Read Online The Academy - Friends vs. Family by C. L. Stone - Free Book Online

forehead to mine.
The light finished warming and fluttered to life. I was caught up in those soft
brown eyes of his, dark and soothing, glistening. “Promise me,” he demanded.
“Say it.”
    “I won’t wait,” I whispered. I swallowed hard. “Silas, I promise.
I’ll call.”
    He grunted, pulled me in close against him once again and sighed
into my shoulder. “I hate this,” he said. “I don’t want you here with them.”
    Where else did I have to go? I couldn’t go home with him or anyone
else. I couldn’t join the Academy, even if I’d wanted and even if Kota said it
was fine. My parents wouldn’t allow it. The only way to leave would be to call
the cops but the results wouldn’t be what any of us wanted. “It’s not for
forever,” I whispered. “If I ran away with you, they’d come after me. Won’t
everyone else get into trouble?”
    He grunted again and lowered me to the ground, keeping a hand on
me to make sure I was stable. He pulled away to rub at his face. “Fine. Let’s
fix your damn shower.”
    “Was it broken?” I asked. I turned from him, my head buzzing after
all of the emotions. I sucked in some air and looked for the toolbox on the
shelves.
    “I felt like breaking it,” he said. His eyes moved to the
collection of boxes that took up the majority of the floor in the garage. It
was a mess and I was embarrassed by it but he didn’t seem put off. “So I just
took it apart. I’m going to put a timer on it, though. If she even attempts to
do it again, it’ll only be on for a half hour before it cuts off. You can flip
it off and turn it back on again but it’ll stop it from being run for hours on
end like that.”
    “Where’d you learn how to do that?” I wasn’t sure he heard me. I
found the toolbox and pulled it off the shelf.
    He took the box away from me. “My dad’s a plumber,” he said.
    I half expected him to say the Academy. I smiled to myself. For
friends, we still hardly knew each other. I wondered how many other secrets the
guys had, and was sure they had many more than I did. I felt as if they were
helping a near complete stranger, which was so messed up because my heart was
telling me I was much closer to them than my own family that I’d known all my
life.  
     
    When we got back upstairs, North had the door off of the hinges.
    Silas held up the tool box. “No wood,” he said.
    “Damn,” North said. He blew out a sigh. “Okay, I’m going to make a
new door and a new frame. Silas, you beat the shit out of it.”
    “Yup,” Silas said, beaming.
    “Sang Baby? Could you fetch me a pen?” North took the toolbox from
Silas’ hands and opened the lid, pulling out a measuring tape and evaluating
the other contents.
    I sourced a pen and paper and gave them to North and headed down
to my bedroom again. Mr. Blackbourne and Kota were next to the far wall,
talking. The bed had been moved. Now instead of against the wall, the bed was
sticking out lengthwise into the room, with the head of it under the window.
The bookshelf was moved near the half door to the attic. It created another
barrier, making a square space in front of the attic door.
    “It creates an entry way,” Kota was saying, “but it makes it kind
of obvious that she might be trying to mask that attic door.”
    Mr. Blackbourne rubbed his palm against his cheek. “There’s no
other furniture to work with. Unless they demand she move it, leave it there.
We’re not prepared to escalate.”
    Escalate? What did that mean? I moved further into the room,
trying to figure out why they wanted to block the view of the attic door from
the entryway. I looked at Kota, asking silent questions.
    He smiled. “Gabriel,” he called.
    The attic door opened and Gabriel popped his head out. “Yeah?”
    “Show Sang.”
    Gabriel crawled out of the space, with his two locks of dyed blond
hair hanging across his forehead. The rest of his rich, russet brown hair was
mussed in the back. His blond locks of hair hanging in