Lila's Thunder: The Almeida Brothers, Book One (18 page)

Jack took a heaving breath and ran his hand through his hair as he backed up, making room for Lila to step out onto the porch and pull her door shut. He shook his head as she struggled to find the right key in her trembling fingers. “This is my fault.”

She turned to him and placed her hand on his chest. “Stop it,” she demanded.

Jack reached up and placed his hand over hers, gripping it as redness began to tinge his usually calm eyes.

Lila’s eyes grew wide in his. “Stop thinking the worst. He’s an eighteen year old, there are a million and one places he could be. We’re going to find him. Okay?”

Jack searched her face and
, after a long silence, he nodded. A few moments passed before he suddenly cringed and looked away from her, biting his bottom lip.

Just watching the emotional roller coaster he was obviously on made Lila turn away. One of them had to stay calm and if she stood there watching Jack freak out for another second she
knew would start freaking out, too. Finally, she found her key and locked the door, bounding down the steps after Jack who was already climbing into the driver’s seat of his truck.

---

Minutes quickly turned to hours as Jack and Lila scoured the city looking for Chase, each of them becoming more and more worried. It wasn't until a little after two o’clock in the morning that Lila had an epiphany.

"I know where he is,” s
he said, turning to Jack who was a mess in the driver's seat.

Jack's eyes met hers.

Twenty minutes later they were at Ashley's Manhattan estate, a sprawling building that took up an entire city block and overlooked Turtle Bay. Before he'd even stopped the car Jack could already see the dark outline of two bodies in the distance, sitting on the shore of the bay. All Chase had to do was turn his head, laughing at something the girl sitting next to him said, and Jack knew it was him. Relief washed over him as well as blind, red fury.

Jack leapt from the truck before it even came to a full stop, leaving the door hanging open and the ignition running. He scaled the small gate surrounding the house with ease and stalked over to Chase with purpose, his black trench coat flying in the wind behind him. When he was within a foot of his younger brother on the sand Jack saw red and reached out, grabbing Chase around the cuffs of his Dalton sweatshirt and pulling him to his feet until they were nose to nose. His nostrils flared with fury.

Ashley, who'd been sitting next to Chase and laughing a moment earlier, jumped to her feet, taking in Jack's enraged face in pure fear.

“Oh my god.”
Lila whispered from the car, hurriedly grabbing the keys out of the ignition and jumping out of the passenger’s side. When she caught sight of Chase and Jack nose to nose, looking about two seconds from killing each other where they stood, she jumped the gate and broke into a run.

But she wasn't fast enough.

Jack shook Chase violently with the hold he had on the cuffs of his sweatshirt. “Have you lost your god damned mind, Chase? Where the hell have you been for the last three days? Where have you
been
?”

Chase’s face was red with fury, and he was gripping the cuffs of Jack’s jacket just as tightly, trying with all his
might to push his brother away.

“Get the fuck off me!” He screamed.

“Where were you, huh?” Tears fell from Jacks eyes. “Taking more perverted pictures of me and Lila? Is that it? Planning your next insipid, juvenile prank? You and your little partner over here?” Jack turned to look at Ashley only to be met with the sight of the tiny blonde lunging at him, in the midst of jumping on his back. Jack released Chase and turned to Ashley just in time to step out of her way, only to be met with Chase’s strong arm wrapped around his neck from behind. His eyes widened in shock as his windpipe was completely blocked, stealing his breath. Chase tightened his grip.

“Stop,
” Lila screamed, running up to the both of them and attempting to put herself in the middle, but there was no room for her. Jack and Chase were filled with too much anger, too much passion, too much unfinished business, that they didn’t even realize she was there. No room in this fight for a third. Even so, Lila stuck one arm between their bodies, wrapping a hand around Chase’s flexed arm, and the other around the front of Jack’s waist, trying with all of her might to pull them apart. “Stop, stop, stop,” she cried.

Somewhere in the scuffle the three of them fell to the ground and Lila ended up on top of Jack with Chase kneeling above them, in the midst of rearing back to punch Jack square in the face.

Chase froze in mid punch, with his fist in the air, when he realized Lila was sitting on top of his target with her palms out, fingers spread, begging for peace. He hadn’t realized he was in tears until that very frozen moment, and the wetness didn’t fall from his eyes until Ashley wrapped her thin arms around him from behind, attempting to pull him away while shooting daggers at Jack and Lila.

The sight of Lila protecting Jack was like a knife to the chest, like nothing Chase had ever experienced, and he was in such shock that he allowed Ashley to pull him back and away.
Far away.

Lila was stunned,
her wide eyes boring into Chase. “Chase, are you insane? What is happening to you?”

