Fall for me

Chapter eight

It's been two weeks since the night of the accident, everyone has completely forgotten about the whole thing it seems like. Everyone around me is always smiling or laughing, it feels like my friends are no longer mine... like I don't know them anymore. Landon just got a car, so now he takes Tristan and Charli to and from school. The only person who's tried having an actual conversation with me in the past week is Lindsey.
Two days ago Lindsey walked to my car as I was getting in to go home for the day. She opened my car door and asked to hangout. I told her I was still in trouble and she asked if my mom would be home. Obviously she wouldn't be, because she works late every night with Stiles' dad. She's not only the receptionist but now his assistant. She proceeded to convince me to take her home. When we got home my dad was there and had a weird look on his face; a mixture of surprise and fear? I didn't call him out in it though and we went to my room. I climbed into my bed and laid there, I couldn't decide if I were trying to fall asleep or trying to stay awake. She said she had to leave twenty minutes after we got there, but I didn't hear the door close until forty five minutes later. It was weird, but again I didn't ask her or my dad about it.
Today is Monday, and I wear the same thing I always wear for school. But instead of curling my hair, I just put a beanie on and braided the pieces that could be seen. I didn't even bother wasting the concealer to try and cover the sunken in bags under my tired eyes. When I made it upstairs no one was home... just a sticky note on the fridge. 'I'll be late. There's a casserole in the oven, warm it when you get hungry." Surprise... surprise. I've been spending a lot of time by myself the past two weeks, Stiles has said a total of fifteen words to me in total since our kiss. I really missed the ball on that one.
I walk into the lunch room and everyone is sitting in their normal seats, with a space between Stiles and Tristan for me. I skip the line and sit down, and Stiles turns to me immediately. "Hey... can we go somewhere and talk?" He whispers, even though no one is paying attention to us. I nod, "Sure." He stands up and I follow. He leads us out to the patio we're allowed to use for lunch outside. It's on the third floor of our school so there's a stone balcony wrapped all the way around it.
There's only one kid out here and he has headphones in and is reading a book. 'If he had been with me' He's still in the first half of the book, and I hope he finishes it at home. It had me ugly crying for hours when I finished it. Not a book I would expect the male gender to read, not that there is a certain gender for different books but I dig that he is.
Stiles walks to the far left side of the patio and abruptly stops causing me to smack into him. He quickly turns around and starts. "Sorry, I'm sorry." He says with concern on his face. "Oh, I'm fine. It's okay." I responded back to him. "No, not for that. I mean for that too, but I'm sorry for kissing you." He's sorry? I've had a few kisses in my lifetime and have never received an apology after it. Especially since I've never had a kiss make me feel like his did.
He must have sensed the confusion, because he turned around and dragged his hands from the back of his head all the way down to his neck and started pacing. "You're sorry?" He abruptly turned toward me again. "Yes, I'm sorry. You had just broken down... I literally found you in the bath with freezing cold water running over you, and I kissed you. I made out with you. I took advantage of the state you were in –" I stopped him before he could continue digging a hole for himself. "Stiles. It's okay, I promise. I wanted to kiss you, you didn't take advantage of me. If anything I took advantage of you." I said, giving him a cheeky smile. His entire face lit up and he gave me a cocky grin. "You wanted to kiss me?" I rolled my eyes. "So is there anything else? We're good I promise. I miss you." I said letting out the breath I had been holding since I sat down.
"Okay, okay. We're good. There is something else though. I can't get my mind off the girl. I have been having really vivid dreams or well... nightmares about the entire thing and I want to do our investigation." He said all in one breath. "Okay yeah let's do it." I say while shrugging my shoulders. "After school?" I speak again. "Actually I was kinda wanting to do it now? Or if you don't want to skip, I guess we can do it after school?" He says. I think about my options, there's only an hour left of school. I really would like to spend more time with him without our friends and not in bed. "Fuck it, let's do it now." I say with a grin on my face.
His entire face lit up like a child on Christmas morning. He grabbed my hand and looked behind us toward the all glass wall separating the patio and the lunch room. When he saw that there were no teachers and none of our friends watching he took off to the small break in the balcony. Our entire school is built on hills, so all we had to do was walk down the hill to get to flat ground, and walk around the building to the student parking lot.
We're walking up to Stiles' jeep when the music teacher is walking from his car to the entrance of the school. "What're you guys doing?" He says while juggling his phone, drink, keys, and a huge sandwich in his hands. My eyes darted to Stiles and he made a break for it. "Hurry hop in!" He said while jumping into the driver's seat. I do. Just as I shut the door Stiles takes off leaving a giant cloud of dust behind us. The windows are down and air is blowing all throughout his jeep. This is the first time in weeks that I've felt anything and it was such an adrenaline rush. I look over to Stiles and he has a shit eating grin across his face. I felt my heart in my chest beat faster. It's crazy how my body reacts to being around him.
