Secrets

Chapter 9

"You get it now?" Lance asks softly, shrugging off his jacket to drape it over my shoulders.

"But...how? How can- are Noah and Ryan a part of Fallen too?" I gasp, unable to picture my strict, businessman older brother or my goofy, happy-go-lucky younger older brother as blood thirsty gangsters.

"Well, you don't see 'em down there. Right?"

Pushing my arms into the jacket sleeves, I meet Lance's eyes and shake my head.

"Then if I were you, I'd assume that that's a no on them being members of Fallen."

"But they're just like Nessa." I whisper.

"Which means?"

"Which means...that...I don't know..."

My mind suddenly blanks, and all I can really grasp is that my sister is a gang boss.

She has probably been a gang boss for a long time, my whole life even!

"And all this time...I never knew."

"Understand a little better now why I thought that you were connected to the gangs of this city, back when we first met?" Lance sighs, running a hand through his hair. "I knew who you were instantly, based off the info I was given about your family before I came to this place, so it didn't make any sense to me how a girl who would just walk right out into the path of an oncoming van could be a gangster."

"Hey!"

"And then you just had absolutely no fricking idea what I was talking about when I said that we were in the same line of business." Lance continues, flashing me a grin. "I started to believe you. With every question I asked, I could tell that your answers were genuine."

"So?" I grumble, slightly insulted by the mocking tone of his voice.

"So it just floored me that you could be so close to th...to one of the top gangs running Rose City, but never knew anything about it. Never questioned how different your life has been compared to everyone else's. It...I don't know, it just made me wanna help you out I guess."

With a shrug, Lance picks up the walkie-talkie and I turn away from it.

"My sister is a gang boss...and I've been followed around by gangsters every day since...probably since I was born..."

The thought sends shivers down my spine.

It's just too unbelievable!

"Then again, I'm sitting on the roof of what was supposed to be an abandoned warehouse, with a member of the scariest gang in the country..."

"How did everything get so crazy?" I whisper.

"It's not too late you know."

Glancing over my shoulder, I find Lance's eyes on me, unreadable and yet...I'd swear he almost looks sad.

"What?"

"I can take you home right now, and you can forget everything that you've seen tonight." He replies, crawling over to sit just a few inches away from me. "You could go back to ignoring everything that's strange about your life, forget that we ever met, and go back to living in the dark."

"I...I..."

Something about how close we are, how Lance is looking at me right now...I can't seem to catch my breath.

It's the last thing I should be thinking about at a time like this, but I wish he'd lean just a little bit closer.

Just an inch or two...