Mess of a life

15- Nosy people & douchebags

The days started blurring together as an indistinct mix of sleepless nights, cups of Earl Grey and tears. The first days after my conversation with Nicolas were spent looking over my shoulder more than once, but eventually even the fear he aroused in me subsided, won over by fatigue. I saw my brothers from time to time, when we occasionally shared a meal or passed each other in a room. Back home, we ate together as a family every day. Here, my brothers ate whenever they saw fit, fixing quick snacks throughout the day rather than having structured meals together. At least it spared me from having to strike a conversation. Elliott sometimes addressed me, and Dane even less often, but Jesper hadn't spoken a word to me. Charles and Nicolas were almost never here.

I spent most of my days reading in the library. Most of my nights too, as I tried to remain awake for as long as I could and ended up waking up in a start every time I fell asleep anyways. I even begun talking to the security team, when I decided I would become nuts if I didn't go outside. The guard from the shopping centre, Reece, was the one who came with me most of the time. I think I spent more time with him in the last weeks than with all my brothers combined. We didn't really talk, as he remained half a step behind me and followed me without commenting, but I was starting to feel familiar in his company.

At least I discovered the grounds of the house were just huge.

My routine was slightly upgraded when I discovered that the house held a huge gym. Huge, as in big enough to be a commercial gym. But this one was utterly empty, bathed in the select and elegant aura everything was bathed in this house. I genuinely think my eyes sparkled when I discovered the pool connected to it, long enough to really swim. From then on, my late nights and early mornings were spent there. I found that if I tired myself enough, I could grab a few hours of undisturbed sleep before the dreams took over. And that running was the best way to chase my demons away when I woke up from a nightmare, or a flashback.

Reading, running, and being very, very alone, such was my life before an attempt was made on it.

It all started very simply on a cloudy afternoon, when Charles discovered the unopened phone box on my desk. He immediately made a fuss about it, and when I used the excuse that I didn't know how to set it up – honestly, I was just using the fact that my phone was disabled to procrastinate the moment I'd have to answer my friends from France – he decided he'd help me. Except that right after that he got a phone call about a pressing matter he needed to attend to, so he ended up asking one of my brothers to do it for me. With a heavy sigh, Elliot accepted to do it, and that's how I ended up in the living room waiting for my brother to finish his fiddling with my electronics.

He briefly explained to me that he had set in my old sim card along with a new one, and that I was now connected to the Wi-Fi as well. I used the next minute to log back in all my social media, and the moment everything was put together was obvious as the phone started dinging like crazy between my hands, to the point I just put it on the coffee table to wait for it to calm down.

"Oh my god, how do you turn it off?"

"You're gonna blow up this thing before you even use it for the first time", snorted Elliott.

When the phone finally calmed down, I saw on the screen dozens of notifications. A lot of missed calls too. Nearly all came from my friends, some from my distant family. The rest from my boyfriend. I felt my heart squeeze. In the middle of all this mess, I kind of lost him too. We were never apart for so long before, as we saw each other every day in high school for the last six months, and as often as we could on the weekends.

His contact was the first I pressed, immediately bringing the phone to my ear. I didn't even realize that I was still in the middle of the living room, or that my brothers were just next to me. I just craved to hear him.