Russian Roulette: Family secrets [2021 version]

Ch. 41: You're an accountant?

"Don't be nervous. They'll love you. I'm not so sure about me, but you they'll love." Cracker put his hand on Alyssa's thigh to comfort her. He felt her nerves vibrating inside the car and heard the sound of her gnawing on her lip, something she did when she got nervous or stressed.

The sound annoyed him. Not because she did it, but because he had put her in a situation where she felt unstable enough to do it. He did not like being that person to her.

At his touch, Alyssa practically jumped out of her skin. She had been far away in her own thoughts and had not registered Cracker sought her attention.

"I'm sorry. Did you say something?"

Cracker simply smiled. He understood how nervous Alyssa was, though she had no reason to be. His parents would paint her in gold and put her on a pedestal for sinking her hooks into him. Not that he minded at all. He wanted her hooks to be right where they were. He knew his parents would be thrilled. How they would feel about him coming home. That would probably be on the cold side of things.

As in somewhere between Arctic and inside a glacier cold.

"Relax, ok? If they say or do anything you don't like, we'll leave. I've left them before, and I can leave them again."

Alyssa sighed. She appreciated his concern and willingness to protect her, but she could handle it if they did not accept her at first. "They're your parents, Fallon."

"And you're my future. You win at every count."

At those words, Alyssa cocked her head and looked at him. The way he spoke about them as a couple was fulfilling to her. He did not go over the top to reassure her at all times. Cracker never appeared desperate, but he acted as if everything about them was normal and meant to be.

He was with her without question.

And she was with him.

"It's just up ahead. Behind those trees is the driveway leading to the house." Cracker pointed farther up the road and motioned to the left.

Waiting in anticipation, Alyssa stared at the road, keeping track of how close they came to the trees. Cracker turned the car into a small sort of driveway in front of a set of enormous iron gates in the tall brick wall they had followed along the road there. They had everything in dramatic effect, even the Winchester 'W' in gold. Alyssa sat there in awe and tried to get a glimpse of the house, which supposedly was at the end of the long driveway with large perfectly groomed trees on each side.

She saw nothing but trees.

Cracker clicked in a code on the control panel at the gates, and slowly the gates swung open for them. He sighed with relief. His parents had not changed his personal passcode.

Maybe that meant they would forgive him?

Slowly, to give himself time, he drove up the driveway to the house, lost in thought and trying to form an explanation to his parents. He had none. At least not one that made much sense. He had not left them. He had left the expectations they had. When he looked at it like that, he sounded like an ungrateful shit.

Gasping in shock, Alyssa grabbed his leg and held on to it when she saw the house. It was huge! And magnificent. Her Cracker had grown up there? It was the size of the village she came from.

A grey stone building, three stories from the looks of it, with white framed windows, and a grand entrance with stairs and huge wooden doors. The sad winter leftovers of English Ivy clung to the lower walls, but everything else seemed well-groomed.

Alyssa could not imagine how that place looked in the summer, bathed in sun with everything in bloom. She was well blown away, as it were. She had not noticed Cracker had parked the car and came around to open the door for her until the cold, winter air hit her through her thin dress.