Hybrid Affairs

No going back

Stacy’s POV

I heard what Greg ordered his men and I shuddered in fear. I came back despite Thomas’ warning me not to. I was tempted to find anything that would help me and them in any way. I felt fear and I am not gonna deny that.

Not for myself, but for my family in Arizona. By tomorrow, my entire family will be under Greg’s watch and I cannot help to blame myself for being the cause of their problems. I have put them through a lot.

Not hearing from me the minute I landed in Massachusetts was enough to cause my parents to call everyone they know there to track me. How long has it been? I am not entirely sure. But the real question in hand here is, am I willing to put them at risk again?

Will they be okay when they find out what has happened to me and what I have become?

Will love suffice enough to not fear me?

At this rate and judging by the way circumstances are going, I can no longer go back to my parents or to simply pick up where I left. Whatever the hell they have placed inside me prohibits me from getting my life back. It was not just me, Thomas and Erma and Erin will never be living a normal life again. All because of a power-hungry bastard who thinks that he can get away with it.

Greg made me his personal target. And I am making him mine.

I crept back to the darkness that was now I consider a friend.

Erma and Erin were still asleep, nestled in each others arms when I came back. We chose to spend the night in a cave that Thomas found where we could make a fire for cooking and for warmth without risking the chance of being detected. I was starting to think that it was just for cooking because we are pretty much warm even if the temperature had dropped to almost freezing.

Thomas was not around. I sat beside the fire and let my thoughts run wild as the fire slowly consumes the twig that I feed on it.

“I know you have been sneaking again.”

“You are not my mother, Thomas.”

“Tell me what happened out there.”

I told him and he listened. For a male, Thomas was good at listening, a trait that men usually fail at. My own father sucks at it, my mother would always complain that he was just listening but never understanding and he was miserable at communicating. Thomas’ head would casually give me nods and shakes and that was all there was. I waited for his interruption but none came, until the time I came to the end of the little excursion that I took.

“Well?” I prompted.

“Well, what?”

“Aren’t you going to scold me or , I do not know, just say something?”

Thomas just sat there staring at me and it gave me discomfort, not because he was a man, but because he was not just a man, he was a hot man.

Back in Texas, I was probably the prom queen for two straight years without the attitude. We go to the community school because our parents were firm believers of the government and my mother always says that school does not matter, it only matters when you are aiming for a degree and you want to see something fancy on your resume, then it will finally matter.

My mother, then Jenny Simmon, applied for Harvard but got rejected. She made it her life’s goal that if she was given the opportunity to have children of her own--they would all be admitted to Harvard one day. It was her frustration and, at first, I did not understand her, but I took the test all the same because I know how it made her happy to know that her first child had the balls to apply for the Ivy leagues.

I was smart.

I am pretty and I am popular and I made it in.

But, I never dated, I never went out partying like most girls.I am still a virgin and no, not even the hot guys at Harvard can make me lose my virginity. My parents did not restrict us anyway. The reason why I did not want to go out at night and leave my sister Amy alone was because she was having these weird and awful dreams and, believe it or not, I had to smack the sh*t out of her for her to wake up.

The popular guys at school did not stop until the day we graduated, asking me out.

I never felt that spark. See, I was a hopeless romantic. I wanted my first kiss to be my last. The kind of kiss that would make my feet go pop because it was magical.

Thomas ticks all the boxes on my standards list.

And right now, he was just looking at me like I was an i***t for not stopping. Suddenly, all the swagger I had earlier vanished like smoke and I was back to the good old, sweet me.

Their silence was awkward and Erma was snoring.

“No.” finally was all he could manage to say to the impromptu speech that I had just made.

“Just no?”

“You see, in the army, we were trained to just listen and never ask questions.”

I sighed.”But the thing is, you are not in the army now. The army won’t take you back. Maybe they will, but what if that animal comes again and kills just because you are mad? I am sure the army will be glad to ship you off to some science facility and who knows? If you are lucky, you might just end up at Greg Phantom’s table?”

I let it sink a bit. People tend to absorb new information if you let them soak it in a little before coaxing them to accept it more. I read it in a law book when I was reviewing for the entrance exams one time.

“What do you say we are to do , huh?”

Ha! That works every damn time.