The Captain's Forbidden Mate

Episode 33: CRACKS IN THE STORY

COLE

I watched from two tables away, close enough to act if things got ugly, but far enough to let her do her thing, his way as she requested.

Damien looked shaken. Just the sight of it was enough to make me think that whatever just happened, was not something he was expecting to happen. Damien Holt was a very composed young man and I'd never once seen his mask slip, not even for a second, not even when he'd received word of his mother's death years ago, back when he and I had been kids.

Noah leaned over from where he'd been sitting, his chair creaking under his weight. "You see that?“I’m seeing it.”That isn't acting Noah, nobody can be that good at it." Noah kept his voice low as he spoke. "If he didn't know what his uncle did, it changes everything. This changes everything. Damien's been living in a world built on a lie his whole life, just like the rest of us."

I watched as Lena continued her little performance, only this time Damien wasn't smiling, his charm wasn't oozing out of every pore, in fact in all honesty he looked none too pleased about this turn of events

"I know little," she said. "That is all. That is, if anyone here can be trusted to tell me anything at all besides choosing and picking at what they think best."

"Perhaps it is time someone stopped choosing," said Damien, taking out his phone. "I think it is time I paid my father a visit. I imagine his involvement in all this is hardly surprising to anyone."

"Damien..."

"If my uncle is alive," said Damien, giving me a long hard look before turning back to Lena, "and if he has been, as you say, hiding from us all these years, I think it is about time someone gave him a piece of their mind, and I rather think my father might not be terribly pleased to hear it."

He got up abruptly, his chair giving an angry squeak as he did so and left the room, the phone already to his ear. I turned back to find Lena standing over us, her face pale.

"That went rather better than I expected," said Lena

"You think he's telling the truth?" I asked. "That he knows nothing about it?"

"I think," said Lena slowly, "that whoever has been texting me was right. I think his face is saying it all, that he knew little to nothing about this. And now he's about to ask his father questions his father probably isn't prepared to answer."

Noah shut his laptop with a grim expression. "That's either going to change everything, or it's going to get someone killed trying to bury it all once again."

A tense silence settled over the room as we all sat there, students flowing in and out of the coffee shop like ever before, couples whispering secrets at the next table over, the muffled sound of someones laptop playing music too low to hear properly. It all seemed so surreal to me, sitting here in a world that was so normal compared to this, compared to all of this. Like somehow, despite all of the things that had happened, everything was just fine because it seemed that way in this little coffee shop.

"We should follow him," I said. "Not that he'll see us of course, but just, close enough distance to intervene if something goes wrong."

"He said he was going to call his father," said Lena. "Not meet with him. If we start tailing him now he'll realize we're following him and he'll stop trusting us with everything he knows."

"She's right," said Noah. "We should wait until he comes to us rather than the other way around."

I hated waiting. I hated it with a passion, ever since that day the other week when I'd found out what she was, since everyones deadlines and threats had begun circling like a storm until everything was due at once and I was drowning in the middle of it. But she was right, and I hated that too, so I sat there in silence, waiting for whatever was going to happen next rather than trying to rush it and end up making everything worse.

"Two days," said Lena quietly, checking the time on her phone. "Two days until the council meets, and we still haven't found out nearly enough to save anyone yet."

"We've learned more than we did last week," I said. "That's something."

"Is it?" she asked. We were all silent for a moment, considering it, but in the end, none of us had an answer. We sat there for another twenty minutes, going over everything once again, trying to think through everything we knew up until this point and what we were going to do next before the council meeting deadline the following Tuesday. Noah was on his laptop going over old documents, searching for any mention of Aiden Holts death and proof that it hadn't really happened, while Lena sat quietly beside me, scrolling through the photo Noah had found last night of her mother, studying her face as though memorizing it.

Eventually we left, the three of us, going our separate ways, each one burdened with the same unsatisfactory conclusion. Whether or not Damien would find answers, and whether or not those answers would help us all, or hurt us more than we already were.

I drove Lena back to her dorm, both of us in tense silence as I pulled up to the building. She didn't get out right away, staring down at her hands for a long moment before speaking. "Thank you," she said. "Thank you for letting me do this my way for once, for trusting me to know what I was doing in there, and knowing when to let me do it.“You didn’t need my permission,” I said. "You never did. I'm only just remembering."

She smiled at that, a small tired smile, giving my hand a quick squeeze before getting out and going inside. I sat there in the truck for a moment longer, watching her light flicker on, contemplating everything that had happened in the past day, and all the things that were still waiting to happen in the days to come. My phone lit up in my hand one last time before I pulled out of the parking lot. It wasn't Damien this time, not with an unknown number trying its best to bother me. It was my father, short and to the point, the kind of message he only sent if something had gone very wrong.

Come home. Now. We need to talk about the council, and about something your grandfather never told either of us. And as I sat there in that parking lot, hands gripping the wheel, I wondered just how many more secrets this one family had buried, that all of this, everything that had happened recently, couldn't possibly be enough.