Аманда Хокинг - Flutter

“Peter.” I sat down on the bed, thankful for the bit of privacy that Peter had given me.

“You found him?” Jack shouted incredulously. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why are you still there?

When are you coming home? Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”

“I’m fine, he’s fine.” I was tempted to say that Ezra was fine, but unfortunately, at that moment, I didn’t know the current status on Ezra. “We just found him last night. He needed to rest, and now we’re getting some things sorted out. We should be leaving soon.”

“What things sorted out?” Jack was a little too good at reading between the lines sometimes, and I didn’t appreciate it. “Why don’t you just get on the next flight out of there?”

“Peter’s still in pretty bad shape. He needs some more time to recuperate.” I felt good about saying that, because it was only half a lie. That was completely true, but that wasn’t what we had to stay around to sort out. “He’s had a rough go of it here.”

“I thought that was the whole idea. That’s why he went there.” Jack tried to keep the edge to his voice, but it had started fading a bit. As much as he was angry with Peter, he wasn’t really hateful guy, and he found it difficult to carry around the resentment needed to properly enjoy comeuppance and revenge.

“We’ll be home soon. You don’t need to worry anymore.” That actually hurt to say. I knew there was still a very good chance that we wouldn’t even make it out of there alive, but I couldn’t tell Jack that. So I lied, and tears welled in my eyes.

“You better be,” Jack grumbled, trying to mask the elation in his words. “Things are going crazy around here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Your brother and Bobby,” Jack scoffed.

“Whose Bobby?”

“He’s… I don’t know. You’ll have to make Milo explain when you get back,” Jack answered vaguely.

“All I know for sure is that he’s human, and he’s around all the time now.”

“All the time?” I questioned, disbelieving. “I’ve only been gone for like ten days!”

“It’s been a pretty wild ten days around here,” Jack allowed. “And Bobby showed up like the day after you left. So yeah. It’s been eventful.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, you’ll see when you get home,” Jack said. “It’ll give you more of an incentive to get here quicker. As if I weren’t incentive enough.”

“No, you’re definitely enough,” I laughed sadly. It was stupid how much I missed him.

Laughing at his silly jokes made me want to sob.

I talked to Jack a little bit longer, listening to him regale stories of what I had missed at home.

Eventually, I had to get off the phone. Peter could only hide out in the bathroom for so long, and talking to Jack would only make me sadder. When I hung up, I knocked on the bathroom to let Peter know the coast was clear, and he came out a minute later. He was much more subdued after that, so we said very little to each other. I showered and got dressed, and after that, there wasn’t much else to do. Peter laid on the bed with his fingers latched behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. I paced the room and frequently peeked out of the curtains. We just waited for Ezra to return.

Sun had started filtering around the edges of the curtains, and while neither one of us said anything, that definitely made Peter and I nervous. The lycan we even more strict about their nocturnal habits than we were, so the odds of them continuing a discussion into the daylight didn’t seem likely. If Ezra weren’t back soon, the only conclusion we could come is that he wasn’t coming back. At least not on his own. It probably would’ve been a much better use if our time if Peter and I been formulating a rescue plan for Ezra, instead of wasting it pacing and laying down.

“He’s still not here.” I peered out the curtain, letting the warm morning light stream in, burning my overly sensitive retina, and then let it swing closed. I looked back behind me, where Peter laid immobile, the same way he had all day. “Peter?”

“I’m aware that he’s not here, Alice,” Peter muttered tightly.

“Don’t you think we should do something?” I stood with my hands on my hips and glowered down at him. Laying in bed just did not seem like the right answer for this situation.

“I’m thinking.” Peter closed his eyes, as if that could block out my voice.

“You’ve been thinking all day! We should’ve been plotting for this eventuality! We knew there was a good chance that Ezra wouldn’t come back, and he’s obviously not going-”

“I have been thinking, Alice!” Peter snapped, and his green eyes looked accusatorily at me.

“I don’t know what you’ve been doing all day long, but I’ve been preparing for this.”

“Well… you should’ve let me on it!” I stammered in a huff, and insecurely crossed my arms over my chest, trying to continue looking angry even though he had caught me off guard. “I could’ve helped! I have lots of good ideas!”

“You mean like pointing out the obvious and peeking out the curtain?” Peter asked dryly, and almost reluctantly, he pushed himself up into the sitting position, letting his legs dangle off the edge of the bed.

“I don’t know what else to do! I don’t know what to do!” There was an unnecessary whine growing in my voice. I felt powerless and on the verge of tears, and I didn’t like it at all. I took a deep breath, and decided to work on controlling the only thing I actual had control of us, namely myself. Pushing a dark strand of hair behind my ears, I decided to start over. “What did you come up with?”

“Nothing useful,” Peter admitted wearily, keeping his gaze on the floor.

“Come on,” I scoffed. “You just said you’d been preparing for this-”

“I’ve been trying,” Peter cut me off again. “But I just can’t see a way around anything.” He sighed darkly, then muttered to himself. “I suppose that’s why he brought you.”

“What are you talking about?” I felt myself stiffening, as if he was claiming something derogatory. “I came with Ezra because I thought I could help.”

“No, Ezra brought you with because he knew how utterly useless you would be, and he thought I would be unwilling to facilitate in your murder for a second time,” Peter explained, his voice dripping with venom. “And I’m been going back in forth between it all day long, wondering what I would I finally do when it came down to it.”

There was a sinking feeling growing in my chest, as if I had been used in a pawn in all of this. I had come back here to try to talk some sense into Peter, and I thought that I had managed to that, if only a little.

But the way Peter was talking made it sound like I had been brought on as more of an anchor. I hadn’t been brought along because of my skills, but rather the lack thereof.

“What?” I demanded, but my anger was wearing off, replaced with an aching sense of uselessness.

“If I leave to go after Ezra, and I bring you along, you’ll get killed! If I leave you here, they’ll follow my scent back and slaughter you! If I try to put you on a plane to get out of here, you’ll probably do something horrible in bloodlust and get yourself killed or something even worse. And if you managed to make it back home, the lycan would probably follow you back. There’s nothing I can do except stay here and babysit you!” Peter growled.

“I don’t…” I started to stumble out some kind of protest about needing a baby-sitter, but I realized that everything he was said was probably true, and I was an idiot for not seeing it sooner.

After the initial sting of that wore off, I thought of something even stranger, especially given the way that Peter talked to me.