by much. Thomas was getting an eyeful without a bra or pants on. I didn’t dare look at Xander because he was probably noticing the same thing.
“Fallon…” My name came out of his mouth like a prayer. It spoke of, both, reverence and insanity.
“Thomas, what are you doing?” I repeated. “Put the gun down.” It never worked in the movies, and I suspected it wouldn’t work now, but I had to try something-anything.
He shook his head. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” he replied. “You were supposed to wait for me.”
Okay.
He was talking.
That was a good thing. It meant I could buy some time until the police got here. Xander’s alarm had surely tripped with the broken windows.
“Wait for you to do what, Thomas?” I took a step closer and it was enough to set Xander off.
“Stay where the fuck you are, Fallon,” he growled.
“Don’t talk to her like that!” Thomas roared. “You don’t get to talk to her like that!”
I needed to regain Thomas’s attention. “Thomas?” He looked over at me again. “W…wait for you to do what?”
“You were supposed to wait for me for when I was ready,” he said vaguely, and telling me nothing.
“Why don’t you let Xander go, and…and we can talk about-”
“The fuck I’m leaving, Fallon,” Xander spat, not helping the situation at all. I understood he was upset and scared for me, but Thomas hadn’t shot him yet, and I was trying to prevent that.
“If you don’t shut the fuck up, I will put a bullet in your head,” Thomas seethed. “Don’t think I won’t.” He pushed the tip of his gun against the side of Xander’s head. “I should shoot you for touching what’s fucking mine anyway.”
Xander turned until the gun was pressed up against the center of his forehead. “Then do it,” he challenged. “Because the only way Fallon is leaving with you is over my dead body.”
“Xander!”
I didn’t think.
I ran towards them and stepped in between the two men until Thomas had to pull back or point the gun in my face.
“Are you fucking crazy?!” Xander grabbed me and threw me behind him.
I didn’t let him have his way, though. As soon as he released me to face Thomas again, I stepped up from behind him until I was practically standing next to Thomas. “Thomas?”
He looked at me and his eyes were wild and hurt. “You’d die for him?”
“Thomas, the police-”
He threw his head back and laughed. When he looked back down at me, the hurt was gone, but the wild was still there. “The police aren’t coming, Fallon,” he said. “Our childhood might have been shit, but I’ve spent the past ten years becoming one of the best hackers in the country. How do you think I’m always able to find you?” I figured as much. Both, Karla and I had. It explained everything. “The alarm’s been disabled.”
“Why are you doing this, Thomas? I thought we had been friends.” It was in that one sentence that I realized I messed up.
“We were?” he disputed.
“I…I thought we had been,” I replied, scared of where this might go.
Those stunning eyes of his narrowed. “Then why did you never look back after you left?”
Thomas was a year younger than I was, and he was right. When I had turned eighteen and left foster care, I never reached out to anyone other than Karla. I had been so busy trying to get my life together and putting all those years of rejection behind me, I hadn’t considered the other friends I had left behind.
I thought of feeding him some fairy tale, in hopes of calming him, but I couldn’t risk him going off on Xander. Plus, he was right. I had been an asshole. “Thomas, I’m sorry,” I told him truthfully. “I was so wrapped up in trying to get my life together, I hadn’t thought to reach out to you, or Bonnie, or Samuel, or…well, anyone, really.”
“Fuck that shit,” Xander barked. “Why the fuck have you been terrorizing her all these years?”
The gun pointed at Xander this entire time, Thomas looked over at him. “I wasn’t terrorizing her,” he denied. “I was…waiting until I wasn’t mad at her anymore before approaching her.”
With men, it really all comes down to the basics. “Well, you waited too long,” Xander snapped. “Fallon’s mine.”
I turned to face him. “Xander!” What in the hell was he doing trying to antagonize Thomas?
“She can’t belong to you if you’re dead, Xander Raynes,” Thomas pointed out.
I turned back towards Thomas.