let alone take someone with me, but Bree...well, Bree makes me want to do things differently.

Is there anything wrong with that?

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A/N: are you going with Hades or are you staying in Winterville?