Kaylee's POV
Fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes was all I had until my mom arrived and called the cops on me for having drunk strangers sleeping on my couch. Not to mention the sight of all the drugs and emptied-out beer bottles lying around would cause her to freak. Or maybe she would forget about all of those things and focus her attention instead on her stained carpet. There was no way to be sure how she would react.
God, why didn't I remember that she was coming over? She had called last week to make sure I remembered and I had promised that I wouldn't forget.
I made myself get up and pushed gently at Ayden's arm. The only response he gave me was a grunt before rolling over onto his side and pulling the covers over his head. That was his fault for drinking so much last night.
Sighing, I yanked the pillow I had been sleeping on off the bed and hit him with it. At that, he started and glared at me.
"What the fuck, Kaylee?" Good morning to him, too. I grabbed his phone off the nightstand next to him and shoved it against his bare chest before picking my own up and sending him a message.
Kaylee: my mom's coming over in 15 min
He picked his phone up when it vibrated against his chest and read the message aloud.
"Tell her no then."
Kaylee: I can't do that. She checks up on me once a month to make sure I didn't burn her house down
I might as well have this time, I thought to myself.
"You couldn't have told me sooner?" Ayden said, suddenly remembering the fact that Asher, Mya, and Khloe were passed out downstairs. He got up and pulled on a random shirt he found on the floor and rushed out the door with me following at his heels.
Just as we thought, none of them seemed even half-conscious. He leaned over the second-floor railing and ran his hands through his messy hair. "Well, shit." he stated. Right at that moment, my phone vibrated in my hand.
Mom: can't wait to see you!
I held it out for him to see.
He looked around at the mess downstairs again and nodded once at me. "Go get some air freshener or something and meet me downstairs."
As it turned out, we didn't have air freshener. What we did have was a lot of perfume and detergent sprays. So while I grabbed a black trash bag and started throwing the bottles in, Ayden was in the bathroom trying to muster up a hot enough shower that would cause the steam we needed to wash out the smell of cigarette smoke and beer. I read it in a book once that it was a way to get rid of the smell. I only prayed that it worked fast enough. I sprayed some detergent and perfume around just in case.
"It's done." Ayden came out of the bathroom sweating. I finished wiping the table off and got to my feet. The white powder clung to the wet towel. That only left one more thing to take care of. We both turned around to stare at the passed-out bodies at the same time.
"Where should we put them?" he asked. I looked at Asher who still had his fingers wrapped around a bottle and his other hand on his girlfriend, Khloe's, waist. She was lying on top of him and I had no doubt that when he woke up, he would be sore. The other girl, Mya was snoring with her mouth open. Her body was lying sideways on the single armchair with her head on one side of the armrest and her legs over the other one. I shrugged and looked to him for an answer.
"What about your room?"
I shook my head. My mother had a habit of going through my things to make sure I wasn't making any stupid decisions. Too bad this time I had no proof of the decisions I had made.
"The garage?" I shook my head again. It was probably less than twenty degrees outside and the garage would be freezing from the snow that had built up over the past couple days. Maybe the snow would help slow my mother's car down and give us more time to clean up the disaster in the house.
"Where then?" He looked at me and waited for me to come up with a better idea. There wasn't that many rooms in the house. There was only one other room I could think of but I couldn't bring myself to tell him about it. "Well?" He looked at me impatiently and then at the bodies reminding me that we were on running out of time.
Breathe, Kaylee, I reminded myself, it isn't that big of a deal. It was just a room. We didn't have time to consider other options. I avoided his gaze as I walked past him and nodded at him to pick up someone. He chose to pick up Khloe first, easily scooping her up into his arms while her head hung at a weird angle.
Picking up the key chain where all my keys were located, I took one off and walked deeper into the house. I held my breath as I opened the door. Ayden shifted his weight so that Khloe's weight was distributed more equally throughout his arms. The door opened.
I couldn't remember the last time I was in this room. Was it a year ago? Four years ago? I counted back. How long ago did the accident happen? I was fourteen when it happened. And now I was nineteen. Five years ago.
I pushed open the door wider and avoided looking at the room itself. Everything was exactly how he had left it. My mother hadn't even bothered to go inside after it happened and only I came home. We had just both reached a silent agreement and locked the door shut.
I stayed close to the door, holding it open as an excuse to not go inside. Fortunately, Ayden didn't notice and pushed past me into the room where he laid Khloe down on my father's bed. I felt sick just thinking that she should even be allowed in his room, but I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.
Ayden left and came in again after a few more minutes, dropping Mya off on the spot next to Khloe. He turned towards me as if to say something, but then the doorbell rang. We looked at each other with the same horrified expression. Ayden reacted faster. He sprinted out the door, yanking me behind him. I barely locked the door before he pulled me away from the room altogether. We tripped down the stairs and into the living room. My wrist hurt but I kept my lips shut and rushed down the stairs with him.
