The Mercy of Birds

CHAPTER 42: DARK TUNNELS

"Good morning," he muttered as he walked up to the window and began to gather the curtain, permitting even more daylight in and repel away the abyss. He turned to her with a reserved smile as he leaned against the windowpane. The backlight rendered more shadows to cast on his sharp countenance.

She straightened on the bed and rubbed the sleep from her eyes as her gaze settled on his attire. He was leaving.

"CC, I have a work event that I have to attend in LA. I'll be gone for just a couple days."

Her movement stilled for a split second, her mind reeled to process the situation. It wasn't hard to understand, right? He was bound to leave her some days, one way or another, either for work, or a date, or to convene with his friends. He could say he decided to retire on the account of her but he didn't trade his whole life just to devote in taking care of her. He was a dashing, young man in his late twenties and as his sister, it procured her happiness more than any other to see him experience life of joy outside of the house, but something about today just made his leaving felt like a blow to the chest. She didn't know why, maybe it was because this was the first he would go for an extended period of time; the last time that he left for dinner with their brothers wasn't even as long as a full day and he had promised to return as soon as possible.

"Okay," she said but stared straight ahead of him.

Perhaps she wasn't the only one who felt that way when she could hear indecision clear in his voice. "You'll be okay, right?"

"Yes." She nodded.

"Alright." He approached her and took a seat on the edge of the bed, he offered a comforting smile.

She gazed down at the bracelet that she created for him dangling on his wrist. "Los Angeles is Nicholas' home... isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," he confirmed.

"Will you meet him?"

It hurt him to lie to her, but he was more afraid that she was going to be afflicted by heavy duress if she knew the truth. "I don't know, maybe I will. I'll tell him that you said hi if I do meet him."

"Okay," she said. "Have a safe flight."

"I will." He leaned in and planted a kiss on her cheek. A sense of wistfulness in that act of affection. "I'll see you in two days."

"Goodbye, Cameron."

+

The prominence of the Crane brothers couldn't be repudiated as Nova's eyes promptly singled him out of the crowd that waited in line at the arrival station of the airport.

Standing tall and solitary among the rest, Victor greeted her with no more than an acknowledging look behind his dark sunglasses, recognizing the flaming red hair from a mile away, before he entered the car on the passenger's side and slammed the door.

"Tell me what this is," he said, no-nonsense.

She glanced at him just as the daylight's shaft illuminated his face with otherworldly glow. "I will tell you once we get there."

"Where?" he asked brusquely.

"A warehouse near Abreaux Avenue and Sixteenth Street," she answered, giving no more elaboration.

"I don't understand why you're doing this," he said.

Me neither, but I have tossed and turned for more than two weeks now, I have made up my mind, she replied, deep in her thoughts, and still there was a trainwreck of doubts in her mind. The youngest Crane brothers were never her main option for the subject of the revelation, it was either Cameron or Nicholas, but the first one would never answer her and the second one was nowhere to be found, and so she was left exhausting her option, but was she being fair to him?