My mom and dad gasped loudly, then my mom threw her arms around Avery. “Oh sweetheart! Congratulations! I always knew you’d knock ‘em dead.” There was probably a part of them that was sad they were missing out on the college experience with me. It wasn’t like I wasn’t going to college. It wasn’t like I definitely was either.
I had no idea what my plan was. I was just focused on finding Deon.
“Thank you,” Avery said, then pulled away. “So, yes. I’d love dinner soon. To celebrate!”
My mom nodded. “I’ll make whatever you want. You just tell Cherri what and when and it’ll be done.”
“Okay!”
Alistair put his hand on my head and ruffled my hair like I was some little sister. “Well, we won’t take up any more of your time. I know you have things to discuss. If you need us to come back for you, just let me know.”
“Thanks, Ali,” I replied.
Avery and Alistair offered a final round of hugs to my mom, Gus, and my dad who finally wandered over, then they offered me warm smiles and good lucks, and left.
“Are you hungry, honey? There are leftovers if you’d like. Dad made his fresh fried rice,” my mom said, already charting a course for the kitchen.
“I’d love that,” I replied.
I wasn’t hungry at all. In fact, I’d gorged myself on pasta at the restaurant, but the idea of getting a mouthful of my dad’s home cooking was too good to deny. Looking back over my shoulder, I smiled at my dad. “You comin’, daddy? I got some stuff I wanna talk to you guys about.”
My dad had his hand on Gus’s back, and Gus was already starting to drift again even though he was standing straight up. “Yeah. Let me just get this kid to bed. He can barely stand up.”
“No,” Gus whimpered. “I wanna stay with Cherri.”
“You know what?” I said, walking up to him and putting my hands on his face. “I’ll stay over tonight. Once I’m done talking to mom and dad, I’ll come up and snuggle with you just like we used to do, okay?”
Gus nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
I released him and my dad led him off towards the stairs and I turned into the kitchen instead. My mom was just setting a bowl of the heated fried rice down on the kitchen, and the smell of the spices was comforting. I sat down at the island stool behind the bowl and dug in immediately. The taste was even better than the smell and it simply reminded me of home. Not necessarily the large home we were in currently, or the smaller one we used to live in in North Postings, but just being around my family and loving one another regardless of the circumstances.
“Okay,” my dad said, walking into the kitchen. “That was easier than I thought it’d be.”
“Really?” I said. “He was damn near asleep standing up.”
He chuckled. “I guess that’s true.”
“So, what did you want to talk to us about, sweetheart?” my mom asked.
I set my fork down and slid the bowl aside. “Well, it occurred to me that there is still a lot you guys don’t know about what’s going on with me right now. Not just now either, but why all that stuff happened during my spring semester.”
My mom tilted her head. “I thought you said it was because your friend died.”
“Kind of, but it’s more complicated than that… way more.” My parents exchanged a brief side-eye and there was something in it that was mysterious, but I didn’t ask. There was already too much in my brain to worry about for the moment. “Well, in the interest of making a long story short, but also kind of long, Deon isn’t dead. He’s alive, although we don’t know where he is.”
“He’s alive?” my mother asked. “Why would you lie about something like that?”
“It wasn’t a complete lie,” I replied. “I did think that Deon had died, that’s what Nathan told me, but I had a feeling he wasn’t, and then Nathan finally came clean about a month ago that he’s still alive and out there somewhere. I was so angry with him for lying to me, and for dragging me away from Deon in a situation when he almost died that I cut off the entire Royal Court and turned into a demon. I’m so sorry.”
My dad crossed his arms. “I don’t understand. What do Nathan and Deon have to do with one another.”
“Right, yeah. I’m sort of starting in the middle of the story and I probably should be starting at the beginning.” I reeled my brain backwards trying to find a good starting point, and landed on the most important fact. “Well, I suppose it needs to be said right away, my friend Deon from our old neighborhood is Connor’s son.”
Both my parents’ jaws dropped and eyes nearly came out of their heads. They seemed so much more shocked than Cherri expected them to be. “What do you mean?” my dad asked. “What about Nathan?”
“Nathan is his son as well. They’re half-brothers, sharing Connor as a father. Deon’s mom is Ciara, who he lived with back in our old neighborhood, and Nathan’s mom was Alicia,” I explained.
My mom took a nervous breath. “Was?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Alicia is dead. Connor killed her.”
I could see the gears of fear turning in my parents head as the words left my lips, but it was my father who managed to speak first. “Why would he kill his own wife?”
“The same reason he’d try to kill his own children, because they’re threatening his power and existence,” I said. “Also, and please don’t freak out, but… he’s trying to kill us too.”
My mom crossed her arms. “What?”
“Who’s ‘us?’” my dad asked.
“The entire Royal Court, but specifically Nikita and me, because we mean so much to Nathan and Deon.” I shook my head, annoyed. The words I was saying weren’t coming out in a way that made sense. “Let me back up.” I took a deep breath. “When we lived in the old neighborhood, I met Deon and… I fell in love with him. The day that we went for our first date, this body literally dropped from the floor in front of us. We just naturally assumed that it was a jumper, but the cop thought we’d killed him for some reason. Deon said we should run, so we did, and I didn’t find out until the beginning of senior year that Deon ended up confessing to it, but he didn’t do it, I swear. He confessed just to protect me.”Again, my parents side-glanced each other and my father in particular looked very nervous. “Okay. What is that?”
My dad looked back at me. “Well, you finish first, then I’ll tell you.”
That freaked me out, but I believed he would explain when the time came. “Well, not long after Deon went to prison, you got promoted and then I was introduced to The Royal Court. It sounds like Connor orchestrated my meeting Nathan. When Nathan and I started to drift apart last year, specifically because Deon came home, Connor started to melt down about it. He flipped out, killed Alicia, tried to kill Nathan, and framed Deon for that teacher that killed herself.”
My dad’s head dropped into his hands and my mom rubbed his back. “Chris. It’s not your fault.”
“It is my fault. You told me not to accept that promotion and I did anyway,” my dad replied.