Tuesday Teaser! Caged Chapter 28!

Well, it may be a week late, but that's better than nothing, right?  :)  Here's a little tid-bit from Caged Chapter 28. 

***

I was supposed to be out of the house before this happened.

“He’s been here for days?” Carlisle growled in a barely hushed voice.  “My son has been here, at your house, for days and you don’t even tell me?  Seriously, Aro?”

“You aren’t going to help any of this if you go off on a tirade,” Aro responded with considerably more calm.  “That certainly never helped in the past.”

“Nice,” he muttered back.  “I don’t need that thrown in my face.”

Leaning out slightly to peer down the coiled staircase, I could see both of them standing in the foyer, blocking my escape.  My father was in tan pants and a light blue polo shirt, and he paced back and forth over the marble floor looking like he was in the rough, searching for lost golf balls.

“I’m not throwing it in your face,” Aro said.  “But I am reminding you why you need to calm the fuck down.  He’s upstairs, and this isn’t an executive meeting.”

“I know, I know,” Carlisle mumbled.  “I’m sorry, you’re right.”

They both walked off to the right and out of my view.  As much as I knew no good could come of it, I quietly walked the rest of the way down the stairs and towards the entrance to the kitchen.  I could hear them both drop down on the stools at the breakfast bar, and my father took several long breaths before he started talking again.

“How does he look?” he asked.  “Is he okay?  I mean, is he in trouble or anything?”

“He looks…okay,” Aro said.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

I shifted to the other side of the door, and I could see their dim reflections in a large landscape painting in the foyer.  Aro’s hands gripped a coffee cup as he spoke.

“He called from the same area where the police picked him up the first time.”

“Shit – at that nasty warehouse?  Where they found him with that dead girl?”

A brief flash, a vague memory of police cars, sirens, an ambulance, and the pale, blank face of a woman whose name I didn’t know flashed through my head.  I blinked rapidly, but there was nothing else to the memory.  There was nothing else except mental fog and heroin-induced apathy.

“That place was torn down years ago,” Aro said.  “But he wasn’t far from the area.”

“Is he…is he doped up again?”

“No…no,” Aro said quietly.  “He said he was tempted, but he wasn’t high when I found him.”

“Jesus Christ,” my father whispered.  His hands gripped at his hair for a moment as he leaned his elbows on the bar.  “I thought we were past that.  I thought that trainer said she was going to keep him clean.”

***

Hmmm...confrontation with Daddy is imminent!  See you on Friday!