My Bestie's Dad Likes Me Wet-Chapter 136 The Wedding Is Tomorrow

NALA POV

I couldn’t stop replaying the look of disappointment that played on ivin’s face as the car drove off.

Even as the car sped away and the distance between us grew and the underground building disappeared into the dark behind us.

Because in the half second before Ethan’s hand closed around my arm and pulled me in I saw Ivin’s face do something I had spent weeks waiting for it to do and would have paid a lot to see under different circumstances.

It cracked.

Even though it was for a brief second, it was there. Something that looked like it had been sitting behind all that controlled nothing for a long time and had chosen the exact worst moment to surface.

But then the door closed and the car was moving and the expression was gone and so was he and now I was left in a moving vehicle with the image of it burned somewhere behind my eyes where I could not erase it.

I pressed my back against the seat and tried to breathe even though the car was choking with the cigarette smoke of the driver.

For the first time in weeks, I was outside, I could see the sky and cold air was coming through a gap in the window and it felt nothing like I had imagined it would feel during all those hours of staring at the ceiling because I had imagined it would feel like relief and instead I felt like I had left something behind that I could not name.

I looked at Ethan.

He was on his phone, he hasn’t spoken a word to me since we escaped, he is not checking if I was okay, not saying anything about what had just happened or where we were going or who the driver was, just on his phone with the screen angled away from me and his thumb moving fast and his whole body carrying this specific tension that I recognized from years of watching my brother be in situations he was not telling me the full truth about.

And I don’t know what to say either, should I be grateful or pissed off? I decided to keep my mouth shut instead.

But then again...NO

"Where are we going?" I said it to the side of his face.

"Somewhere safe."

"That is not an answer."

"It’s the answer I have right now Nalayna."

"Ethan." I reached over and put my hand on his arm drawing myself nearer so I could see what was on his screen but almost immediately that the screen tilted further away from my line of sight and I felt the shift but I patiently catalogued it. "Who are you texting?"

"Nobody."

"You are visibly texting someone right now."

"Just a friend."

"At four in the morning."

"He keeps late hours." He finally looked at me and smiled and it was the Ethan smile, the one that had been getting him out of things since he was nine years old, wide and warm and completely designed to make you feel like you were being unreasonable for asking.

"You’re out, you’re safe, so nala can you please let it be that for five minutes."

I looked at him for a long moment. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Then I looked out the window.

The city was moving past us sparsely. It was four in the morning and there was a different energy in the streets. I did not recognize any of it as I had not been in a car in weeks and my sense of direction was compromised.

I couldn’t even tell if we were moving toward any part of the city I knew or away from it entirely.

Away, I was starting to think. Definitely away.

Ethan went back to his phone.

I watched him in the window’s reflection, the glow of the screen on his face, the way his expression when he thought I wasn’t looking had none of the easy warmth of five seconds ago and was replaced with something tighter and more calculating and I had a feeling that was sitting in my stomach like something I had eaten wrong.

I still kept mute and said nothing.

I watched and I kept quiet as the car drove and Ethan continue to text his friend who kept late hours and twenty minutes later we turned off the main road and then off the secondary road and then down something that was barely a road at all before pulling through a gate that opened before we reached it and stopping in front of a house that was not a house exactly but something that wore the shape of one.

Everything about it said money.

Not just any money, this is old money that doesn’t need to announce itself because the announcement is built into every visible surface.

Lights were on inside despite the hour. Men at the perimeter that I clocked immediately because I had apparently spent enough time in Ivin’s building to start noticing perimeters.

Then the car stopped.

Ethan got out and I got out because I had no other option and the air here was different, it was much more uncomfortable and colder.

A man was standing on the steps.

I noticed the tattoos first, they were much and definitely designed to be noticed, it was the type of tattoo that meant something, that told a story across every visible surface of skin with the particular language of a world that did not need to explain itself to outsiders.

Then the black guns in each side of his pocket that was t trying to hard, it was obviously meant to be seen.

He was tall, broad, somewhere in his forties, and he had the calm attitude that came from the absolute certainty that nothing in any room he stood in was outside his control.

He looked at Ethan first.

Then he looked at me.

Then he looked back at Ethan and something passed between them that I did not have the context for and did not like the look of it.

"Everything went smoothly?" His voice was low and unhurried.

"Like we planned." Ethan said it and I heard the slight catch in it that nobody else would have noticed but I noticed it because I had been listening to Ethan’s voice my entire life.

The man nodded slowly. Then he looked at Ethan with an expression that was almost pleasant.

"You can go." He said it simply. "Your debt is settled."

Ethan looked at me.

You’ve gat to be shitting me, I almost screamed but there were lots of gun around and none of the owners looks nice.

I looked at Ethan.

My brother who I had missed every day underground. My brother whose humming I would have given anything to hear. My brother who was looking at me right now with that ghost of an apology that never quite finished forming and this time I understood with a cold and complete clarity why it couldn’t.

Because this time he had actually done it.

Ethan had fucked me up.. AGAIN!

The man turned to me and looked at me the way you look at something that has already been decided about and there was no need to stress or worry over the details.

"The wedding is tomorrow." He said it like he was telling me the weather. Then he looked at someone behind me. "Show her to her room."