Carolina Wren

Chapter 42

Wren's POV

Anxiety was pulling me in two different directions—away from the guys and towards my siblings. Now that I was cleaned up as well as I could be without showering, part of me wanted to hide in Kota's bathroom long enough for them to forget that I was even here. It was childish and I knew it was impossible, but the thought of facing them again made my insides seize up. They claimed they wanted to discuss where to go from here but in the end, I was nearly powerless if Mr. Blackbourne and Sean decided that going to the police was the only option.

I've spent my entire life dodging CPS. Even when I was living with my dad, I knew that if they ever showed up that I had to be careful with my words or they'd tear us apart. It was like I was always on stage and never got to rest. I couldn't let teachers or classmates suspect that something was off about my home life. At least with Dad, I was being taken care of. It was issues with himself that he kept as far away from me as he could that would have led to me being taken away.

Sheila was always a different story. No one had ever raised a hand to me until my first night living with her and she smacked me across the apartment for crying because I missed my dad. If someone had reported it and I still wasn't taken away, though, Sheila had made it clear that my life would be in jeopardy. But that's not even what scares me anymore. It's what happens to the kids one way or the other.

In the end, my anxiety over not having the kids in my line of sight is what wins. Not being able to see them is making me imagine worst case scenarios, like they had already been taken away from me or Sheila coming back and somehow getting to them.

When I make it through the door at the bottom of the stairs, my arms instinctively cross over my chest, obscuring the print on one of Kota's t-shirts and protecting myself the best that I can. I rolled up his pajama pants so I wouldn't trip on them, but they still drag against the floor as I follow the sounds of voices to the kitchen. North is standing at the stove, glaring at a pot filled with water on the front burner, practically threatening it nonverbally to boil faster. I didn't realize when he was upstairs that he's still in his football jersey. They were supposed to have an away game tonight, how is he even here?

Darting my eyes around the room, I find Silas leaning against a counter watching North, also in his jersey. The voice I was hearing was Luke, who is picking through the pantry looking for ingredients while he talks to himself about my brothers' preferences. Clearing my throat, three sets of heads jerk around to look at me with a mixture of concern and unease. "The boys will eat anything," I said, my voice echoing in my own head. "As long as it's not too spicy. Well, they don't like black beans very much, but we'll eat whatever you can scrounge up."

"We're thinking about doing a twist on an Italian dish Victor told us about after his last concert in Rome," Luke said easily, like it's completely normal for your teenage friends to jet set to a country on the other side of the world to perform in a concert. "It's a creamy pasta dish with peas and ham. It's the only thing we have enough of to feed all of us."

"That's fine," I tell them. They know the boys eat peas and they have ham all the time. "Why aren't you guys at the game?" It's ridiculous to think they would have dropped everything for me, and the drive would have been too far. There was a reason they took the team out of class during last period to get ready to leave.

"Bomb threat," North answered gruffly, turning his eyes back to the water. "We were halfway there when their school called our coaches and told them it was cancelled. Silas and I were at the school with Mr. Blackbourne checking to make sure it wasn't related to the idiots at our school when you red lined us."