Fractured

Chapter 33

In the weeks following my date with Axel, we went full steam ahead with planning for the talent show. We originally put feelers out to the Academy members and their Academy aware families and the amount of interest we received in reply meant we had to change our original plans. Instead of being open to the public, we decided to start with an in-house talent show, with the prize of a Disney holiday for a family to be donated to the charity of the winners choice, which would then be open to use by that charity in any way they deemed appropriate. It would be able to be gifted directly to a family to use, or could be used as a raffle prize or auction item for additional fundraising for the charity. We decided that we would use this show as a test run to iron out any kinks we might find so that we could have a smooth show when we hosted a second, open to the public show a few months later.

It took me a few weeks to notice, thanks to my workload, but when I did, I realised that the entire Toma team was disappearing for a couple of hours every other day. They conveniently left me with a babysitter from the Blackbourne team each time. First it was Luke wanting to climb our trees because they looked like so much fun. Then Gabriel worrying that he had decorated the house with out of style furnishings and needing to come in to tweak the layout and placement of furniture and finishes.

After Gabe, Silas had to do a full inspection on all of the plumbing again because someone was sure there was a leak. Sean needed a safe, quiet place to sleep thanks to all of his shifts at the hospital and Luke was over indulging in sugary foods again, so he was getting no peace at home. And the list went on. Perceived issue after perceived issue, excuse after excuse.

It wasn't long before I started doubting the relationship I had with them, and whether they really wanted to pursue something with me, or if they were just too polite to tell me they wanted out. Axel was the first to realise I was withdrawing and they kept trying to reassure me there was no issue, but they also refused to tell me where they were going or what they were doing, so their reassurances weren't doing much to alleviate my fears.

I ended up distracting myself by focussing on my contortion routine to open the talent show. Phil and Rose had begged me to perform for everyone, but after my protests that it wasn't fair for me to enter the show when I was performing professionally in my youth, they agreed to let me open the show without considering me for the prize. It was a compromise I was willing to make.

The morning of the talent show came around too quickly. I was up early, knowing the team had planned to help with setting up the event. The guys had been out late the night before, on one of their secret meetings or whatever it was they were doing. Owen had been given the task of babysitting me. It was the first time he had been assigned the task and he knew i saw through the ruse the moment he arrived. He was polite enough to avoid talking about it and instead we worked through my property portfolio, looking for opportunities to make changes.

We also began developing a plan to maximise the changes we could make to housing within the community. We wanted to increase the number houses we restore and return to the community, and use it as a way to train more people in the various trades and help improve employment rates.

It was around midnight by the time we finalised our brief to present to the council and the team still weren't back. Despite everything that had been going on, someone always stayed the night with me when they got home. Knowing Owen would still be here when they got back, I asked him to tell them to leave me be, that I didn't want their company that night. Checking my phone when I woke, I saw a message from Owen saying they didn't take it well, but he had managed to keep them out. There were also various messages from them, but I refused to open them. It would just be opening a can of worms that I was not ready to deal with.