Chain Link

Chapter 10

 Her life felt like it was about to spin out of control.

No, it wasn't because of Logan. Logan was great. His little brother had finally accepted her after talking to him a couple of times. She was sure that her book collection was the thing that won him over to be okay with her about being an important part of his older brother's life as well.

And no, it wasn't work related. It was going smoothly. There were no bumps in her road. At this pace, she could be a translator full-time in a year.

It wasn't Nic related either.

But it was family related.

Elaine had called a few days ago and told her that she wanted to meet up with her to talk about her parents. The talk wouldn't be good. Why else would she do it in person?

Alessa hadn't seen Elaine since they had settled into Austin. There had not been a reason for Elaine to come to them. They were far away from their parents since she had guardianship and had different last names.

Their parents could not find them so they weren't a threat. Elaine was only around when it was dangerous.

She needed to remain positive.

Maybe Elaine just wanted to inform her about small tidbit about her parents and felt like coming to see her a friend.

It could happen.

Nic didn't notice anything about her mood that morning. She tried to keep smiling as much as possible. Her little brother shouldn't know about the things that their parents were planning. He had already suffered enough under their reign.

The only comment that she had gotten from Nic was that she was annoyingly positive before getting some teasing comments about Logan.

If only she could be that annoyingly happy in her head.

Logan didn't notice anything about her either that evening when he came to hang out after dinner. Dan had also come along with him to take Nic to the park to go rollerblading.

But he had his own things to deal with.

"Am I a crappy brother?" He asked.

Alessa looked at him surprised. They were watching something on tv while drinking beer. The question came out of nowhere, but then again she hadn't paid too much attention to Logan. Instead she was paying attention as to how her mood was reflecting towards her boyfriend.

"Why would you ask that?" She asked.

A sigh was heard as a hand ran through his hair that was getting on the long side for him. "Dan came to talk to me yesterday about his behavior towards you and he apologized to me for kind of being a dick towards you."

Was she understanding him correctly? "And why does that make you question your older brother skills?"

"It wasn't that," Logan admitted. "I asked him why he was being a dick."

That statement raised her interest. Of the nearly three months that they had been dating, she had learned that not a lot of talking was done among the brothers about their feelings or emotions or anything that left an impact on their lives.

It had taken her ages to find out that their dad wasn't the best dad around by a passing statement that Logan made about him not being able to make it to Logan's birthday two weeks ago. So she still didn't know everything that there was to know.

It was unheard of in that family to ask things like why people were acting a certain way or feeling a certain way.

How they managed to live like that was a mystery to Alessa.