"Grab his feet!" he yelled. I did as I was told while Ayden lifted the rest of Asher's body up. The doorbell rang again. "Shit," he mumbled under his breath. I didn't pay attention to him though. I was too busy trying to breathe under Asher's dead weight. Asher let out a groan and I almost dropped him.
"Where do we put him?" Ayden shifted Asher's weight in his arms and looked around wildly.
Bathroom, I mouthed. It was the closest room I could think of.
He read my lips and nodded, ushering us both in the direction of the bathroom. I could just imagine my mother standing outside the house tapping her feet impatiently. The phone in my pocket buzzed. A few seconds later my ringtone sounded.
Ayden threw open the bathroom door using his back and I followed. He set Asher's body down roughly while I pushed his feet over the bathtub's edge and into it. Asher let out another moan before letting his head fall back against the wall.
I could hear Ayden downstairs already opening the door. What would my mother think? Would she think that she had the wrong house? Or would she just find it extremely strange that there was a boy living in my house without her knowing it?
"Oh that's wonderful," I could hear her saying. He was probably helping her get her coat off now. I put my index finger to my lips so that Asher would know to stay quiet even though his eyes were still closed. Better safe than sorry. I closed the door behind me and ran back down the stairs.
The last time I saw my mother, she was angry at me for even considering quitting therapy. I had told her that I was done with it and she had not accepted that. But she didn't seem to hold any grudges as I casually sprinted back down the stairs, running into Ayden on the way down.
"Kaylee!" My mother exclaimed when she saw me. She looked surprised to see me. No doubt I was a mess with my shirt clinging to my body with sweat and my hair everywhere in my face. "It's so good to see you!"
Ayden grinned and wrapped his arm around me casually, looking as perfect as he usually looked while I continued to sweat underneath my shirt. My heart was still pounding from the adrenaline. I shrugged and smiled before offering her a hug.
"Look at you! I leave you for a month and you've already got a handsome boyfriend living with you! Now when did you intend on telling me this?" She went on and on after I broke from the hug first. She continued to chat as Ayden led her into the living room and I left for the kitchen to make her some tea.
I heard a sudden burst of Ayden's laugh and thought about how good he was at acting. If he wasn't such a professional at scaring the crap out of people, I would think that he could pull the acting job off. But then again, couldn't I do it, too?
I put the top of the teapot back on and braced myself for the next few hours that were to come.
My mother eased the tension a little by being oblivious to it all and by bringing up stories of what had happened to her during our time apart. Ayden laughed at all the right times and I smiled and nodded when she looked at me. As long as everything seemed fine, my mother wouldn't question anything.
I was so lost in my thoughts that when she addressed me, turning her head from Ayden to me, I jumped. "So Kaylee... How did you meet Ayden?" She seemed overjoyed to learn about all the details about how our "relationship" blossomed. I thought about ignoring the question altogether, but her cheeks were rosy from laughing so much and she had come so far to see me that I couldn't deny her.
I couldn't think of how to explain though. If I signed something, Ayden might take it the wrong way and think that I was telling her something that he didn't want her to know. And it seemed inconvenient to text her when she was sitting right in front of me. I tried to rummage through my brain about ways to communicate with her that wouldn't set off alarms ringing in his head. Luckily the teapot whistled right then and I hurried out of the room.
His conversation carried over from where I pulled out teacups and set them on a platter. "How we met," He leaned over to her ear and cupped his hand over his mouth before whispering loudly, "is a secret." He pulled away and smiled devilishly while my mother shot a glance over her shoulder and caught me looking back at them.
"Kaylee, that's not fair! You have to tell me all the details! A mother ought to know what her baby is up to." She laughed.
She looked so happy, sitting there in my living room talking with Ayden. I couldn't remember the last time she talked so animatedly. Suddenly I felt bad about lying to her face while strangers slept in her dead husband's bed. Watching Ayden, I felt more disgusted than ever.
It was all so fake. The nice outlook of the house from the outside when in reality it was a disaster in here. Ayden's bubbly laugh and the way he smiled and the pretty words that came out of his mouth to hide the fact that he couldn't wait for her to leave. Instead of taking the teapot off the stove, I turned to leave, wanting to be anywhere but here. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. The air was beginning to suck out of my lungs and choke me. The house was too warm, too hot. The high pitch whistling of the teapot shrieked louder than before and I covered my ears.
"Hey," I felt an arm grab mine. I could just see it happening. Everything was planned with Ayden. From the distance between us and my mother, it would look like he was trying to help me. But with his back to her shielding me from her view, he whispered in a low voice, "Get your shit together. She's your mother and you're the reason we're in this mess."
