Undercover

4. Victory?

As I had predicted, Cayden basically drilled me about the boy that he had seen me with. He saw how convinced I was about the nature of the boy next door, and he agreed to tolerate hanging out with him as long as I wasn't extremely late getting home. That I understood. He just wanted to make sure that I was safe and it made sense to him. So I couldn't tell him no. I agreed to his terms of the deal an that was that. I don't think that he would ever attack us like he did earlier in the day.

When I walked into the room, Ingrid was sitting on my bed reading one of my books.

"What are you doing with my book?" I asked her, with an eyebrow raised. She mostly kept to her room and was never a big fan of the genres that I collected. So the fact that she was on my bed reading one of the books that was obviously missing from my collection on the bookshelf was a surprise for me.

"Who's your new crush and why didn't you just say he liked the series?" I asked her, knowing fully well her motives for this trespass.

She sighed. "How do you do that? You just kind of read my mind and you're not even seeing my face. I couldn't have denied or accepted it and there were no clues at all."

"I'm your sister, Ingrid. You literally can't lie to me. I know you too well to know that you would never touch those books willingly, unless you really wanted to impress someone."

"His name is Shane. And he's totally into bio and all of this stuff and I want to have something to talk about with him. You know I am horrible at any kind of science and historical fiction is one of the genres that I avoid at all costs. But when he told me that this was his favorite book and I found it here, I had to read it. It's actually not a bad book."

"Okay, so a boy can get you into reading a specific book genre you won't touch but you won't listen to your own sister? Gee thanks, Ingrid. That makes me feel so much better."

"Shut up." She shoved my shoulder playfully, then she kind of recovered. "So...I saw you with Mr. Hot Guy Next Door."

I rolled my eyes. I knew where this was going. This had always been a hot topic for her. I was usually the one doing this to her. And I was already used to it because I just was. She had a field day whenever she saw me hanging out with someone new, which trust me, wasn't that often. So when she did see something, she would get a kick out of just annoying me and asking me questions to no end. I get her concern and her curiosity but there was nothing happening. I didn't really think I was the type of girl guys fell in love with.

"Nathan. His name is Nathan, Ingrid."

"Ooooh. Very appropriate."

I groaned. I did not want to go through this. "He made a deal with me. He told me that he would tell me something about himself every day if I hung out with him."

Her head shot straight to me. "And you accepted?"

I nodded my head.

"Just be careful, Nat. Remember what happened last time with Cain."

"I know. I am being careful. But Nathan, I see kindness in his eyes. No malice. No intentional malice, anyway."

"Well, I'm just glad that he's not going to try to do anything to hurt you or anything."

I nodded. I didn't want to go through that again. Cain had been someone I had met a few years ago. Someone that would hang out with me even outside of school. I didn't approach him, he approached me. I got an instant sense of weird energy from him, but like I said I had always just been able to put it on the back burner. But sometimes, he would do these really creepy things. Like one time, he snipped off a piece of my hair, and if that wasn't screaming "get the hell away from him now," I don't know what was. But me being me, I chose to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't ever learn. He spent I don't know how much time trying to convince me to get into the car. At that point, signs with neon lights were appearing everywhere. And I listened to them. Only he wasn't too pleased. So what he did is that he took me into the car with him, forcefully. I didn't know what his plan was but we were driving way too fast for comfort. And I'd seen horror stories. The ones where the girl gets into a car only to come out dead. The only problem was I had no idea what the hell I should do. So I buckled in my seat belt and prayed that I wouldn't die in this car. We ended up crashing into a tree actually, out of all things. I was surprised that I hadn't been more injured than I was. I had hit my knee on the dashboard and the only other thing that hurt was from where the seat belt had been. I don't know, maybe my parents had been with me that day and that's why nothing too bad had happened. He, on the other hand, was not so lucky. Last I heard, he had broken his arm and a few ribs. And I think maybe a leg. I guess he's lucky he's not dead.