Page 41 of Obsessive Love

"Don't sneak up on me. You're gonna give me a heart attack."

"Maybe that's my plan," he grumbles, rolling his eyes as he walks past me and saunters down the hallway towards the stairs.

"Yeah, right," I scoff, following after him. "You'd be bored without me, Jay."

"Bored but happy." he retorts sarcastically.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sophia

We sneak down the stairs, listening for any noise that might alert us to someone still in the house, but we're met with complete silence. Jaylen tiptoes across the foyer and peeks through the frosted glass panel beside the door.

"From what I can see, no one's out there," he whispers, turning around to face me and putting both his thumbs up. "Go check the kitchen whilst I make a start at trying to get those padlocks off."

I nod my head and follow after him. I watch as he reaches the locked door and pulls a rectangular black case out of his pocket, unzipping it and revealing an array of small silver tools. I continue down the left hallway, peeking my head into the kitchen until I'm positive Myra isn't there.

Before heading back to Jaylen, I quickly check the dining room as well, just to be sure that no one's going to catch us trying to break into the right side of the house.

When I get back to the door, Jaylen's quietly humming to himself as he uses two tools to try and pry open the padlock at the top of the door.

After a few minutes and plenty of cursing that interrupted his peaceful humming, we hear a loud click and the padlock comes undone.

"One down, one more to go," he says, crouching down as he starts picking the other one.

I take a few steps back and glance around the empty foyer as nervous jitters begin to spread through my body.

"Jay, what do we do if we get caught?" I ask.

"We're not going to," he tuts, shaking his head and huffing as he tries to get the padlock unlocked. "Stop the negative thoughts, Soph. Believe that we're not going to get found out and thenhopefully, that belief will be true."

I wipe my sweaty palms against my jumper, nod my head, even though he can't see me, and then pace back and forth in the hallway, waiting until I hear another click.

"Yes!" he shrieks, jumping up with the padlock in his hand. "I knew I could do it."

"Shhh!" I hiss, lightly thumping his arm.

"No one's home. We don't have to whisper," he states, shaking his head and pocketing the padlocks. He jiggles the handle on the door and pushes his body against the steel, slowly opening it. "Jesus Christ, this is stiff as fuck."

He continues to jam his shoulder against the door until there's a big enough gap for us to squeeze through.

I grab onto the back of his jumper, holding it tightly in my hand as he slowly walks into the dark hallway beyond the door.

"Why didn't we think about grabbing flashlights?" he whispers as we carefully scoot through the darkness.

"Probably because it's the twenty-first century and we have them on our phones," I say, pulling my phone from my pocketand handing it to him so he can illuminate the hallway ahead of us.

I relax my grip on his jumper and peer around his broad frame as he shines the light around, showcasing multiple steel doors.

"Are you kidding me?" I huff. "We're gonna be down here all night just picking locks at this rate."

Jaylen stalks forward to the first door on the left, jiggling the handle and finding that it is in fact locked. When he moves down the hallway, he shines the light down on the floor and creeps forward, squatting slightly as he approaches the door.

He turns to me, attempting to signal something with his hands as if we're some highly trained spies when in reality, I have no idea what he's trying to tell me and he just looks like he's about to have a seizure.

As I move to walk towards him, he shakes his head and brings his finger to his lips, silently shushing me. He then points upwards at the small square window at the top of the door and starts waving his hands around again.

When he finally seems to realise that I'm not understanding what he's trying to tell me, he creeps away from the door, quietly making his way back to where I'm standing.

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