My head was starting to spin and I felt myself tilting. Stop it, Kaylee, I told myself, you only have to pretend for a little longer. I repeated it over and over in my head but my mind and body refused to cooperate. I felt my elbow knocking into the teapot and searing pain ripped through my arm. I think I cried out, but no one could hear it.
An hour later, my mother stood watching over me as Ayden carefully applied some kind of medicine over the burn on my arm. I grimaced and he apologized but I could swear he was pressing down harder and harder with each dab.
"Are you sure you're feeling alright?" she asked for the hundredth time. I nodded and closed my eyes again. All I wanted more than anything right now was to sleep. Just to crawl under the warm covers and never wake up. "Maybe we should take you to the hospital. It looks serious." Ayden pressed until I could feel his fingernails digging into the raw skin. I didn't need him to remind me about getting anyone involved. I was already shaking my head furiously at the mention of the word "hospital." I didn't want to have to be there again after the last time. I willed the burn on my arm to evaporate or heal or something faster. Anything but there.
"I can stay the night." she offered, shooting me that familiar look that said mothers knew best. Ayden kept his lips shut. I shook my head again. She had work tomorrow and it was getting too hard to continue this facade. Barely twenty-fours had passed and I had already ruined the evening by being clumsy. "Are you sure you're alright?" she asked again, touching the back of her hand to my forehead.
It's just a burn, I signed to her, and she sighed. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Ayden's eyes flashing back and forth between our hands as a warning.
"Well, I'm going to go now," she said slowly, willing me to change my mind about her staying the night or taking me to the hospital. However, both options were not an option. My head was spinning from shaking my head so much. I shook it once more and she reached out to hug me, careful not to touch my arm. Ayden was staring daggers at me over her shoulder but returned to a smile after she turned to him for hug as well, clearly not expecting the warm embrace.
"Thanks for stopping by," he said. "It was nice to meet you. Kaylee talks about you all the time like you're a goddess." She smiled brightly at this compliment and I turned away to avoid her concerned eyes. I focused my attention on the wall instead. There was a chip in the upper left-hand's corner and I made a mental note to myself to get it fixed one day.
"Take good care of her, alright?" He nodded enthusiastically. I felt sick.
"Alright, well before I go I'm going to go use the bathroom so if you'll excuse me," She made her way around the coffee table and started for the stairs. I snapped my head back at Ayden. Asher was in the bathtub. I waved my hands frantically at him to get her to stop.
He cursed under his breath and called after her, trying to keep his voice calm. "Hey, Ms. Harrison, the bathroom is a mess right now since we're repainting the walls and fixing some faucet leaks, too, so maybe it's not a good idea to use it. We could drive you to a gas station or..."
My mother stopped near the top of the stairs. "Faucet leaks? Well, that's new. And new paint? Kaylee, what in the world are you up to?" She said this jokingly but she still wasn't coming back downstairs. "I'll go in anyway. I want to see what you've done to it." She continued to walk up the stairs. Ayden and I immediately got off the couch and as normal as possible, rushed up the stairs to stop her. Every movement made me want to scream out in pain and the burn wasn't even that bad or big.
She continued talking as she walked towards the bathroom with us trailing a few feet behind her. We had to stop her now. The bathroom door was only a few feet away. "You know I've always wanted to repaint the bathroom a different color as well but your father..." She paused and inhaled a breath. When she turned back around to look at us, she forced a smile back onto her face, "...always wanted it to the stay the same way as it was because I quote 'cool people have white tiles.''"
We watched in horror as she turned back around and set her hand on the doorknob. Stop her, come up with more lies if that's what it takes, I screamed in my head at Ayden but he seemed frozen, unable to move. How ironic that it was my mother who could make him speechless.
My heart stopped when the door opened fully. I forgot all about the burn engraved in my arm and the boy standing next to me and waited for her reaction. Ayden at some point grabbed my hand without even noticing it. We stared and waited.
I didn't know what I was expecting, but a scream sounded reasonable. My mother frowned instead when she turned back to look at us, giving us both a strange look. "You two look like you've seen a ghost." Her frown deepened at the sight of our intertwined hands before shrugging it off. "Kids these days." she muttered and walked into the bathroom. Ayden looked at me with a raised eyebrow. Realizing our hands were still entwined, I shook my hand free from his grip and looked inside the bathroom.
Asher was nowhere to be found.
A/N: Hey guys! Sudden inspo hit me over this week, so here is chapter 27 :) Please let me know your thoughts, and don't forget to COMMENT, VOTE, and FOLLOW!
~Forever_Yours_Too