Over and Run With - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Twenty-Two

"She bought it."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure." The night was lit up by tall, golden flames, but that old hospital was still filled with shadows—along its edges and in its corners, around its perimeter and through its long, limbing hallways. The only living portion of this building was its heart. "My mother is fully convinced that I'm on her side. They'll be waiting for my signal.  We've got as much time as we need."

Lily eyed me, as though she couldn't quite say the same. But that didn't much matter. I had gotten her to trust me this far, and this far was all that I needed. "I still think we should flee."

"You've been fleeing your whole life, Lily."

"It's served me pretty well this far."

"It's too late to leave now."

"I think you're underestimating the utility of a back door."

The words sent a twinge through my heart, as I thought about another Collins on the other side of this fight. "If you don't think they're gonna be waiting for you at the back door," I said, "then maybe you're even less prepared for this than I thought."

She laughed, but we both knew there wasn't anything funny about it. Here, now, this was how everything ended, and so the two of us split towards our stations, ready to carry out a plan that only I knew was designed to fail. "You better be right about this," she called out.

 "I know exactly what I'm doing," I called back.

That was the last time I saw or heard from Lily Collins.

We were set to lead two different teams that night. I had presented it as a means of deceiving our enemies—I would lead my initial team, and then Lily would lead hers, and this would, in theory, overwhelm the Goode family. But I knew that Goodes didn't get overwhelmed. They got a second wind, and the second batch of Gathering members would be taken down quicker than the first.

My only concern was with Hughes—which is where most of my concerns always lied. After all, he had known my family even longer than I had, in a way that was deeply intimate. He had lied his way into Joe Solomon's good graces, charmed his way past my father's skepticism, and he had won the heart of Charlotte Woods. If anyone had the opportunity, the capability, the knowledge to expose me, then it was him.

But lucky for me, Blake Hughes was a proud man. "Look at you," he said upon my approach. "Look at what you've become."

I no longer felt enchanted by his presence. When he smiled, I no longer swooned. When it came to Hughes, the best practice was to simply let him say his piece, and then to ignore him as best you could. "Mhmm."

Our team was gathered at the back of the room, trying our best to conceal our numbers. Trying our best to make us seem bigger and more menacing than we really were. Most of the Gathering was a performance, making up for a desperate and permanent sense of lacking. "I did this, you know."

But even with all the practice in the world, sometimes Hughes still draws you in. "Did what?"

"Brought you here," he said. "Made you who you are. I trained you, showed you the truth, and now you've found a purpose here with us. Now you're leading us, and we're finally getting somewhere."

In the time spent with the Gathering, it had become abundantly clear to me that Hughes had always wanted more. More from his leadership, more from his past, more from me. His desire extended far beyond revenge and bled into malice. Hughes wasn't here because he wanted to settle the score with my family—he was here because he liked being mean, and that was a key difference.