Thorns & Oranges

The Tomb & The Truth

Chapter Twenty-Two

When I woke up, the room and the whole apartment was dark and still. Rey was asleep next to me, his arm wrapped around my waist. For a while, I just laid there, taking it all in. The good outweighed the bad, not that there was much bad with him but...

That nagging feeling just kept going on. What if he was a cop? What if he wasn't? What if he was and he was planning on sending my brother to jail? Wouldn't Vince have noticed there was a cop among the ranks? He always had before.

In the end, the feeling that I had to pee won over and I silently and carefully made my way out of bed to go relieve my bladder. I paused in front of the mirror afterwards, contemplating with myself for a few seconds on what to do.

"Fuck it."

I grabbed a towel from the rack and headed out to the living room. If I was a cop, where would I hide my secrets?

Not in an apartment where he brings the gangster girl back to sleep with. "He's not a cop and I'm insane for thinking it," I whispered to myself. "This is stupid."

I could agree with myself on that one. Standing there in a towel was definitely stupid. Rey's white v-neck sat on the back of the couch and my skirt was crumpled in the corner, crammed down between the arm rest and the seat cushion. I threw together the outfit and grabbed my blood sugar kit from the bookcase. This was the perfect solution, if he came out and asked what I was doing, I could say I was testing my blood sugar. If he didn't, I had a chance to think where he'd hide something that might tell me if he was a cop or not.

By the time I was finished, I had an idea. Rey was a smart guy, that was obvious, and he wouldn't leave something that important in the obvious places. When I was younger, I used to hide notes in my brother's car before I went to school. He used to keep a copy of Milton under the passenger seat for when he got bored doing whatever it was he did during the day and I'd slip a note of encouragement or just details of my day between the pages. That and I saw it in a movie once. I would pick one book and if that wasn't it, then I would let it go.

I studied all the books on the bookcase while I was waiting for the contraption to beep. There was one book that looked promising and a little out of place amongst the literature and current fiction. Digital Fundamentals with PLD Programming. When my sugars came back normal, I packed it all up and moved it back to the shelf next to my phone. I pulled the book out and flipped it open.

There was nothing weird about it.

Well. There was my one shot and that was it. I was going back to bed and forgetting about this whole half ass theory.

I put the book back on the shelf, the corner of my mouth turned up just a little. Paranoid, that's what I was. He was in the Army; he probably learned the hand grip from that. It was stupid of me to think otherwise. As I turned away from the bookcase, my eyes snagged on another book. H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction. It had a little gold ribbon sticking out of the bottom which wasn't out of place for compiled books but...

I glanced back over the shelves and noticed all the other authors with multiple works had separate volumes for each piece of writing. I closed my eyes and looked up at the ceiling. What was I doing?

My curiosity ate at me until I slowly slid the book off the shelf. The second I picked it up, I knew.

The weight wasn't right.

I flipped open the cover and the strange blue inside cover art looked back at me. I let out a breath and flipped. Right at the end of The Alchemist the pages stopped flipping. The last one lay over top and I slowly brushed it back.