The Exclusive One

Chapter 2

Day 1.

2:45 a.m.

Parker.

It’s been hours of walking and I am beyond exhausted.

My legs are like gelatin and with every step I take it feels like I will fall down from my shaking. My feet are so numb I can’t feel them, but I do know that they’re bleeding. I’ve seen the tracks on the ground. I have to find my way back to society so I can call someone to come get me.

I push myself to keep walking when I hear a noise. I turn around and I’m enveloped in a warm hug. I pull away and see familiar dirty blonde hair and a heart shaped face. I smile softly- I’m sure I look delirious as I say, “Nikki!”

Nikki looks at me with pity in her eyes as she asks me, “What the hell were you doing, Parker?”

I stumble for the words, but my mind is foggy, and nothing comes out of my mouth. She shakes her head and takes off her leather jacket and puts it on me and then takes off her beanie and puts it on my head and I revel in its warmth. She turns around and crouches down and commands, “Get on my back.”

I know she’s strong enough to carry me and I’m too exhausted to argue so I do as she says.

Once I’m on her back she begins to run and she’s moving as fast as a cheetah. We soon make it to civilization, and she asks me, “When is the last time you saw the Aberrations? I assume that’s why you look that way.”

I mumble and I know my words are slurring together, “It’s been at least two hours.”

She nods and asks, “Was Hunter with them?”

I nod and she pulls out her phone and I hear her talking, but I’m having trouble making out her words. Black spots cloud my vision as I struggle to focus.

She looks back at me and crouches down in front of me placing her hand on my shoulder she says, “Tom will be here soon, okay? Do not move, do you understand me?”

I nod yes, but honestly, I don’t think I could move even if I wanted to. She takes off running leaving me all alone.

The heaviness of my eyes makes me want to sleep. They feel like giant weights that I’m forcing to keep lifted. There’s a faint sound of a siren and I watch at the lights stop flashing and the siren turns off. I hear a door shut and see Tom walking towards me, but he looks a little disheveled which is unusual for him. Or could I be imagining that. He looks blurry.

He walks towards me and without even greeting me he picks me up bridal style and takes me to the passenger seat where I am immediately engulfed by the warmth making me sigh in satisfaction. He gets into the driver’s side and hands me a small test tube and commands, “Drink it.”

“What is it?” I mumble quietly.

“Jasper made it up it’ll help heal you, so you won’t have hypothermia which I’m assuming from your looks you do indeed have.” He pauses for a moment before continuing, “Do you know where Nikki went?”

I swallow the serum in one big gulp and grimace at the bitter taste of it-it’s only a little sweeter than the one Hunter gave me. I decide not to tell Thomas that our enemy has already given me something because I know I would be in bigger trouble if I were to tell him that detail. Besides getting into trouble for it I didn’t want to tell him because I knew then I would spend the next 24-48 hours at headquarters being tested on.

So, I just gulp down his serum and wait a moment as I feel its healing properties begin to take effect. Suddenly everything doesn’t seem so confusing and it’s like the fog has been lifted from my brain.

I respond, “No, I don’t. She set me down and told me not to move then took off with her super speed.”

He mumbles under his breath, “Of course she did.”

It’s been at least ten minutes of us sitting in silence before he asks, “What happened to your clothes?”

I scoff before snapping at him, “What do you think happened?”

I see him roll his eyes and he rubs his forehead before asking, “Did anyone go with you when you ran off?”

I shook my head no and I hear him mutter something under his breath. The rest of our time is spent in silence until he pulls into our driveway and tells me, “Go get a bath and get warmed up. I’ll be back soon; if the boys ask about me or Nikki don’t tell them anything, you understand?”

I nod slowly as I get out of the car. I cross my arms and watch as he drives away then I walk into our house and hear nothing, but silence. I go to one of the master bedrooms on the first floor which is my room and strip out of my clothes then walk into the bathroom and turn the water on in the shower and wait until I see the steam fill up the room and the mirrors fog up.

I hiss when I first get in from the hotness of the water; within seconds my skin begins to turn a pinkish tone. I don’t care though; I am not going make it cooler even though the stinging in my body tempts me to, but after being as numb as I was that morning for so long, I welcome the pain. After about fifteen minutes I hear some creaking from upstairs and I moan feeling frustrated that someone is already awake. I get out of the shower and quickly wrap myself up in a towel because sometimes the boys will come in my room unannounced.

I look in my full-length mirror as I sprayed some conditioner in my hair and start to brush it out. I glance up to make sure I’m not obviously showing any scars from earlier this morning and I cringe seeing the chunk of skin that has been taken off my arm. It is now scabbed and has bruises surrounding it and I grab a first aid kit and grab the hydrogen peroxide and pour it on my wound before wrapping it up in gauze.

I guess that healing serum only heals sickness.

I look back into my mirror and my long dark brown hair hits just below my breasts and I quickly pull it up into a messy bun, my dark brown eyes have circles underneath them indicating that I hadn’t gotten much sleep so I grab some makeup and quickly cover it up. The boys don’t need to know what I’ve done. Especially Ashton and Ryan both of them would go crazy if they knew.

My complexion is clear which makes me smirk showing off one of my dimples. I grab some studs out of my jewelry drawer and put them in my ears in knowing that if I don’t Nikki will have a cow since she is the one who talked me into getting my ears pierced. She doesn’t want them to close up because she claims it is the only thing that makes me “girly”. I grab a pair of sweatpants, a pair of fuzzy socks, and one of the boy’s sweatshirts I had stolen about a week ago and make sure the sleeves will be long enough to cover up the bandage. None of the boys’ mind that I take their shirts since we aren’t related most of the boys think I look attractive like that. Taking one more look at the mirror I look at myself. I’m not unattractive by any means, but I have so much baggage I don’t know who would ever want to put up with me.  

