Delete --> a.i au

Chapter Fourteen --> Hide and Seek

It had been two days and maybe Ashton was just being impatient. Austin had not called over even left a single text stating how the progress was going, so Ashton wondered if Austin forgot. No, he couldn't have forgotten. With the sum of money that he wrote down, the technology geek would be gathering the information as fast as he could.

Finally, by the end of the week Ashton heard his phone ring and scrambled from where he sat on the couch to get to his phone. Not even checking to see who called, he answered. He did not have to say anything, for the person on the other side of the line flat out said the information was gathered.

Collecting his keys and phone, Ashton started to walk to the door, but was stopped.

“Where are you going?” Michael asked, letting out a yawn, indicating that he just woke up.

“Out,” Ashton replied curtly.

Not arguing, Michael watched as Ashton left and shut the door behind him.

The walk to the tech repair shop did not take long, for Ashton practically ran there. The fact that he would finally be able to find out about Aleixs’s past was almost mind-boggling to him.

Pulling open the door as he was catching his breath, he scanned the store for Austin. The lanky tech geek so popped out from behind the counter, his glasses perched on the bridge of his nose.

"I have it, so hand over the money," Austin instructed, pushing a manila envelope across the counter.

Not saying a single word, Ashton took out his wallet and took out the correct amount of cash. It had taken him quite a while to tell the bank teller that he was not using the money to buy drugs, since clearly he seemed like the type to just stroll into the bank, ask for a couple grand out of his account and then go off and buy some pot or cocaine.

"Here - take it," Ashton said curtly, reaching for the manila envelope. Opening up the envelope he could see that there were not sheets of paper with the written information, but at the bottom on the envelope was two thumb drives. "What the hell?" he blurted out. Taking out the thumb drives he held them up and glared at Austin. "How are these going to help me?"

Austin looked up from the stack of cash he was counting and grabbed the thumb drives from Ashton. "Each one of these are over 300 GB. All of the information that you wanted are on these; just plug them into your laptop and sort through the files. Each file is labeled with each year of her life. Have fun."

Tossing the thumb drives back at Ashton with a flick of his wrist, Austin took and cash and went to the back of the store. That left Ashton gaping at what he had just heard and with the pieces of plastic that contained 18 years’ worth of information.

With nothing else for him in the store, Ashton shoved the thumb drives back in the folder and left the store, knowing very well that he would never come back here. He had what he needed, so unless Austin tricked him and the thumb drives were blank, then there really was no need to return.

The walk home was uneventful, or at least it was in Ashton's opinion. Fans saw him on the street, but he quickly ducked into some alleyway, only to leave them running down a street they thought they saw him go down. Ashton did not want to ignore the fans that had supported the band for all of the years they had been together, but he desperately wanted to get back to the apartment and see what information there was on the flash drives.

Once back home, he made a beeline for his room, ignoring the constant stream of questions that tumbled out of Michael's mouth. Picking up his laptop that was charging, Ashton turned on the slim piece of technology that would soon help him revel all of the things that Alexis had been keeping from him.

"Come on, come on, come on," Ashton hissed that the laptop as it warmed up and asked for his password. Typing in the seven digit code, the main screen popped up and he went ahead and plugged in the flash drives. It was not long until messages came up on the main screen, asking him if he wanted to view the files. Of course he did, otherwise he would not have gone out and spent a shit load of money.

After clicking yes, several folders popped up, each one labeled with a year. Skimming over the years, he located the one that was the year that was the year the Alexis was born, since it was the date that was the latest out of all 18 folders.

For the next twelve hours Ashton poured over the information that was in the folders, finding out every little detail of Alexis's life that she might not even remember. By the time that he finished and was letting the information sink in, he was shocked into silence. Only the whirring of the laptop filled the air. Alexis had been hiding so much from him and the world. It was like he did not even know her. Perhaps no one actually knew who Alexis was, not even herself. What was contained in the folders was shocking and proved that even though his life had not been the easiest growing up, Alexis had it much worse than him and she may not even know it.

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Short chapter, but there is a ton of drama happening over the next few chapters, so they will be better then this one. Of course this chapter was important too.

Thanks for reading even if it was just this single chapter. xD