Faded Heart

XXXII. Scars To Your Beautiful

The familiar view of the small Chateau caught my attention as Pope pulled his old truck into the gravel driveway. I longed to have my head finally hit a pillow after this insanely long day. The entire car ride was filled with Pope eagerly explaining the plan to Kiara. After hearing the plan for a second time, I was ready to just put all the gold planning behind me for a few hours.

"So, we gotta be done before my scholarship interview in the morning." Pope says, as he turns the ignition to the old truck off.

"Okay, well we gotta focus." Kiara responds, opening the passenger's side door and making her way out of the tight front seat the three of us just barely managed to squeeze into.

I follow behind her, trying to ignore the squeak the rusty door makes as it closes behind me, "It's going to be fine."

"We got John B and JJ inside the well. The rest of us on top." Pope continues, walking to the bed of the truck and grabbing supplies. "The rest of us are on top. Em and Kie, you two will be the transporters."

"Yeah, we got this." Kiara and I exclaim in unison, sharing a quick high five and a smile. "Girl power."

Before Pope could continue with the plans, the three of us were thrown off by the lights returning to the Chateau. I was very confused because the power wasn't supposed to be back on. It had to be at least a few more weeks before the power was restored to this side of the island. So, the only way that anyone could have power right now was a generator, but no one on this side of the island had enough money to afford one. 

"What the hell?" I ask, listening to what sounded like a hum from a generator come from the other side of the house. None of this made sense to me. "I thought the power was out still?"

"It is.." Kiara mutters, moving towards the noise. Pope and I followed behind her. "It's not supposed to be back on for a few more weeks."

What we saw when we made our way around the house was enough to leave anyone speechless. There were different colored lights set up all around the front of the Chateau and around the trees. Beach themed pool toys were also spread around the yard. It looked as though a Kook had decided to throw themselves a beach themed party here at the house.

But this wasn't the most surprising thing. In the middle of the yard, JJ was sitting in a hot tub... Not just a blow up, cheap hot tub, but an expensive hot tub that would surely cost a few thousand dollars. The blonde's arms were sprawled out around the side of the hot tub and there was a bottle of champagne in his hands that had just been popped.

I was speechless and I stared at the scene in front of me. I was stuck between being confused about what was going on and concerned about what JJ had done in the short amount of time that we'd been separated. On the surface he seemed fine, but I could tell that there was something going on with him. 

His hand reached for his sunglasses, pulling them off for a moment to reveal a pair of overly intoxicated blue eyes staring back at us, "I got a jet going straight into my butt right now." He chuckles, his hand sliding around an expensive gold chain on his neck. "Y'all should get in immediately, you hear me."

"How much did this cost?" Pope asks as he knits his brows together in confusion. From the other side of the hot tub, JJ holds up a glass of champagne towards us. The three of us frozen in our places, still not understanding what was going on in front of us right now.

"Uh...Well with the generator, the petrol, and oh, hey, express delivery...pretty much all of it, yeah." He responds before taking another sip of the champagne. This meant that JJ had spent every cent of the money that he stole from Barry. Every cent of twenty five thousand dollars.