Escaped Masterpiece (The A Reports Series)

Nailed to a Wall

"I don't think you understand. I am an animal. I need to be free like I need oxygen."

I giggled at him pacing down the hallway, back, circling the living room, and then repeating.

"Don't you think you're over-exaggerating? It's only been three days." I said to him, picking back up the book I was reading.

"Three days, three-thousand days. There is no difference to a caged predator."

He stopped on his round in the living room and looked at me.

"I'm calling Kota." And with that he went out the back door, poking at his phone.

I sighed. Gabriel and I had been put on watch duty at the house and it was tiring work. Nothing had happened and he wasn't happy to have spent Friday, Saturday, and now Sunday at Nathan's house. I picked my book back up. Kota had stockpiled them for me about a week ago when I made a comment of not having read for a while.

The one I was reading now had a female main character that was in a love triangle with a dog, and what I thought was a bad fairy before Gabe explained it was a vampire. But it sparkled? She complained often about how she loved both of these guys. Ha, and she thought she had it rough.

I set the book on the floor by the couch, having lost interest in the series after three installments of what seemed like the same movements.

I put my head down and closed my eyes, listening to the breeze coming through the windows.

Being stuck in Nathan's house wasn't all that bad. The boys would stop by and hang out between their jobs, and I got some much-needed R and R. It was too cold to be swimming in the pool now, but sometimes we went and soaked our feet. It was fun the first day, we had a sleep over, but then the boys started dwindling out until it was just Gabriel and myself.

And then Gabriel started complaining...

I heard the sliding door open, and the tail end of a conversation. "Yes... Yes... Of course, who do you think I am? Yes, we will. Okay Kota, bye."

I sat up on the couch. "That sounded like good news?" I asked, hopeful that we could do something to cease the whining and the pacing.

"Yes, go get your sweet ass dressed Trouble, and wear something cute, but comfy." He said, running to Nathan's dad's room, where a standing clothes rail hung extra clothes for the boys.

I jumped up for my position on the couch and raced down to Nathan's room. It definitely wasn't torture to be here all weekend with Gabriel, but I was excited to go...

Wait, where were we going?

I kept the door cracked open, and hollered, "Meany, where are we going?"

"We're going to go make trouble, Trouble!" He hollered back.

I pulled some dark brown skinny jeans down from the closet, wiggling into them. Then a cotton tee that said 'wild hearts can't be broken', over that I threw on a pink knitted cardigan.

"Hmm, I wonder what shoes will be the best decision... Meanie!"

"What Trouble?" His voice came from somewhere a lot closer than I expected. I turned around and jumped, seeing him lean against the door frame to the bedroom.

"Uhm, I was wondering what shoes I should wear, since I don't know what we'll be doing."

"Grab the brown lace up riding boots, but to be safe put the white leg warmers under them, in case they start to chafe because they're new."

I dug through some shoe boxes until I found the boots he was talking about, and slipped them on over the leg warmers Victor and I found while we were looking at some of the gypsy carts, they were made from alpaca fur, and really soft.