Release Me by Aria Grayson

Author:Aria Grayson [Grayson, Aria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

Tom

The days passed in relative peace. Tom and Callum spent their nights together, and during the day the three of them lived like a pretend family on an extended vacation. Sometimes Tom could almost forget it wasn’t real—that both of them had only been a part of Tom’s life for weeks instead of years. Leila hadn’t lost her reserve, but occasionally there were moments when something broke through her shell and they shared a real connection—and although it might have been wishful thinking on Tom’s part, it seemed to him like those moments were happening more and more frequently. And although all three of them still cast quick worried glances out the window when they thought no one could see, they didn’t flinch at every sound anymore.

For Tom, an innocent question was what put the first cracks in the comfortable illusion. Callum was out buying food, and he and Leila were reading together in companionable silence. The only books on hand had belonged to a young Callum, so Tom was reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which he had always thought of as a kid’s book but was actually more sophisticated than he remembered. He was so absorbed in the misadventures of the character who shared his name that when he heard a quiet voice say, “Dad?” he suspected it wasn’t the first time she had spoken.

The word gave him the same warm glow as always. He set the book down on his lap. “What is it?”

“How am I going to catch up with school when all this is over? A friend collected my homework for me last year when I was out sick for a week, but it’s been longer than that now, and neither of you have said anything about when we might be going back. Am I going to have to do all that homework at once? And when I get back, I’m not going to have any idea what’s going on.”

There were certain parts of being a parent that Tom wasn’t used to thinking about; school was one of them. In the back of his mind, he had known Leila was missing school, but he hadn’t really thought about how the days and weeks would add up, or what it would be like for her to try to catch up once she got back home. If she was able to go back home. Leaving town with Carrie would mean switching schools entirely, and even less opportunity to make up for everything she had missed.

Carrie. How was Carrie doing? The worry had to be eating her alive inside. He hadn’t been able to so much as call her, afraid she was still being watched, so she probably had no idea whether he and Leila were still alive. However conflicted Tom’s feelings about her might be, he didn’t wish that kind of fear on anyone.

And what about his business? He was losing money every day he spent out here. Would he have any customers left by the

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