Lila's Thunder: The Almeida Brothers, Book One (17 page)

Jack was no longer smiling and no longer amused when he realized that this was no game to Lila. Still, he opened the folded up pictures that he held out of her reach, and
looked up at them. The moment he took in the images he brought the pictures quickly down, allowing Lila to snatch them from his hands. But it was too late.

“God damn it, Jack,” s
he breathed, looking down into her hands at the pictures crumbled beneath them. She should have burned them. “Damn it.”

Jack didn’t know what to say, so he just stared a hole into the top of Lila’s bowed head, attempting to make sense of the situation. The line in front of them had continued moving, and the people waiting behind them were slowly beginning to go around since they didn’t seem in any big hurry to move ahead with it.

It felt like an eternity that Lila stared down at her hands. Finally, she found the courage to look up at Jack, whose face was stricken with confusion. She cupped his face in her hands and dug her fingers deep into his hair. "Chase knows."

Jack's face sobered and he pulled slightly away.

Lila looked up into the sky and begged for help. "He knows about you and me. Everything. He knows we're sleeping together, he knows..." She blinked lazily. "Everything. I wasn't going to tell you this but..."

Jack waited patiently, but when too much time passed with nothing said he
gripped her waist and shook her. "What?" he demanded.

"When I woke up this morning his keys were in my door... it was hanging wide open and his keys were in it... And that picture of us sleeping was…” She had to take a moment, still unable to stomach
the events that had transpired. “It was taped to my front door.”

Jack jammed his eyes shut. The wheels in his mind were moving far too quickly for him to keep up.

"Yeah." Lila nodded, seeing realization cross his face. "And I found the other one on my office door when I went in this morning.”

His entire face
collapsed into a cringe. “Wait. Stop.” He needed a minute for his heart to catch up with his head, but after several long moments passed he knew it wasn’t going to happen.

“He says he didn't do it." She
paused. "Well, he didn't exactly
say
he didn't do it but..."

"He did it
, Lila." Jacks nostrils flared. "Of course he did it."

She was
suddenly rocketed back to the cafe table with Tracy.

"And it's completely
fucked up.
"

"Jack
please..." Lila begged, seeing how out of control Jack was on the verge of getting. "Please, if you love me like you say... please let me handle this. You’re right, we do need to change our legacy, our dynamic. All of us. I want that just as much as you do but if you let your temper get the best of you and say something you regret then we might
never
get that chance…”

Jack looked off. He clearly wasn't trying to hear any of that, but allowed her to wrap her arms around him.

Lila stared up into his eyes desperately. "I'm handling it. You didn’t see how he reacted when I confronted him with this in the office. He’s hurting, Jack. If you say anything to him about it, any small chance the two of you have of fixing what's broken will be completely dead and gone. Please.”

He looked away from her, struggling terribly with the news she'd just blasted him with and her absurd expectation that he keep his mouth shut about it. Looking back into her eyes and recalling the day they'd spent together, the things she'd told him, he knew that he would never betray her, or do anything to make her unhappy.
Even if it was something that caused him almost physical pain.

"All right," h
e said, gruffly.

Lila exhaled with relief. "Promise me."

"I promise, Lila."

"W
ill you stay with me tonight?" she asked. "I'm still a little shaken up."

"Y
ou have nothing to be afraid of," Jack said. "I'd never let anything happen to you."

---

Ashley opened the door to her bedroom and stopped short when she saw Chase sitting on the edge of her bed, leaning on his knees and staring down at the backpack between his feet, appearing deep in thought.

A smile lit up her face as she stepped through the door and closed it behind her. She removed her jacket and licked her lips. "Well this is a nice surprise--"

"Where are my keys?”  he asked, staring down into his hands, which were clasped tight.

The smile fell from her face and she rolled h
er eyes, kicking off her heels.

"Well hello to you, too. Oh my day was great, how about yours?" She tried to smile but the halfhearted attempt fell from her lips when Chase looked up at her without a hint of amusement.

"Where are my keys, Ashley?" he asked, his voice booming but calm.

Ashley was finally in the present and, sensing the tone of the room, crossed her arms over her chest. "Chase, I have no idea what you're--"

"Where are my fucking keys?" Chase leapt from the bed and was face to face with Ashley in a second, fists clenched at his sides.

Ashley was so stunned by how quickly
he'd moved that she'd barely had a chance to react, but she wasn't afraid. Her blue eyes met his head on, and she lifted her nose a little higher in the air for good measure. "Dude, on my
grandmother's grave
I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't have your fucking keys, okay?"

Chase pulled his head slightly away, but kept his body close. "They were in my bag last night during that party and now they’re gone."

"Rumor has it there are these really cool things called replacement keys... they make them everywhere. Even Wal-Mart, if you're brave enough to step foot in that shithole." Ashley shook her head. "Do you have a secret Lamborghini that I don't know about? Lexus? BMW? What the hell are a bunch of rich kids going to do with your keys? Break into your
townhouse
and steal a bunch of shit that their own parents already have ten of? I know you and your asshole brother think you're hot shit with your Mommy and Daddy's inheritance but around these parts you're small potatoes. Calm the fuck down." She shook her head and pushed passed him, pulling her shirt up over her head.

"I..." Chase didn't know why, but as he turned to Ashley and watched her get undressed he felt like he'd unfairly attacked her, "I'm sorry, I just..." He motioned to the closed door of her room. "Those keys are important to me... but I guess I did leave them downstairs with all those...
fucking morons
last night." He pushed a frustrated hand through his hair.

