Fall for me

Chapter twenty-three

We begin walking up the steps leading to the police station, just as we did that night. My body is trembling and my breathing is shaky. I try to take deep calming breaths, hoping Stiles takes the lead in there. I know he will, because that's what Stiles does. He protects me in any way that he can, however he can. He opens the thick heavy wooden doors, and my breath is taken away. Raken is standing directly in front of me with the widest toothy smile he can. My spine snaps straight and I can't move. I'm stuck in the doorway not able to let Stiles through. "Hey, what's up? Everything is going to be okay, the worst they can do is ground us... and well we live together so..." His voice halts as I feel his head snap into the direction mine is in. He sees him, he places his hand on my lower back and directs me to the opposite side of him, away from Raken. His hand never leaves my body, my throat is bone dry and it physically hurts to swallow. My eyes never leave Raken's and Stiles almost has us past him, when his voice halts our movements.
"Hey guys, what're you doing here?" He says looking down to where Stiles' hand is on my back. I go to step away from Stiles, but before my body can move I decide against it. It's like my body is trained to move away, but I'm not sure why. "We're picking our parents up. Going for an early dinner outside of town. What brings you here?" He finishes while looking around. We have a solid answer as to why we're here but there's no possible reason he would come here on his own free will. "Oh, there was a bar fight or something. I got called in as a witness." His eyes never leave mine. He knows. My arms drop to my sides and I can't move, I can't breathe. He knows I've told someone... he knows I'm about to tell Andrew. He's going to kill me — or even worse, he's going to kill Stiles. "Damn dude, that sucks. Just don't say too much" Stiles laughs and swiftly leads us away from him. I begin to question everything.
Should we be doing this? They still don't know anything yet, we can back out of it. Before anyone gets hurt. What're the odds Raken is in the police station the same time we're coming to tell the police everything we know? Did I give something away when we spoke earlier? I was trying to get information out of him... and maybe he was trying to get information out of me the same way. What did I do — I ruined everything.
We're almost to my moms desk when I stop Stiles, he looks at me confused at first but then he understands. "Stiles, can we tell them we want to have dinner at some place and drive there separately? I need to think — to really think about this before we do this." He nods his head, and we take the last ten steps before we're standing in front of my mothers desk. I try to fix my demeanor and slap a smile on my face before she looks up at us. She looks up briefly and I can now see she's on the phone, she raises her pointer finger at us and we wait until she's done. "Hey guys, what's going on?" She says with a smile plastered on her face. "Hey aunt Liv, we just wanted to go to dinner with you guys. Is there any way you can both get away?" He puts his hands on her desk and leans his weight on them. She looks over her schedule and crosses a few things out, "We can go in about thirty minutes. Will that work?" She asks. "That's perfect Erin will text you the name of the restaurant, see you in a little." He says swiftly. When we make it back to the lobby Raken is gone. I walk as quickly as I can back to the jeep and Stiles doesn't waste any time by buckling me in, he just walks straight to his side and gets in.
The restaurant is forty minutes away, and I lean my head on the window, close my eyes and try to figure out what to do. Every possible outcome is racing through my brain a million miles per minute, none of them have happy endings. I open my eyes and look at the blurry buildings we're passing, each one making me more and more nauseous. I turn my head to Stiles, "Hey how much longer do you think?" He looks down at his phone and back up to the empty road in front of us, "I would say ten minutes, why are you feeling okay?" I nod my head in response and take my chances looking back out the window. My eyes focus on the side mirror and through the slight fog two bright headlights make their way closer and closer to us. I inch closer to the mirror and make out a small circular shape in the headlight before it begins to back off and we're a few minutes from pulling into the restaurant. I don't say anything about the weird vibe that just climbed its way through my entire body, and soon I see the bright neon lights against the darkened sky. Stiles pulls into a parking spot and parks, but doesn't say a word. I go over everything in my head one more time before I decide to speak. "Stiles, are we sure this is the best way to do this? I mean... Raken told me. He told me if I told anyone he would hurt you. Or someone I love, but definitely emphasized on you. I just — I can't — If something happened to you—" I stop talking in fear that I'm not making any sense. He leans over and wraps his arms tightly around me. "Baby, nothing is going to happen to me. We're going to go inside and tell our parents what we know, then we're going to go home and act like none of this ever happened. If they find her, amazing. If they don't find her... then we did everything we could to help her. I'm not sure what else we could have possibly done to help her, okay?" He kisses my forehead so tenderly I almost don't even feel it.  I nod my head multiple times not sure if I'm trying to assure him or myself at this point.