Once Ashley had Chase a comfortable distance away she came unglued, screaming at the top of her lungs from over Chase’s shoulder. “
He’s
insane? Fuck you!”

Lila reared back in shock, maintaining whatever small shred of sanity she had left only becau
se she could feel Jack’s arm wrapped around her.

Ashley had come unglued.
“I think the school board would be very interested to know what you’ve been up to, not only with a student at the school but with his guardian, as well, you fucking bitch!” Ashley screamed. “You’d do well to know that my father is the god damn head of that very committee, so I suggest you back the hell off!”

Chase was
now holding Ashley back, but his pain filled eyes bore into Lila and it took everything in him not to follow after when Lila stumbled to her feet and stared down at him. An agonizing moment of silence wafted between them until Lila took one, two, three steps back before turning completely away. She headed back to the car, not running, but with a walk filled with determination. Jack sat up with a hand wrapped around his burning throat, and took in Chase and Ashley, his eyes on fire. Chase looked like he had a lot of fight left for Jack and was ready whenever he was.

Breathing violently, Jack stumbled to his feet, and walked away.

---

Jack and Lila rode back to her apartment in silence. Once they arrived Jack parked and went to take his seatbelt off but when Lila spoke for the first time the entire ride he stopped cold.

She stared ahead as she spoke, eyes dead.

“I’ve caused this,” she said into the cool night air, quietly sobbing. She could feel Jack’s eyes boring into her from the driver’s seat but didn’t have the heart to look at him. “I can’t continue deluding myself into thinking that there’s any way I can help this situation between you and Chase. There’s nothing I can do. My being involved is only throwing more and more shit into the fire. I can stick around until it all burns to the ground or I can just get out now while you two still have a chance at a life together.”

“Lila--”

“It’s over.”

Jack’s eyes grew red and he looked out of the other window in disgust when he felt tears touching them. Just as soon as he was looking away from her, he was looking back.

“What about you, huh? Some sick fuck is after you. Taking pictures while you sleep? You really expect me to leave you alone at a time like this? I’m not going to abandon you, Lila. You can spew this bullshit at me all night but the truth is that Chase is unstable and you’re not safe. I’ll never forgive myself if something happens to you.”

“
I don’t believe that Chase is behind any of this.  I truly don’t.  Besides, I can take care of myself. It’s not your job to save me.” Lila wept. “But it
is
your job to save
him.”

“God damn it, Lila. What about us?” His voice trembled as
he drug his gaze back to her tear stained face.

“Us?”
Lila was dumbfounded. “Think about what just happened back there, Jack. What
about
us?”

Jack looked off.

Lila hammered on. “Without Chase, there will never be an ‘us’. And as long as there’s an ‘us’, you will never have Chase. He is our common denominator. He always has been. I know you love me, Jack, but you love him more. Why delay the inevitable? I’m only doing what has to be done… what will inevitably be done.”

“We can make it work.”

“No.” Lila shook her head and stole her next words right out of Chase’s mouth. “That’s just a fairytale.”

“Lila—“

“I don’t want to see you, again.” She covered her cringing mouth with her hand and continued to stare out the window. “Ever.” Her voice broke and her body began to shake as tears overtook her and she pulled away when Jack tried to touch her. She was too afraid that if he did she would give in, and she knew she couldn’t do that. “Goodbye, Jack.”

Jack listened to her climb out of the car and
slam the door behind her. Only then did he bury his face in the steering wheel and allow a single tear to fall, then another, until the SUV was rocking gently along with the weight of his grief.

Chapter 9

Lila awoke with a start.
  She sat up in her bed and immediately bolted out of her bedroom and to the living room door.  When she opened it, sure enough, there it was.  Another photo.

Snatching it down
, she slammed the door shut and immediately went to grab her phone and call the police until she turned it over.

What she saw stole her breath.

This time it wasn’t a photo of her and Jack.  It was one of her and Chase.

The photo had been taken so long ago she felt like it had been an eternity.
  It was the last day that she’d allowed Chase to call her, see her, or walk her to school.  In the photo they were standing face to face, and Chase was in the midst of tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.  What was a completely innocent habit of his that he’d had since he was fourteen suddenly looked far too intimate.  It looked like a man yearning to touch a woman he loved.  The look in Chase’s eye only solidified this fact.  Upon further inspection Lila realized the photo was taken on the same day Jack had fired her.

Little did she know back then that day wou
ld change absolutely everything, forever.

---

Jack pulled his truck to a stop at the Passenger Drop Off terminal at JFK and put the car in park before turning to the passenger’s seat and placing his arm across it. 