"Well yeah..." Ashley said, her eyes narrowing.

Chase jammed his eyes shut, still gripping his hair. "I'm sorry I attacked you I just..." He exhaled and opened his eyes wide. "I feel like I'm going fucking crazy." He didn't know when Ashley had changed into a swimsuit but as his eyes ran down her red-bikini clad body he was certainly appreciative.

"Look..." She began to slowly make her way up to him, "Keys can be replaced..."

He stood rigid as she wrapped her arms around his neck, but wasn’t in a big hurry to move.

"I, however…" Ashley's eyes widened.
"Cannot." She smiled at the expression on his face and whispered. "You have no idea how hot you are do you?" Standing on her toes, Ashley placed a slow, soft, almost hesitant kiss on his lips. When he didn't immediately repel, she glowed. "You can stay here for as long as you want, okay?"

Chase let her run her nails gently through his hair, eyes flutteri
ng shut at how good it felt.

"Thanks,” h
e grumbled.

Ashley took advantage of the moment and gave him another kiss, "I'm going down to the shore. Take your pants off and come with me. It'll make you feel better."

Chase gave into Ashley and before he knew it he was wearing nothing more than a pair of black boxers and a small, unsure smile.

If there was any better distraction in the world than Ashley, he had no idea what it was, but even in her tiny red bikini, Chase still found it impossible to focus. Someone had used Lila's key. She'd said they were in her door
, so whoever took them only meant this as a one-time thing... or they'd made copies. The idea of someone having a copy of Lila's key sent a wave of protectiveness inside him into overdrive. One so strong that it made his vision a little blurry every time he thought about it.

He had to find out who took those keys.

---

A few days later, on Thursday evening, Jack was propped up on a pillow watching Lila sleep. He took in her delicate face, the soft peaks and curves that made her so wonderfully
Lila.
For nearly an hour he'd been watching her and waiting as her breathing became slower and longer, until he was sure she was in the deep throws of sleep.

He hadn’t been able to tell her that he planned on talking to Chase about everything tonight. He had spent the last few nights sleeping in Lila’s bed, mainly because he didn’t think he could trust himself around Chase. With every night that passed he became more and more angry when it became apparent that Lila would rather completely ignore what his brother had done than confront the situation.

Jack couldn’t ignore it any longer. Though she was good at hiding it, he could tell that she was perpetually on edge. She only made love to him under the private safety of her sheets and blankets, checked that her doors and windows were locked at least a dozen times before she could manage any form of sleep, and kept her formally open window blinds shut tight, even during the day. He’d be damned if he had to watch her paranoia for another night, so he planned to sit down with Chase and do something about it. But he had to wait until Lila had fallen asleep.

After watching her chest rise and fall for nearly an hour he finally climbed out of the bed as quietly as he could, and got dressed.

Jack would stop at nothing to get to the bottom of this.

Tonight.

---

Lila awoke to an empty apartment and
, after checking room after room, she finally accepted that Jack was gone. And she knew exactly where he'd gone, to rip Chase a new one. She ran around her apartment, throwing on anything she could find in sheer panic. If Jack and Chase got into it over this she was sure that their relationship would be beyond repair and that simply wasn't something she was prepared to face.

The green indicator light on her phone blinked and she snatched it up, continuing to get dressed while she listened to her voicemails.

The first one was from Tracy. "
Hey, Lila
..." Lila contemplated skipping the message all together since listening to it was only making it harder for her to get dressed. She hopped on one foot as she attempted to listen to Tracy and get her jeans on at the same time. Tracy's soft voice continued, "
I'm not sure why you aren't answering your phone. I hate to leave this message on your machine but I thought you should know that Chase hasn’t shown up to Calculus the last few days. I checked with Marsha and she said that he disappeared after you and him spoke in your office the other day. He hasn’t been back to school since.”

Lila froze in mid dress, her
heart seizing. She and Chase had the confrontation in her office nearly three days ago.

The message continued as if Tracy were reading her mind.
"And I know that kids ditch class all the time but...Chase never ditches. I just have this weird feeling, and with everything that’s been happening
..." A long silence filled the air. "
I don't know, Lila, but I just had to tell you. Okay... bye
."

The message ended and Lila remained in a stony terrified silence. Tracy was right. Chase did a lot of things, but he never mis
sed school.  Sometimes he was late, but he never completely missed it, not ever.

A pounding on the door shook Lila to her core and made her scream out in horror.

Composing herself, she slowly made her way to the door. After checking the peephole she opened it to Jack's ghost white face.

“He’s gone,” h
e said, frantically, his eyes full of helplessness. "Grams hasn’t seen him in three days. He's not at the house, he's not at Lavo, he's not
anywhere,
Lila. He wasn't in class. Grams told me that he gave her his locket. The locket my mother gave him... you know how much he loves that necklace..."

Lila's mind raced. "That doesn't mean anything." She hardly believed her own words.

"What about what you said at Danielle's grave?"

She
brought a shaking hand up to her mouth, then nodded in horror. “Okay, okay, calm down, Jack.” Lila reached out and touched his arm, cupping her fingers around his large bicep. His shoulders visibly relaxed at the contact and she held onto him as she grabbed a jacket from the hall closet. “Calm down. We’re going to find him, okay?”