Unravelling

Chapter 41 - Turmoil

My life is in danger. Like, literally.

About ten minutes ago, Aidan found out that Alex agreed to let me come with him on Future Day. An erupting volcano has nothing on the force of nature my brother became when he had absorbed that information.

Thanks very much, Noah.

Fight or flight was not even an option when Aidan immediately started to yell down the house in search for me. Obviously, I decided on the latter and quickly ran out of my room. Why I did that, I don't really know, but I think at the moment it seemed to be only reasonable thing to do.

Where else would he look for me, if not in the sanctuary of my own bedroom?

The obvious option would have been to lock the door. Unfortunately, I lost the privilege of having a key to my room door more than half a year ago, when I refused to open my door and let Ben in after we had a heated argument and I had stomped off in a huff and locked myself in. Once he had found the replacement key – nobody had ever told me that such a thing even exists, otherwise I might have given up sooner as there was no way I could have won the argument under these circumstances – he was literally seeing red. As a result, my key was taken off me and so far, I have not received it back.

Anyway, the moment I heard Aidan losing his shit downstairs, I dashed out of my room, aiming to hide in the one room closest to mine: Jack's and Will's four walls. As it turned out, that was a very, very bad idea. I barged into the room without knocking – this was a life or death situation, after all – and ended up regretting it the moment my eyes fell on Jack's bed.

I hadn't known that Nora was over.

To be fair, she hardly ever is. Jack is careful to only bring her here when the chances of her bumping into any of our brothers are zero to none, due to the merciless teasing that ensues every time the topic of his girlfriend comes up. I cannot blame him, of course, because I know they are relentless.

That is also the reason why I will never ever tell them if I get a boyfriend myself. I am not dumb enough to voluntarily give them free reign to make fun of me.

Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that I could really not have expected her to be here, since both Sam and Ben are in the house. Not to mention that Alex promised to be home for dinner tonight. And it is only a matter of minutes until Jordan will show up, too, since he pops around to eat with us most nights.

Let's just say that I wish I could un-see what I witnessed when my eyes fell on Jack's bed – and its two occupants. I think they were still at least partially dressed, but I cannot be sure, because I immediately averted my eyes and started my retreat, my hand firmly pressed in front of my eyes.

As I was clumsily backing out of their room and Jack was yelling some not so pleasant things at me, I could hear the scuffling sounds of a fight downstairs. It appeared to be coming from the living room. I also picked up snippets of shouting between Noah and Aidan. From what I could tell, Noah was struggling to keep Aidan from coming after me.

I didn't have time to dwell much on appreciating Noah running interference – nice, but unfortunately too little too late, since it was clearly his fault that Aidan even found out – because I needed to find a new place to hide and ideally wait out the storm. I quickly closed the door behind me and then my eyes fell on Sam's room. Without contemplating it any longer, I burst into yet another bedroom.

Which brings me to now, where I find myself cowardly hiding away underneath Sam's bed, trying to ignore the mess and the dust that surrounds me.

Sam, gracefully, ignored my being rude and just storming into his room unannounced. While I was busy scrambling under his bed, I told him in a few words what had happened. He already knew about my arrangement with Alex – nothing ever stays hidden for long in this family when it comes to me, it seems – but he had promised not to breathe a word to Aidan about it.