The Rules They Broke

Chapter 38: Hanging Out

OLIVIA

Olivia slammed the door shut to her room after arguing with Elijah. She pressed her back against the wood and slid down until she was slumped on the floor.

How could she tell him? She knew he wanted her to tell him - she even knew that was the right thing to do - but how could she do that knowing that every extra moment she stayed in his house, it could cost him and her other brothers their lives? Her mom hadn't been so lucky, and there was no way she would take a chance that those men would spare her brothers.

But she didn't want to keep doing this anymore. She wanted to live forever in Logan's room, find the guts to be on better terms with her middle brother, and demand that he try harder too.

She wanted to wake up in the morning to the sound of Blake demanding what she wanted for breakfast, to listen to him ramble on about absolutely nothing and then turn and give her silly kisses on the cheek. .

She wanted Elijah to always be there to be angry with her when she did something dumb, to hug her when she was scared.

She wanted to stop running.

Maybe he could fix this.

Or maybe, he'll just get killed too.

Olivia pressed her hands over her ears against the voice in her head. She wasn't wrong in wanting some peace.

You're just wrong in wanting it at the gamble of another person's life.

As Olivia clenched her fingers and fought to shake off the ugly voice inside of her, her phone buzzed.

She squeezed her eyes shut against the glow of the screen. She wasn't going to look at what was there. She wasn't going to see one more horrible thing before she made up her mind about telling Elijah or not.

She separated her fingers on her face and peeked through them.

It was another email.

From: prettyboys678

Subject: come out come out

She clicked open the email and forced herself to read the words on the screen.

Don't tell anyone you're leaving. Leave through the back door and come to the cafe on Main Street. We are waiting. We are not patient. We know where you live.

For a few moments, she felt so dizzy everything swam in front of her. Her phone screen, the window, the bed all mushed together until she realized she wasn't breathing and slowly sucked in a few breaths. When the spinning stopped, she stood up.

She glanced back at the door, on the other side of which she could hear her brothers talking in the kitchen, probably about her.

She wasn't going to let anything happen to them.

So she grabbed her backpack, pulled open her window, and slipped outside into the night.

*****

For the first five minutes as she walked, Olivia could only focus on forcing one foot in front of the other.

For the next ten minutes, she tried to think of some way this wouldn't end in either her disappearance or an accidental death that wasn't really accidental.

By the time she neared her school, just a short distance from the mall, she realized that there was no way out of this.

She sat down on the curb under a streetlight and put her face in her hands and tried imagining what would happen if she called the police.