My Bestie's Dad Likes Me Wet-Chapter 128 Could Ethan Really Be Dead?

Nala Pov 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

"Is that what your hair actually looks like or did something die on your head?"

I turned slowly because I wanted to give myself enough time to decide if I was going to be the bigger person today.

I was not.

"Do you have days where you behave like a beer wench or do you just generally have daddy issues because your dad replaced his fatherly relationship with you with overpriced fancy items and forgot to throw in a personality while he was at it?"

I saw something like pain flash in her eyes. I probably hit too close to home but I was past the point of caring or giving any smudge of a fuck about where it landed. She walked in here with her nose pointed at the ceiling like the air near the top of the room was better quality and decided to open with my hair so whatever bruise she was sitting with right now she packed and brought herself.

I woke up more reserved and weak than I had felt since getting here and I hated it. I had been thinking about Ethan’s habit of humming when he cooks and of course it was always bad, off key and loud and completely unbothered about being either of those things, like the sound coming out of his mouth was a gift the kitchen should be grateful to receive. I used to tell him to shut up all the time.

I used to throw things at him and tell him he sounded like a broken ceiling fan and he would just grin at me and hum louder. Right now I would give anything to hear it. Just one terrible song. Just my brother being alive and annoying somewhere above ground.

I had also been thinking about Ivin, which was the part I was less willing to look directly at. I have not heard from him or seen him in days and we parted on a bad note and there is this unresolved thing sitting in the middle of my chest that I cannot swallow or cough out.

A part of me I don’t want to acknowledge actually misses him. Misses his coldness. Misses the thrill his voice sends through my bones, the way my thoughts clench and unclench when he starts using that dominant masculine energy with me like I am something he has already decided about. I am putting all of that in a box and leaving it there for now.

I had even considered going over to Nova just to be near a familiar face but I was in no mood to be the grey clouds standing next to her always bright sunshine of a smile so I decided to stare blankly at one of the walls and wait for the day to move on without me. That was my whole plan. Stare at the wall, bother no one, survive without incident.

And then this rude motherfucker walked in.

"Cat got your tongue?" I asked into the silence that was stretching on comfortably from my end.

"Oh I’m just letting you enjoy the last few seconds of feeling like you said something clever." Giulia smiled and shifted her weight to one hip like she had all the time in the world and had decided to spend it in my space specifically. "That line about daddy issues was cute by the way. Recycled, but cute. Did you workshop it or does it just come out pre-assembled?"

"It came out looking at you."

"Hm." She looked around the room slowly like she was deciding whether it met her standards. "You know what I’ve noticed about you Nala? You are very loud for someone with very little to stand on. You’re in somebody else’s safe house, eating somebody else’s food, protected by somebody else’s name, and you’ve got this whole unbothered act running like the rest of us can’t see straight through it."

"You don’t see shit."

"I see enough." She looked back at me. "I see a girl who doesn’t actually know what she is to the man she came here with and is too proud to ask. I see someone performing toughness in a room where nobody asked for a performance." She paused and let that sit. "How long has it been since you’ve seen your so-called boyfriend? Three days? Four?"

I didn’t answer.

"Its none of your business"

"No but cat probably got your brother’s tongue too." She said it lightly, casually, like a sentence she had been saving and was finally getting to spend. "My sources tell me his tongue might be decaying in an unmarked shallow grave alongside his useless—"

"Shut the hell up. Shut up your—"

"Be more original, peasant." She smiled and it did not reach anything behind her eyes. "It’s not like I lied."

My head started making noise, this low grating pressure that started at the base of my skull and spread upward until it was sitting behind both eyes pressing outward.

Is it true?

Could Ethan really be dead?

Is that what three days of silence means, that my brother is already gone and I am sitting underground performing toughness at strangers while his body is somewhere with no marker and no name?

Why am I here? I agreed to this. I walked into this with my own two feet and now I am standing in a room with this woman and her smile and I have no way to call anyone or check or know for certain if she is holding actual information or just a weapon shaped like one.

I am spiraling and I know I am spiraling but my brother might be dead and I have not seen Ivin in three days and this underground space has been slowly closing in on me since I got here, the walls doing that thing where they move just slightly enough that you can’t prove it but you feel it, and right now they are moving faster.

I stumbled out of the room before I finished deciding to leave, just desperate to be somewhere with different walls and different air, somewhere that was not the four corners Giulia was currently standing in the middle of like she owned them.

I made it a few steps into the corridor before I collided hard into another body.

We both grabbed for balance. I steadied myself first and looked up.

Lena.

She had both hands raised slightly, her eyes already scanning my face with that quiet careful attention she seemed to carry with her everywhere, and whatever she found there made her stop trying to make it into a normal hallway collision where she walked away.

Instead she looked at me and waited, her hand around my back rubbing slowly in circles like she could see the chains running behind my eyes.

"Nala." She said my name like she was actually talking to me, like she was trying to draw me out of the noises in my head.

"She said my brother might be dead." It came out smaller than everything else I had said all morning and I hated how it sounded out loud, hated that saying it made it feel more like a real thing sitting in real air.

Even more so I hated that I’m feeling this way over what Giulia said, for all I knew it might be a lie.

Lena held my gaze and nodded once, slow and steady. "Come with me. Come on, not out here in the corridor." She turned and I followed because I was tired and the armor was heavy and she was the first person since I got here who looked at me without trying to play polite.

She stopped at a door I had not paid attention to before, pushed it open and stepped aside so I could go in first and I stepped through and then I heard a low unmistakable and definitely familiar voice I’ve not heard in days.

Ivin.