I walk toward my bed and instantly fall onto it falling asleep quickly.

 ******

Day 1.

6:30 a.m. 

Ryan

I wake up moaning as I lift my head up from the pillow to look around my room and Bella is gone.

It’s not surprising although we have been together four years, we still haven’t spent the night together by ourselves. If we ever fall asleep in the same room there is always others with us like it’s a giant sleepover.

But normally she will switch rooms and sleep with Nikki or Parker. But… she normally wakes me up to tell me. I’m sure she just went to sleep in either Nikki or Parker’s room, but there’s always the small chance that she drove back home.

It makes me a little uneasy not knowing what has happened to her.

I grab my phone and text her to see if she is up as well: Good morning beautiful :)

I set my phone to the side and notice the time and chuckle softly. There’s no chance in hell that Bella is up yet. She will be asleep for at least two more hours… honestly that girl loves her sleep more than anyone I have ever met. When she is up this early it is extremely rare.

I lie back on my bed and wonder if maybe I could try entering her dreams.

I can enter people’s heads easily if I’m in the room with them, but dreams have always been tricky. If I disrupt the dream too much, then the person will wake up and the whole thing falls apart.

I’ve only attempted it once before with Bella and it didn’t work then. I’ve tried it with others, mainly due to Thomas and Jasper wanting me to test my powers and see how far I can push myself. I have only once been able to enter a dream, and that was with my sister and she was sitting right beside me. Because we are related, we have a stronger bond that it has always been easier to use my powers on her if she has an open mind.

I don’t know exactly where Bella is though so that makes it a lot more challenging to get into her head. She could be in Nikki’s room and that’s only a couple of doors down from mine or she could be all the way home and that’s a few miles away from me.

I don’t think it’ll work, but what’s the harm in trying?

I take a deep breath and focus on my breathing as I close my eyes.

I breathe in and out.

In and out.

In and out.

Once I feel nice and relaxed, I try to picture Bella and how I think she would look right now. I could almost see her as if she was right next to me lying down on her side curled up in a ball with her blanket’s half on her and half of it falling off the bed. Her auburn brown curly hair sprawled out on her bed with a few spirals on her face and her face gracing a faint smile. I try to push myself into her head to see what she could be dreaming about. I don’t see anything, but the image of her I had been seeing now has changed.

I don’t see her at all anymore instead I see glimpses of different shades of green, brown, and blue and I hear yelling, “Run faster!”

It sounds like Bella; immediately making me feel on edge and desperate to talk to her.

I keep trying to push through to see more of the image and what could be going on right now, but I can’t make anything else out. And suddenly I’m pushed out of the image completely.

I sit up in a panic and I grab my phone and call her only to come up with a busy signal. I double-check my text to make sure it sent to her and feel a small amount of relief to see that it did.

Maybe she’s just having a nightmare.

Bella and her roommate Lorelei probably went home late last night. That’s fine- I’m sure everything’s fine and that she’s just having a bad dream.

Yeah, that has to be it.

Just a nightmare.

My gut is telling me it’s more than that though. I pick up the phone and call Tom knowing that he should be at work by now. He answers on the third ring, “Is it important, Ryan?”

“When I woke up Bella wasn’t here anymore. I tried to enter her head and I saw flashes of brown, green, and blue and I hear her voice yelling keep running. I’m worried something has happened to her. Have you heard anything?”

“Hang on a moment.”

I wait for him to respond and I know he thinks he covered the phone, but I can hear him let out his strand of curse words before calling someone in and discussing stuff. It’s too muffled to understand everything and I wonder what else is going on. He gets back on, “No one here has heard anything about Bella, Ryan, but I’ll keep you updated if I hear anything.”

“Okay…” The phone line goes dead and I know he hung up. That was very odd. He has never been in that much of a rush to get off the phone before.

I go to my sisters’ room across the hall and open the door to find it empty. I groan in frustration and go to the next room where Travis is still asleep in bed. I then go to the room beside mine and open it to see Ashton putting a shirt on. He yells at me, “Hey man, why don’t you knock?”

“Sorry.” I mumble, “I was checking to see if you were awake.”

“Well, I’m awake,” He pats on the bed for me to come sit down and asks, “What’s troubling you, Ry?”

“I tried to get into Bella’s head and saw some concerning things. I can’t get in touch with her and Nikki isn’t here. I’m just worried.”

“Do you know if Parker is here?”

I didn’t even think to see if Parker was missing. I jump up and head to the door with Ashton right behind me. We run down the stairs and to Parker’s room. I open the door quietly and see her lying on her bed. She doesn’t even stir at the sound of us which is unusual because she’s normally a light sleeper. I know she must’ve been exhausted to be sleeping this hard.

I close her door and Ashton says, “At least we know she isn’t involved in whatever’s going on.”

I nod in agreement as we head to the kitchen. We both are always more worried about Parker because she doesn’t have any powers to protect herself. All she knows is self-defense moves and although that’s better than nothing it’s still not much when you’re facing the Aberrations.

Both of us prepping a bowl of cereal as we sit in silence. The more the silence is around the more worried I get. 

Where is Bella and Nikki? And are they going to be okay?