Chapter 207
That night, my mom made baked chicken (only my mom would go grocery shopping while she’s on vacation) and we had a nice meal in the borrowed apartment. As much as everyone seemed nonchalant and genuinely carefree, I had so many things on my mind. About halfway through dessert, I asked, “So when do I get to start my training?”
“Oh, Cassidy,” my mother exclaimed, rolling her eyes. “Can you just slow down a little bit?”
“Why?” I asked, trying to keep my tone even. “I think it would be beneficial for me to start while I’m here this week. I don’t have anything else to do.” I shrugged and looked from my sister’s disapproving face to Aaron’s. He looked somewhat more likely to agree with me, as usual.
“Are you sure you even want to?” Cadence asked. “It’s a lot of work. Just ask Brandon.”
I turned to my right and looked at him. “Yeah, it is. But you’ll have to do it sooner or later.”
“Who is your trainer? Aurora?” I asked him. We hadn’t had as much time to talk alone as I’d wished we’d had earlier in the day.
“Usually,” he nodded. “And she’s one tough cookie.”
I could see that, considering Aurora had to be taller and stronger than just about anyone else she might have on her training team. “That’s cool. I like her.”
“You won’t like her after training with her for a day or two,” Cadence muttered. She looked at Aaron and could probably tell from his face that he wasn’t going to protest. “Okay, fine. We’ll meet you at the gym tomorrow morning at 8:00. Don’t be late. Aurora doesn’t sleep much, and she likes to give out laps to people who aren’t awake and with it.”
“Cool!” I exclaimed, not afraid. If I could make it through cheerleading practice outside in the August heat, surely I could do this, couldn’t I?
Cadence was shaking her head at me. Changing the subject, she said to my parents, “I think we have a little bit of work to get done, but we’ll be back in a little while.” Standing, she cleared her dishes from the table. Aaron did the same, though he didn’t have a dessert plate and there had hardly been any food on his dinner plate. I swear I’ve only seen the man eat, like, ten bites of food in the year that I’ve known him.
They left, and Brandon and I cleared the rest of the table, rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher. My parents were relaxing in front of the television when we were finished. “Would it be all right if I went down to Brandon’s apartment for a few minutes?” I asked, hoping they wouldn’t protest. He’d finally moved into his dad’s old apartment just a few days ago, and he’d been talking about how cool it was to have his own place.
My dad glanced at his watch. “Sure, honey, but don’t be gone too long. You’ll need to get to bed early if you’re going to start your training tomorrow.”
“Great,” I said, offering him a small smile. I thought my mom might protest, but she didn’t. She had no reason not to trust either one of us, and I wasn’t in any physical danger while at headquarters.
We walked out into the hallway, and I called the elevator—with my finger. My IAC was still off. I was a little nervous to try turning it on. “Maybe you should ask Brandon if you can go to Brandon’s apartment,” he joked as we waited for the elevator.
“Sorry,” I said with an unapologetic shrug. “You’ve been talking about showing it to me for a while, and I thought this would be better than hanging out with my parents.”
“True. I just hope my girlfriends don’t pop in while you’re there,” he said as the elevator arrived. I smacked him pretty hard in the arm and then questioned myself as to why. I was not his girlfriend, so why had that offended me so much? He laughed. “Jeez. Someone’s touchy.”
“Sorry.” This time I meant it. The idea of him seeing someone made my stomach roll over, even when I knew he wasn’t. “Are there pretty girls here?” I asked. “I mean, Meagan’s cute, but she has a boyfriend. Anyone else?”
“I assume you’re not counting your sister?”
“Gross,” I replied as the elevator door opened. There was a man standing there waiting to get on, one I’d seen before, but I didn’t know his name. He had red hair and was older. I thought I knew him from the funeral.
“Hey, Rusty,” Brandon said as we walked out. Rusty said hello to both of us by name, and I smiled at him, thinking now that I’d heard his name it shouldn’t be hard to remember it. I wondered if it was a nickname. “There are a couple of cute girls in the new class,” Brandon said, heading toward his apartment. “But I don’t know who is staying and who is going, so even if I wanted to see if any of them were interested, it would be a waste of time for now.”