“Look, Chase…”

Chase already had the passenger door open, grabbing his duffle bag from between his legs. “Don’t fucking bother—“

“Hey
now!”  Bitsy cried, leaning between the two front seats from where she’d been stewing in the silence of the truck from the back seat for the entire ride.  She placed both of her hands on either of her grandson’s shoulders as she leaned in from the back seat.  Feeling Chase’s entire body relax under the slight pressure of her hand, she gripped it. “You don’t speak to your
fucking
brother that way.”

Chase and Jack’s eyes both flew to Bitsy in shock.
  Not once in their lives had they ever heard that kind of language leave their grandmother’s mouth.

Bitsy’s
eyes jumped from one grandson to the next in pure distress.  Jack’s eyes were red and swollen, Chase’s lips were curled down into a disgusted sneer and he had bags under his eyes that she’d never recalled seeing there before.  They both looked like hell rising, and she’d had enough. 

“Now I’ll be damned if I let you climb out of this car and fly to Cambridge on that kind of piss poor note.
  You’re going to say goodbye to your god damn brother before you get on that plane even if it kills you, do you understand?”

Chase leveled
Bitsy’s eyes with his own, willing himself to stay calm. “He attacked me.”

“You disappeared for three days.
  You’re lucky he didn’t murder you.  Not a jury in the world would convict him.”

With his jaw clenched, Chase met Jack’s eyes, and his stomach immediately turned.
  With teeth grinding in pure fury, he managed to snarl.  “Bye.”

Jack’s fin
gers dug into Chase’s head rest. “Good luck at Harvard, all right?”

Chase leaned over and gave Bitsy a begrudging kiss on the cheek before climbing out of the car.

“I love you, all right?”  Jack called.

Chase stepped out onto the
terminal walkway and mumbled, “you too,” softly, so softly it was barely audible.

But Jack heard it.

---

Ten minutes later, Bitsy was in the passenger seat as Jack pulled into a park in front of The Dalton School.
  She threw him a look.

“I jus
t have to make a quick stop,” he said, undoing his seatbelt. “Five minutes--stay put,”  he added when he saw that Bitsy was fixing to undue her seatbelt.

The hallways of Dalton were full of kids scattering about as Jack walked through, shrugging out of the way of every strange kid he touched,
assuming that the bell had just rung.  His eyes searched the halls until he found the long windowed wall of the front office, pushing his way through the door.

Every head at every desk, most of them women, flew to the door of the office the second Jack stepped through.
  Pens dropped, phone calls were forgotten and conversation came to a halt all around at the sight of him standing in the doorway.  He shoved his hands in the pockets of his trench coat at the unexpected attention before gradually making his way to the reception desk.

“Hi. I’m here to speak to Lila James?
  It’s about my, uh… my brother.”

The receptionist raised an eyebrow.
  The smirk on her face spoke volumes.

Jack’s heart raced.
“It’s important.”

The rec
eptionist grabbed a pen and pad. “Well, Lila’s not here.”

“Not here?”

Her eyes rose to him as she de-capped her pen and leaned over, exposing her ample cleavage. “Not here. But I can certainly take a mess--”

“Where is she?”

She straightened up. “I’m really not at liberty to say, Mr. Almeida.”

Jack tilted his head down at the receptionist, not missing how she’d known his name with no introduction, his brown eyes going soft as they searched hers.
  He placed his elbows on her desk and leaned in close, a small smile lighting up his previously serious face. 

“Listen…”
  He said, gently. “I’m sorry if I was rude just now… but I think we both know that I’m not really here for my brother…”

She only rolled her eyes in response before letting them slowly travel his body.

“But if you could do me this one favor I would…”  Jack’s eyes bore into hers. “I would really appreciate it…” His eyes flew to the nameplate on her desk. “Marsha.”

Marsha smacked her gum and
let her eyes travel his body once more before shaking her head. “She got on a plane to Cambridge this morning,” she whispered.

Jack visibly froze.
  “Cambridge?” he repeated.

“Massachusetts,”
 Marsha confirmed.  “That’s all I know.”

Jack pushed away from the desk like it was on fire and took a moment to collect
himself before offering Marsha a quiet thank you and flying out of the office door.

---

It was a full flight and it showed, but Lila didn’t care.  After everything with Jack and finding yet another picture hanging from her door that morning, she was happy to be leaving New York City for a little while.  Someone was following her, someone with an agenda that they had yet to make clear and she was sure it was only a matter of time before they did.  She was too afraid to call the police.  Partly because she would definitely lose her job if the administration got wind of the pictures, and partly because she was embarrassed.  She thought maybe, just maybe, if she got this job and left New York for good this would all go away.  The thought of leaving made her sick to her stomach.

But it didn’t make her nearly as sick as she got every time she thought about having blamed Chase for the pictures.
  Clearly he wasn’t the one who was taking them, and she hated that she’d let herself believe he was capable of it for even a second.  She knew Chase.  She knew him so much better than that, and yet she’d still burned him at the stake.

