Flirting With Fire

Chapter twenty-six: A few home truths

Chapter Twenty Six

The next morning brought a new perspective on things for Whitney. She was a little more positive, more motivated to find out some hard truths and start fixing this mess.

She woke up in her own bed - alone - with lots of missed calls from her Dad. She'd had some last night too, but she'd ignored his ridiculous voice mails. He had sent over five insisting she get back in contact with him. He was staying with Uncle Jim, one of those uncles who weren't actually related to you but liked you to address them as they were one. Now Whitney thought about it, she had quite a few of those 'Uncles' around.

The messages were frequent and she could tell her Dad was worried, but she thought it was silly to go to Uncle Jim's in the middle of the night. Especially when she was so upset, and angry with her Dad.

'Whitney?'

'Hi Dad...'

'Oh thank God, why didn't you return my calls? We were worried about you!'

Whitney rolled her eyes into the empty room, 'Chill, I'm just at home wouldn't take a genius to figure that out.'

'Don't talk to me like that,' he replied sternly and Whitney was reminded of times when she was younger when he would discipline her. 'This situation is a lot more serious then you might think.'

'I know everything Dad...' She said quietly. 'I know exactly how serious the situation is.'

There was silence at the other end of the phone for a minute where Bill was trying to think of something to say. 'Well if you know everything, you understand how important it is for you to get out of that house right now. Come to uncle Jim's and we'll head home together from there. I'll have someone collect your things later.'

'No way.'

'Whitney this isn't a time to be difficult, there's a lot of bad blood between your boyfriends family and ours. He won't welcome you with open arms when you next see him, believe me.'

Whitney frowned, 'No Dad, this is your mess not mine.' She was a lot more optimistic about the Riley part of the situation too. She wasn't just disappearing from Willow again. She had Robbie and Lila to think about and of course Riley if he wanted her.

'It was everyone's mess when they figured out I had a family honey,' he was trying to break the news gently to his daughter but she could hear the edge in his voice. He was getting frustrated with her, she knew that.

'You don't know anything about my friends,' she retorted quickly eager to get off the phone and go and find Riley. 'If you want to go back to Mum, go ahead. I'm not in any danger here...' She trailed off uncertainly suddenly remembering the multiple times she'd been broken into and had horrible messages left for her.

Had someone known who she was all along? Was that why she was getting those threatening messages?

'Whitney?' Her dad was suspicious. 'What's going on? Has something happened?'

'Uh, no Dad everything's fine. Look I'm not coming with you, I'm not a child so don't treat me like one. I'll call you tomorrow at Mums.'

She hung up the phone quickly before his protests started and sat back down on her bed deep in thought. She drifted back on the times she'd received the notes. They didn't really give anything away, the words didn't mention anything specific, just a general warning. All those times she spent wondering why someone was threatening her...Whitney was starting to think someone in this town did know about her families past.