Forever and Always, In my heart

Chapter 40:

Ch. 40

~Peyton POV~

I woke up to my phone obnoxiously ringing. David groaned, so I grabbed my phone and quickly exited his room. “Hello?”

“Just know that I warned them to stay out of it.” And without another word, Tim hung up leaving me staring at my phone.

“Huh?” I whispered but just shrugged and walked back into David’s room and crawled onto his bed.

He wrapped his arm around me and kissed the top of my head. “Who was that?” His voice was still heavy with sleep.

“It was Tim, but that was weird.” I let the confusion fill my voice because what he said still made absolutely no sense to me. At all.

I felt his body stiffen. “Oh.” There was tightness in his voice and it made me wonder if it was only because of the name, or if I was missing something. Did something happen last night that I don’t know about? “What did he say?”

“He said to remember that he warned you guys to stay out of it.” I thought about it and that only just happened last night, so how would someone have time to do anything? Then something occurred to me. “Where did you go when you tripped over your chair last night?”

“Nowhere.” He answered me a little too quickly. “I went to the bathroom. That’s all.” He was covering up something.

“David Allan Joseph, don’t you lie to me. I’ll be very angry with you.” I looked up at him and frowned. “What did you do?”

“Swear you won’t get mad at me?” He asked, looking a little frightened.

I growled. “What. Did. You. Do?” I said each word separately.

He held his hands up in surrender and sat up on his bed, leaning against the headboard. “I may or may not have gone to the police last night.”

“David!” I shouted louder than intended. “Why would you do such a thing?” I sat up on my knees and faced him. “You idiot!” I punched his thigh, causing him to wince a little. Good. He deserved that. “I told you not to do or say anything! To anyone! Especially the police!”

“Peyton Rene!” He knew I hated when people used my middle name. I wasn’t some little kid, and it made things worse when he used it. It felt like he was belittling me somehow, even though I just used his full name at him. “You know I couldn’t just sit around and watch this happen to you! Look, I know you’re angry at me…”

“No, I’m way past the angry stage.” I crossed my arms at him. “I was angry when you were lying to me.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine, I know you’re pissed, but just hear me out.” He waited a second and when he saw I wasn’t going to say anything he continued with a calmer tone. “Look, I hated seeing or even hearing about the things he did to you. Last night was the last straw and I had to do something. I don’t know why you won’t do anything but I had to. I couldn’t watch him hurt you anymore. He would still find ways to hurt you even if you stayed here, so something had to be done. I wasn’t going to sit around and feel useless about it. I could do something about it and I did. If it makes anything better for you they wouldn’t help me because it wasn’t me who it was happening to. They said you had to be the one to do it, so it’s basically like nothing happened.”

Actually, that didn’t make me feel better. I know I was mad at him, but it was more because I didn’t want him to get hurt. After last night, he’s right, I really should do something about him, but I just can’t make myself do it. The fact that he went in the wee hours of the night just for me, well, I don’t know who else would have done that for me. Maybe Jules or Ally, but I still haven’t told them. As a matter of fact, I haven’t talked to them for a while. I’m such a bad friend.