An Eye For An Eye

Quarante-Deux

Thankful for a cup of coffee, I eagerly drank half of it before deciding to savour it. I didn’t know when I would next have the chance to buy coffee. There was a knock at the door and I put my cup of coffee down on a coaster before going to answer the door.

“Charles, hi,” I greeted. I took a step back and opened the door wide. “Come in, Deuc’s just upstairs.” He walked inside and I shut the door behind him.
“Hey, I was wondering if you needed any help with unpacking. I didn’t have too much to unpack so…”
“Help would be appreciated,” said Deuc as he reached the bottom of the stairs. “But I don’t have much left to unpack, Liza might want some help though.”

I raised my eyebrows and nodded.
“If you don’t mind,” I added on. Charles shook his head.
“No, I don’t mind,” he said. I smiled and he smiled back.
“I’m just going to finish my coffee and then we can drive over to my place, if that’s okay with you?” I said while heading to the kitchen.
“Drive?” he repeated, his voice a little shakily. He followed me to the kitchen while Deuc sat in the living room.

“Yeah, I can drive, if Deuc doesn’t mind me driving his car again,” I said as I grabbed my coffee cup.
“I tried to give you the car, I’m not going to mind you driving it,” he said loudly.
“I’m not having your car!” I said back, equally as loud. I was going to be stubborn about it. Charles laughed a little and I offered him a drink but he shook his head.

Once I finished the coffee, I said goodbye to Deuc and grabbed the car keys and the keys for my apartment so we could drive there. During the drive, Charles was on edge. He had seemed like a rather nervous man anyway but he seemed even more anxious while in the car. Part of me wondered if something bad had happened involving cars. Deuc had said a lot of his pack were turned because they were injured and dying.

I parked in the parking lot for the block of apartments and locked the car as we headed to the door.
“My sister used to live near here,” he said.
“Really?” I asked as I opened the door to the building. I held it out to him and he nodded as he headed inside.
“Yeah, a few streets away, the apartments were new when she moved in,” he said.
“Oh, nice.” The apartments I was living in were fairly old, I wasn’t sure how long exactly but the outside of the building was falling to pieces.

After unlocking the door, I let Charles in and shut the door behind me.
“Wow, this is small,” he said. Glancing over at him, he looked away. “Sorry, I don’t mean to-”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, shaking my head. The apartment was very small but I hadn’t really minded it since it tended to just be me. “I know it’s small, I don’t exactly earn much.”
“What do you do?” he asked.
“Freelance writer, articles, short stories. Whatever sells really. Haven’t exactly been doing great lately though.”
He hummed and nodded. “I’m a lawyer,” he said. “An attorney, specifically. We have a family business and everything.”
“That’s kind of cool,” I said honestly. “Do you like it?”
“Yeah, I do.”

We stood awkwardly for a moment and then I spoke.
“Um, I mostly just need help with the computer, Deuc said I could put it in the guest bedroom, I have all my writing on there so it’s kind of useful,” I explained. “Do you mind crying it to the car? I’ll hold the doors open for you?”
“Sure, I don’t mind at all.”

It didn’t take too long to put the computer in the car. I headed back inside and searched the cupboards for any more coffee that might have been lurking around at the back. Unfortunately, there were none. I headed back to my bedroom quickly and pulled out a tub hidden in a shoe box under the bed. Inside was all of my savings. I took out the money for the rent and a little extra for food and other things and put it in my purse. I hid the rest back in the tub, in the shoe box under my bed. Hopefully, I wouldn’t need any of it.

Leaving the bedroom, I saw Charles standing by the window, looking at the photo of Chris and his own family.
“He’s a hunter,” he said quietly.
I took a deep breath. “Yeah, but my brother.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. He turned to look at me. “You’re an Argent.”

“Used to be, I guess. But… I sort of ran away and got disowned,” I said with a frown on my face. I hoped he didn’t act like Tasha, I wanted to be friendly with them, or at the very least civil.
“Why did you run away?”
“I didn’t want to be a hunter. You were there, when I went to Deucalion, I think,” I said as I walked to the front door. He furrowed his brow for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah, those three days changed a lot more than I realised.”

“Tasha just seems to think he’s doing it to annoy the Argents, but I don’t think he is, is he?” said Charles as he turned and followed me to the door. My desk looked a little odd without the computer there.
“I hope not and he says he doesn’t but I haven’t really got the hang of the telling if someone is lying part of being a werewolf yet,” I said, laughing a little. Knowing Deucalion, I could be perfect at telling if someone was lying but he’d have a way to hide it.

“I know it’s weird, an Argent werewolf who hasn’t killed themselves,” I said. I let out a shaky breath. “But… I don’t want to be that. I want to be myself, I want to be a writer who dances and is an absolute mess because everything is always changing.”
He laughed and smiled. “It’s fine, I’m kind of a mess too,” he said. “I haven’t quite been the same since… well, I was in a car accident.”

That did explain a lot. His smile morphed into a frown as I locked the door to the apartment.
“Is that why you’re so…?” I trailed off, not sure of how to word it.
“Nervous? Yeah. I just… yeah, I was in a car accident a few years ago and I was the only one to survive, and that was only because of Deucalion.”
“It seems he’s not as bad as the hunters kept making him out to be,” I said with a sigh. He saved Charles’ life, and mine. And probably most of his packs’ too. And to think, a month or so ago, I had thought he was a monster.

We headed to the car and I sat down.
“I have to go and pay my rent for next month and then get coffee because that first one was definitely not enough for me,” I said. The seatbelt clicked into place and Charles’ did the same. “I know it’s not much, but can I get you a coffee or something? As a thank you?”
“A hot chocolate would be nice, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all. And hot chocolate it is then.”