Adler | The Aces of St.Sinclair BOOK 1.

Goodbye | A FORTY SIX

A/N: I dedicate this chapter to Thatgurlaturdoor and blobwithdajob. Thank you for all your support and feedback!

My eyes stared upward into nothingness. Darkness surrounding me. Only the silvery streaks of light casted from the bay window providing me some sort of visual on the silhouetted objects in the room. Snores from the bed across wailing out like a siren, no signs of ending. I turned over on my pillow.

Tonight was shaping up to be one of those nights. It wasn't anything trauma induced, or an illness. I self acclaimed it as a me thing; it would happen at least twice a year at random where sleep would be close to impossible. No matter how tired I knew I was, my body wouldn't cave until daybreak.

Except, I didn't have the option to sleep in this time round. Our flight back to England was scheduled at eight am and I had to try to slay this dragon somehow.

The burst of bright luminescence had me wincing, eyes crinkling until they gradually adjusted to the light of my phone screen. Quarter past midnight flashed as my starting point and the race to wear myself down to the bone was on.

Sneaking in to Garren’s suite came to mind first but during our return, he ran into Xinyi who wanted to 'share a few last things' and they slipped off somewhere. Maybe I was thinking wrongly but I wasn’t in the mood to drop by and possibly find someone else was on that bed besides me. Will and Ben didn’t answer their phones.

I texted Shaun without meditating on how exactly he'd perceive a 'Hi' in the middle of the night. I was his girlfriend though— I was allowed to inconvenience him, right?

I waited several minutes and there was no response. I sighed. Granted, it was a long shot to assume every teenage boy was nocturnal like Liam.
Unlike my body, my mind was what would be in affect, growing sluggish as I aimlessly browsed through Ashton's profile page and recent posts. Then in the blink of an eye, I somehow crossed over to her cousin's boyfriend's card trick channel. He knew some pretty interesting manoeuvres.

I planned to abort after a while, but then my eyes strayed to the related pages and my groggy brain hooked on a familiar string of letters that formed the name.

Alger Hess

Maybe I would've stopped there if I hadn't seen it after opening the profile. The little symbol of notification that the person was currently active.

Before I could think over what I was doing, I'd already scoured out the number and set my phone to dial.

‘Hess and Charlie differ greatly.’

Like an echo, Garren's words back in his suite that night replayed in my head, along with that unforgettable expression I witnessed in those crystal blue eyes that could no longer be put to rest.

The line pitched in on the third ring and the snake's voice came through.
“Stevie?”

Hearing Hess sound anything besides assertive was intriguingly bizarre. “Why do you sound so surprised?”

There came a pause before he spoke again, voice a little more settled and recognisable. “I have reason to be, don’t I? Striking up the conversation is my thing.”

I scoffed. “Conversation? I don’t recall having any of those with you. What I recall is you following me, making inappropriate remarks and harassing me.”

I wanted to imagine the bastard would be holding this chewed up look or at least bear a frown but that was what made Hess so insufferable. None of my disgust seemed to faze him— in fact, it was like in his warped mind, there wasn’t a reason to feel rattled by it.