Happier

➸ FORTY NINE

"You're so fucking useless!" A clearly very stressed Austin yelled then he turned to us with begging eyes. I looked to my left and saw a broom leaning against a shelf on the wall. I shrugged, taking it then walking over to Austin and staring directly at the huge bug who stayed still on his pants. Austin looked at me hurriedly and I took the hint as I smacked the bug off of his leg. I watched it fly across the room then chuckled at Austin's gratefulness as he crushed me in a hug.

"You guys can fight a group of men and workout to the bone, yet you can't handle a bug?" I teased them and they shrugged, not caring that they had a bug weakness. "Why did we need to meet here again?" I questioned as I took a seat next to Emmett on the ground.

"We were bored and figured we could go through all that—" Austin pointed to the pile of papers and files in front of Emmett as he spoke. "— quicker with the help of more people." He concluded and I raised my eyebrows at him as he suddenly had a football in his hands, throwing it to Ethan.

"Well maybe if you two helped him, you would've got somewhere." Riley stated in a teasing manner. We all silently dove into our own assigned piles of documents that Darren left behind, each of us hoping to find some sort of clue to anything at his point.

I was the first one to snap out of my focused gaze around forty minutes later. My eyes scanned over everyone else's either stressed, anxious or tired expressions— some being a combination of all three. I knew non of us had been in the right state of mind since Nathan and Carter left, and not to mention each of us dealing with our own issues as well. I sat back on the cold floor, not bothering to look through the files surrounding me anymore as I focused more on my friends.

I could see Riley looking up from her papers to Emmett every once in a while which hints to me that he still hasn't told her about his father, since she looks sad every time he won't return her gaze. Ethan was growing more and more frustrated as he kept coming to blanks through his set of files. Austin and Emmett look tired as I assumed all they've been doing is searching through hundreds of papers to find the last activity Darren did before leaving.

I admired each of them for working to their bones, all for Nathan and Carter. They will stop at nothing until they find them and I could tell the fact that Nathan left them out of the loop was taking a toll on them. They've never been separated like this before. Even those who don't know them could tell they were brothers at heart.

"Ethan?" I called out to him softly making him look up at me, his hard expression shifting to a softer one as he met my gaze. "Can I have the number Blake gave you? I thought might as well give it a try, you know?" I asked shyly, unaware of the butterflies that stirred up in my stomach at the thought of Nathan possibly picking up. However, Blake said it was from a disposable phone so it's probably long gone by now.

He gave me the sheet with the number on it and I took it silently while standing up and walking out of the warehouse for some fresh air. I breathed in the brisk air, the cold making me shiver. I pulled out my phone and started dialling the number on the paper, nerves taking over my body as I did so.

I hit call and was ready for a, "this number is no longer in use" message, but it never came. It started ringing making me freeze in my spot, the rings giving me more chills than the weather. It continued to ring a couple more times and although I felt like hanging up, I stayed on the phone regardless. Just as I was about to hang up, the rings stopped and I heard loud voices in the back.

I heard a faint, "shut the fuck up", come from the background followed by a string of chuckles. I didn't have it in me to say anything at first. I immediately started imagining Nathan on the other line of the phone and that alone made me smile.