The Things We Couldn't Save by Bea Nicole

Author:Bea, Nicole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silver Shell Publishing
Published: 2023-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

It’s late—or early, depending on how you look at it—when I eventually put away my laptop and curl up under my blankets with an unbreakable smile. I must fall asleep with the grin plastered from cheek to cheek because my face feels sore when I awake to knocking at my bedroom door.

“Clarke? Why’s your door locked?” Mom’s voice is muffled on the other side.

Ah, shit. I should have remembered to get up and unlock the door when I finished my conversation with Zayne, but by that point my brain was on fire with possibilities. Well, perhaps a combination of possibilities and also from trying to think of the right words to use in order to keep him from going to bed or admitting his own sleepiness.

“Oh, sorry—I must have accidentally locked it when I came home. I was trying to close the door quietly so I didn’t wake you and Dad up.”

Mom doesn’t say anything but there’s also no sound of her leaving, which I presume means that she’s waiting for me to unlock it. There’s a roofing nail on top of the ledge to use in an emergency, but this isn’t an emergency, so I reluctantly roll out of bed and pull on my pajama pants before crossing the room to open the door.

“Good morning,” Mom says, and I rub my bleary eyes with the back of my hand. The house smells like toast and scrambled eggs. “It’s ten o’clock. Time to get up.”

“Okay. Are there any eggs left?”

She nods, staring at me with narrowed eyes like she’s evaluating my appearance or trying to guess what it is that I’m hiding from her. “I’ll put some bread in the toaster. But come out to the kitchen. Your father and I want to talk to you.”

“Did something happen?” I furrow my brow, hoping that my expression conveys seriousness and worry rather than guilt.

“We’ll talk about it at the table.” With that, Mom turns around and walks back down the carpeted hallway, disappearing into the kitchen at the end of the corridor.

A hundred thoughts go through my mind all at once, ranging from her awareness to me having a boyfriend who street races, to something about Katie skipping off work, to the even more embarrassing prospect that she knows I had cybersex with Zayne last night. I’m not sure how anyone would know; I haven’t said anything and I’ve only barely lied about going out with Katie. Plus, my computer is password protected so even if they somehow wanted to know what I was doing on it, I don’t think they’d be able to figure it out.

But I think there’s something that’s going on—maybe they saw the Mazda at Scoops when it wasn’t supposed to be there? Or they didn’t see it in the parking lot when it was supposed to be? I can’t even remember when I was scheduled to work. I only remember that the ice cream machine broke sometime in the last week.

That, and MessageSpace conversations aren’t saved.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.