When someone jammed into the back of her ankle with god-knows-what from behind she begged for patience. Lila always seemed to have the awful luck of being upon the last passengers to board the plane and with
, almost two hundred passengers, getting to her seat was taking longer than she cared for.  Adjusting the heavy bag on her shoulders she breathed a sigh of relief as she finally stepped onto the plane and was able to make her way down the narrow isle.

“Row 1
0, seat F.”  She said to herself, smiling gratefully when she found her seat in the first row of economy.  Dropping the heavy bag from her shoulders felt like heaven, so much so that her eyes fluttered shut momentarily.

When they opened
, the sight that met her stole her breath and stopped her in her tracks.

Chase was staring up at her from Row 1
0, seat D with wide eyes, his fingers clutching the handles of his seat like a vise.

“Holy shit you must be joking,”
 Lila whispered, shaking her head in shock, unable to break eye contact with Chase.  After another long moment of silence, a sarcastic grin broke her face. “No, actually… this is just about right.”

Knowing exactly what she meant, Chase chortled, runni
ng a bashful hand down his face.

“Story of my life.”
  His deep voice boomed right into the isle and wrapped itself around her.  He stood from his seat and placed his hand on top of hers.

Lila looked
down at her hand, which was gripping the handle of her suitcase tightly, holding her breath at the warmth of his hand on hers.  Apart of her knew it was wrong to feel so much comfort from being this close to him, and that she should shut it down immediately, but another part—the much more powerful part—could only be relieved that he didn’t hate her. 

“I know you didn’t t
ake those pictures.”  She said suddenly, quickly, hers eyes watering at how horrible she must have made him feel. 

Chase
stared down at their hands for a few moments before looking up and meeting her eyes.  He stared at her for ages, but didn’t say a word. 

“I’m so sorry--I was so wrong,”
 Lila whispered, frowning deeply.

Before s
he could breathe another breath, think another thought, Chase had taken the bag from her hand and lifted it into the overhead bin with ease.

“Thanks
,” she whispered, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.

“Story of my life,”
 he said, again, falling back into his seat and staring ahead.

“Story of
your
life?”  She asked, thankful that they were able to somewhat break the discomfort with humor.  She stepped out of the isle and began to squeeze past him to get to her window seat.  “How about story of my freakin’ life?…”  Her words slowed to a stop when Chase placed his hand on the small of her back, his fingers brushing gently under the fold of her small Dalton t-shirt as he helped her past him.  She froze at the unexpected contact and moved quickly forward, plopping into the window seat and dropping her purse at her feet.

The skin on her back pounded where he’d touched her and she jammed her eyes shut.

“Story of my life,” she whispered to herself.

---

“This is Lila.
  You know what to do.”

Jack’s jaw clenched as he was sent to voicemail for what had to be the tenth time in under an hour.
  He’d been running errands with Bitsy all day in an attempt to clear his mind, but nothing was working.

He stared at the rapidly inclining number at the gas pump and his stomach felt like it was eating him alive. He’d been hanging up on her voicemail every time he called
, but this time he couldn’t control himself.

“I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence that you and my brother are on the same god damn plane, right?”
  His voice was gripped with sarcasm. “Total fucking coincidence.”  

After realizing that he was now unloading his feelings onto Lila’s voicemail
, he forced himself to hang up the phone, mortified that he’d just solidified his complete loss of control for her to hear.  Internalized it on her voicemail.

After filling the tank he opened the door to his truck and climbed in, slamming it behind him.

Bitsy jumped to attention and stared at her oldest grandson in dismay.

“What is it, dear?”
 she asked seeing the naked distress on his face.

“If it came down to me and Chase.”
Jack stared out of the window, his eyes burning.  “If it really came right down to it… she’ll always pick him.  Always.”  His eyes flew to Bitsy.  “Am I right?”

Bitsy faltered.

“Am I right, Grams?” Jack’s voice trembled.

Bitsy didn’t want to answer, but she c
ouldn’t stop herself, “Yes, darling.  All right? Yes.”

Jack looked away.

“Whether she knows it or not,” Bitsy shrugged.

---

“Damn,” Lila said through gritted teeth, slamming her pen down as Chase drew a deep, dark line through the third three-in-a-row he’d achieved since he’d pulled out his notebook.  Lila tossed her pen over her shoulder dramatically in response to her loss, cutting her eyes when Chase laughed an arrogant laugh.

“Still suck at tic-tac-toe.”
  His deep voice boomed so heavily that the flight attendant, who was in the middle of a safety briefing to their left, threw him a look of warning.  “Some things never change,” he teased, his voice considerably lower.