"So where are we going?" I say after staring at him for a moment, probably too long. He takes a sharp left turn and shrugs his shoulders. "Well, if we're going to get anywhere with this we have to start at the beginning. We're going to the library to look at all the old articles about Joey, and everything he's been convicted for. We have to see who we're really dealing with here." What he said makes sense but a feeling of unease sets in over me. It's been a few weeks since the whole thing and I haven't seen or heard from Joey since. I've just been waiting for the shoe to drop.
We walk into the library and go straight to the archive section, Stiles used to come here all the time with his dad. Anytime we had a report due about the town or anything like that his dad would bring him here, saying that kids these days have their faces stuck into a cell phone or computer and needed to know how to find things the old fashion way. Jokes on him though because a few years ago they digitized all the archives, so now they're all on computers. Stiles shows me the basics on how to navigate the system and we get to work. We had been at it for about two hours only finding things we already knew about. "Oh here I have something!" He says bringing me out of a zombified sleep with my eyes open. I blink a few times trying to get my eyes to focus. "Juvenile caught peeping into windows, and is later picked out of a line up" He says reading the headline. Further reading we learned that he had been looking through the windows of his twenty six year old neighbor when he was fifteen. The police initially brought him in to scare him, but while being questioned, the officer noticed a birthmark under his jaw that someone a few weeks earlier had described her assailant had. He had been waiting to cross the street at our local fair while a mother and her young daughter were waiting next to him. She had her one year old in a stroller waiting on the curb for the walk sign. Raken had looked at her a few times and made her uncomfortable. She tried turning the stroller away from him but as soon as she unlocked the wheels, Raken had pushed the stroller into oncoming traffic.
I gasped, "I knew he was sick... but I didn't know he was this sick. A child?" I finished while turning the screen for him to read. After a few moments he responds. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, the car swerved and hit a telephone pole instead of the little girl." He says while sitting back in his seat. I nod my head, "That does make me feel a little better. But he's still sick." I say folding my arms in front of my chest. He stretches his arms behind him and his shirt lifts and I can see the bottom of his stomach. He has an athletic build, the last time I saw him without a shirt was when we were like ten, and his body definitely didn't look like that. He is lean but also has obvious muscles. His muscles aren't huge but are well defined in proportion to his body.
I pull out my phone and look at the time, "Woah, how is it already so late? My dad is going to kill me." I say while standing up. I look over at him and he smiles and shakes his head, "when are you going to learn? If you're with me... there's no possible way you can get in trouble." He says while standing. I exit out of all the open links I had open, but get this weird feeling that someone is watching me. I feel every hair on the back of my neck stand up tall and my entire body gets a weird tingle coursing through it. I look over my shoulder but don't see anyone. "You okay? What's wrong?" Stiles says from a few feet away from me. His face scrunching with concern. I shake my head and look toward him. "Nothing... I just — I just thought someone was back there." I say and continue walking.
We get outside and the cold hair essentially punches me in the face, I wrap my arms around myself to keep in the warmth that I have. We had to park behind the building so no one who knew his car would see it and come wandering inside to see what he was doing here. We make it to the side of the building which is kind of like an alley, and I see the silhouette of someone in the shadows. I halt to a stop which causes Stiles to stop too. "What's up?" He says confused. "Stiles..." I say while taking a few steps backward. When he turns his head to look where my eyes are stuck on we hear a sound that I can only describe as metal scratching metal. "Run. Erin run!" He says while turning around and pushing me back toward the street.
Everything is happening at once and my body goes into survival mode. I start running and don't stop. Stiles stays behind me the entire time, not passing me even though I know he could if he wanted to. We make it all the way past the library and almost to the gas station when we finally see him. It's an older man with scruffy facial hair. He's huge, and has muscles bigger than my head. He's wearing black combat boots, black cargo pants, and a black tshirt straining around his biceps and chest. He's not running, he looks like he's in no rush at all. He's about thirty feet away from us, and he halts to a stop. I look over at Stiles and he's wearing the same expression I'm feeling. Fear.
The light catches something in the man's hands so I turn toward him and see a knife about the size of my hand. All the air is sucked from my lungs and I'm stuck, every cell in my body is telling me to move but I can't. "Erin. When I say go... run to my jeep. Don't look back and don't wait for me." Stiles says in a voice so low I can barely hear him. I snap my head toward him, and he grabs my hand and pries my fingers open and places his keys in it. "I'll be fine. I'll be right behind you, I promise." He says with a tremor going through his voice. "Stiles–" I start but am interrupted. "Go! Now Erin, go!" I go against every fiber in my body and I run. I run as hard and fast as I can. Within three minutes I'm in his jeep. I lock the doors and keep my eyes peeled for him. After a few minutes my chest starts aching and I'm uncontrollably shaking. "Come on Stiles... come on." I say to myself.
I get closer to the wheel and look out the windshield trying to make out anything I can in the dark, when there's a loud thud on the passenger window. I shriek in response but when I look it's Stiles. I unlock the door and he jumps in relocking the doors. "Drive! Drive!" He says while buckling his seatbelt. I pull out so fast the tires start smoking and I'm sure there are tire marks left on the pavement.