I realized he’d worded his answer in such a way that I really shouldn’t be offended, and yet that rolling feeling was back in my stomach. He opened his door, and I slid inside. It looked a lot like I expected—same layout as Cadence’s apartment, but a lot messier. There were clothes and trash here and there. Not enough to make it smell, though. “Wow. You could’ve cleaned up.”
Brandon picked up some pop cans off the coffee table and carried them into the adjoining kitchen. “I told you I wasn’t expecting company. Besides, this is nothing. You should see it on the morning after a hunt.”
I sort of laughed, not sure what he meant, and picked up a pizza box and some wrappers and carried them to the kitchen. The trash was overflowing. “Seriously?”
“I’ll take it out,” he huffed.
We spent the next twenty minutes cleaning up the living room and kitchen. I didn’t go into either one of the bedrooms, though. He’d mentioned that his dad’s stuff, for the most part, was still in the bigger bedroom, and he was using the smaller one. I could see no reason to go into either.
Sitting on the sofa a full cushion away from him, I asked, “What was it like to have all of your dad’s stuff still here when you moved in?”
“Surreal,” he admitted. “Aaron asked me if I wanted it moved out, and I thought about it, but then, I kind of liked the idea of having part of him still here, even if he’s not. Someday, I might go through his stuff.”
I imagined that would take a while. “Do you want his urn here?” I asked. I knew it was supposed to be in Aaron’s apartment, although I had no idea what was going on with the remodel of the top floor. It seemed to me like it wasn’t just Cadence’s apartment that was being remodeled.
“No, it’s okay for Aaron to keep him. I think it might be a little weird to have it sitting around.”
I nodded, not sure how I would feel about having my mom or dad sitting in a decorative container on the mantel. I knew my grandfather was in an urn at my grandmother’s house, but I thought I’d rather be buried. Seems like that would be the more complete way to go. And that way I wouldn’t have to risk getting spilled and scattered at some point.
“So… what do you think Christian was talking about earlier?” Brandon asked tentatively. “Do you think he was telling the truth or just messing with us?”
The question had been on my mind all afternoon, ever since Christian had mentioned it the first time we’d gone to see him. “I honestly don’t know,” I replied, crossing my arms and readjusting on the couch. “He said he’d killed his boss temporarily, right? So, he had to be talking about Aaron, didn’t he?”
“I would think so. But then, he’s been around for a long time and probably had a lot of bosses. Maybe he was talking about someone else.”
“Maybe. But… he made it sound like he had been working on that serum recently, and that made me think that whatever went wrong probably went sideways on a recent test.” I was chewing on my thumb and tucked my hand back under my arm when I realized it.
“Wouldn’t your sister mention something like that, though?” Brandon asked. “If Aaron died for a little while, wouldn’t she be devastated?”
I nodded. “Yeah. That’s a reason why it doesn’t make any sense. Unless he wasn’t dead for very long.”
“How do you bring someone back from the dead exactly?” Brandon asked.
“I have no idea. I thought at first, when Christian originally mentioned it, maybe you had some idea.”
“Me? No, but it did make me wonder if that’s not why Aaron’s so much faster and stronger than everyone else.”
“Right,” I agreed. “I was thinking the same thing. Maybe we should just ask him. I’m sure he’d probably tell us.”
“We don’t want to get Christian in trouble again, though.”
While Christian hadn’t managed to get me my IAC without Jamie’s help, I didn’t think it was a good idea to throw him under the bus either. “There have got to be other people that know. We don’t have to tell Aaron or Cadence who told us.”
“True. All right. But we should probably wait until after you start your training. The last thing you want is for them to get mad at you about something and say you can’t go.”
“I concur,” I replied.
“Do you think you have time to watch a movie?” he asked, gesturing at the TV with his head.
I checked the time on my phone. It was 7:30. I wasn’t sure if my mom would let me stay long enough or not. “We can try,” I said, hopeful. “The worst that can happen is she can call me and tell me to come back up.”
Brandon smiled and grabbed the remote. After flipping through several choices on Netflix, we decided on Jurassic Park. I scooted slightly closer to him, so that I could see better, but there was still that barrier between us, like an unseen line neither of us would cross. For now, I was content just being in his company, happy that he wasn’t in a rush to make any sweeping changes to our relationship at the moment either. But like all things around here, I just never knew when something was going to change or some bomb was going to be dropped. Hopefully, I’d start my training and find out the truth about another secret all in one day.
