"This is what she had become."
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Cleopatra Banks' last week in the small town of New Chelsea is nothing like she would have imagined it, but nothing could have prepared her for the stinging betrayal she's faced with and suddenly the prospect of...
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Cleopatra
We find Ethan seated outside our front door with a murderous look on his face. I swallow audibly and spare a look at Natasha. She looks everywhere but at me and Ethan.
He gets up from where he's seated and stalks over towards us and I only now realize that he has my phone in his grasp. I must have left it chilling on the floor before I rushed out with Natasha almost four hours ago.
He glares at Natasha and I can feel the nervousness seeping out of her with the way she shifts her weight from one foot to the other. I don't know what either one of them is thinking.
"You've been crying," he plainly states when he comes to stand in front of me with furrowed eyebrows. "What did you do to her?" he asks Natasha who again fails to meet his gaze.
I roll my eyes. He's being way too dramatic.
I take a hold of his forearm and pull him away from Natasha so he's standing in front of me again. "She didn't do anything." Ethan looks at me skeptically. "What do you mea--"
"I should probably get going," Natasha cuts him off and starts backtracking toward her loud little red convertible. Ethan glares at her.
"Wait," I walk after Natasha and hug her tightly. She returns my hug and pats my back. "Thank you, for everything," I say. "Anytime," she replies. We let go of each other and I watch her walk back to the car, the box with Thandi's things left somewhere in the middle of our driveway.
"What the hell is going on Cleopatra? I was gone for one hour...one hour and when I come back, I find your phone lying on the floor and your friend from New Chelsea was talking nonstop. I then find out that you've gone to Isabella's place with Natasha and when I follow after you two, you're nowhere to be found. Do you have any idea how worried I was?" he asks, the last part of his rant coming out soft as he draws me into a hug.
A magnificent warm hug that I needed very much. He holds me and inhales the scent of my hair.
"What's going on?" he whispers as he cups my cheeks with his hands. I look into his eyes and once again I'm overcome with emotion and I break out into tears.
***
"...then she started driving around. We ended up in this random alley. That's where we destroyed and discarded the flash drive because well...it's the flash drive and then I kept everything else. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with the rest of the stuff though," I inform Ethan over a cup of coffee at the dining table after having explained what happened today.
"She took you to an alley?" Ethan asks, indignantly so.
I give him a bored expression. "That's seriously all you heard? It was the only place we could think of where kids from our school would never bother to look for a flash drive, besides it's destroyed now... for real this time and all those secrets are gone forever.
