Wounded; A Brallie Fan Fiction *EDITING*

Chapter Six: Gone Girl

Brandon's POV
Callie looked at me and pinched her face together as she was about to sob.

"I love you, Brandon. Tell Moms I'm sorry," she said, and then she took off down an alley way. She ran at the speed of lightning, far too fast for Mom to catch up with her, though she tried.

I watched as Callie disappeared behind a corner, right as Mom began to run after her. She'd never catch up.

But why would Callie run? Why would she leave so instinctively?

And then it hit me. That was her plan all along. Of coarse it was. I should have known that. She was never going to tell Rita that she 'went to pick up missing work'. That was a flakey lie, and she didn't think I could figure that out.

Should I be hurt, or worried about Callie?

Mom came back around the corner without Callie walking beside her. It was an understatement to say that her approach was angry. She was furious. I could say goodbye to Idyllwild and everything following it.

I got in the passenger's seat of the patrol car as Mom got closer and closer, and her expression got angrier and angrier. For a humorous, yet serious second, I wondered if she was going to brutally murder me today.

I wouldn't rule out the possibility; she was pissed.

Just when I expected her to yell, she didn't. No, she didn't yell; she lectured, which is just as terrible.

"What were you thinking, B?" She asked, and I said nothing. "Huh?! What was going through your mind when you decided to get back with Callie, who, in case you weren't aware, is your sister."

"She's not," I whispered in hopes of her not hearing.

"Yes, Brandon, she is!" She shouted.

"No, Mom. She's Jude's sister, she's Jesus's sister, she's Mariana's sister, she's Sophia's sister. She's everybody's sister but mine." I told her. She didn't say anything, and I could see the sympathetic expression on her face. "It takes a different kind of love to be brother and sister."

And with that, Mom shot me an angrily surprised look, her eyebrows turned in. "Are you still in love with her?!"

I looked out the window, and gulped, which I knew was enough of an answer for her. I heard her draw in a exasperated breath of fury and worry.

"Brandon, no. No. You're not going to do this. You're not going to manipulate the situation any further and you most definitely are not going to have any kind of a relationship with Callie. Do you understand me?"

I said nothing.

"Do you understand me?!" She yelled.

"No!" I yelled back immediately, which surprised her. I felt something inside me snap in half, and adrenaline broke free, pumping into my veins and giving me the courage to explode. "What the hell is wrong with you?! Just last week you told me that you and Mama weren't there for me enough about Callie, and that you understood my heart was broken! And now that's different?! What, was that just you spitting love out of your ass just because you thought Callie and I were over?! Well we're not! And guess what?! We violated the restraining order! We dated the whole time she was at Girls United! And Outlaws?! That was for Callie! Not Lou! And at the fundraiser before the ambulance showed up?! We kissed! And guess what else you'll be happy to hear?! My 'sister' and I had sex last night! So no, I don't understand you and I'm not even going to try to!"

There was now an expression I'd never seen on her face before. I'd never seen her look so angry and yet, so mind-blowingly confused in the exact same moment. Her face twisted into a fragment of blunt sadness then, and she didn't say anything else.

We drove around looking for Callie for another hurtfully silent hour, and with no luck we went back home.

It was two o'clock when we pulled into the driveway, and Mom finally said something, but they weren't the bundle of apologetic words I wanted to hear. Instead, she was distant, and she kept it short and terrifying.

"You are going to be in a world of trouble, Brandon Adams-Foster." She mumbled, and then slammed the door behind her after she got out.

It took me a second to process the terror I felt arising in my stomach, boiling up to the surface, but I finally got out of the car and followed my Momster into the house.

When I got inside, I saw a worried Mariana sitting on the couch in front of the window, and an angry Jude placed right next to her. Rita was pacing a whole in the floor in front of the coffee table, and Mama was on the phone with (it sounded like) Monte, the principal at Anchor Beach.

I prepared myself for the punishment and the scrutiny from everyone in the house. It got even worse when my dad, Mike, came trailing down the stairs. He was even more intimidating in uniform, like Mom.

"Where in the hell were you?" He asked, and before I had a chance to answer, he bombarded me with an eternity's worth of even more questions. "Were you with Callie? What did you two do? Where is she? Where did you go? How did you-"

"Mike, enough," Mom said, surprising the hell out of the both of us. "Brandon wasn't with Callie."

I looked at mom, bug-eyed and hot-cheeked. The wheels in my head began to turn with curiousity, until it all clicked together in unison; Callie. Mom was going to lie her ass off for as long as she had to, so long as it meant getting Callie back home.

"So where were you then?" My dad asked.

"I left early for Idyllwild this morning," I lied.

"But your car's still here," he said.

"My partner for the contest picked me up. He was already in the area," I said as I began to twitch and squirm. It wouldn't be long before I'd start stuttering and scrambling my words into improper sentences. "I came back early because Jesus called me and told me Callie was missing, and that everybody was looking for me, too."

"And that's when I found him at the bus stop," Mom finished. I studied my dad's skeptical expression, but decided not to worry about it for too long, otherwise he'd catch on.

Dad rolled his eyes. "Look. I like Callie. Really, I do. But she's caused a lot of problems for the people in this family. Is she really worth it?"

Everybody in the house stayed silent, and looked at my Dad with angry eyes. Jude looked hurt, and Mariana looked the angriest out of all of us.

"Mike, Callie is a part of this family," Lena said. "We appreciate your help with this but if you're going to bash our daughter in front of her siblings, or at all for that matter, then you can leave."

I'd never heard my dad speak so lowly of anybody before. I suppose it was purely out of his worry for me, but I couldn't bring myself to believe that he'd say those things without any genuine resentment. He said nothing, though his cheeks turned pink and he shifted his attention to the ground around his feet.

Mom sighed and pressed her fingers to her temples in stress, and before we knew, the whole room has inflated with tension and fear.

"So where is Callie?" Rita asked.

Author's note: So this is definitely not one of my strongest chapters, and the writing is really poor, but keep reading, the next chapter is really good, and Jesus comes back in again!