Page 88 of The Beta: Part Two
The other men in the room involved with the late Alpha Crane's scheming have been shockingly silent up until now. They don't appear to be overly upset by his violent passing, but they also don't look very inclined to be willingly detained.
Either way, the show is over and I want Talia and Jasper the fuck out of here.
Kaleb and Corso have the same idea. “Talia, Jasper, let's let Marcus and Thaddeus take it from here,” Kaleb says, offering Talia his arm, “we need to go look in on Devon. His father texted me a bit ago, he's going to meet us at the hospital.”
He looks over at Seth, “you good?”
Thaddeus answers instead of Seth, “no. He isn’t, obviously. We’ll contact his family and get him looked after. Get my girl out of here.” Then he says to Talia, “you were magnificent today, all of you were. But the cat’s out of the bag, sweetheart. I’ll take care of your registry change. Check in on Devon, then go home. Rest. Let them take care of you.”
She rolls her eyes at him, but kisses his cheek when he bends down to hug her.
The plan was to go drop by Daniel’s place to get cleaned up before we barged into Devon’s hospital room looking like a walking crime scene, but Reid drives right by the exit without saying anything.
“Hey, I think…” his eyes flick to mine in the rearview mirror and he gives the tiniest shake of his head.
Corso turns around in the passenger seat and looks into the back row of seats behind me where Talia and Jasper are cuddled against either side of Nathan. They all have their eyes closed. Jasper might actually be asleep. Alex told me how hard it was for him to be separated from us, and I will be eternally grateful for Reid giving him another anchor.
Nathan isn’t asleep, but he’s definitely dozing. He’s exhausted. He was separated from us for too long, he thought the rogues had Jasper and were doing horrible things to him, then when we walked in with Seth in tow he remembered those pictures of Talia, and it was too much. He’s still coming down from the intense stress of everything. Kaleb leans up between Reid and Corso to find out what’s happening, then he leans back and pulls me close to whisper, “we’re stopping somewhere else to get cleaned up. Talia and Jasper packed clothes for us from the house. Everything’s okay.”
Good enough for me.
Half an hour later we pull off an exit and turn off onto a road that leads to nowhere. Then we turn onto a little gravel road that climbs up a hill and ends with a pair of posts connected by a thick, rusted chain. I don’t know where we are. Why would he drive us out to the middle of nowhere when we need to check on Devon?
I’m opening my mouth to ask when Talia laughs from the back seat.
Corso jumps out and slides open the side door of the van, and Talia doesn’t wait for anybody else to get out. She does take Corso’s hand to let him help her out after she pushes past Kaleb, though.
She goes to the back of the van and opens the hatch door to grab two big gym bags. The rest of us are still unfolding from the van, but she’s already stepping over the chain and walking up the hill on the other side. By the time we catch up she’s pulling her boots off and looking out over the cliff at the top.
“What are we doing,” Jasper, the embodiment of an interrupted nap, asks, “I thought we were going to get cleaned up so we can go see Devon.”
Then Talia takes off running and jumps over the cliff. Just does it without saying anything. She’s going to give all of us a fucking heart attack, especially Kaleb.
“Goddammit,” he hisses, and takes off after her, disappearing over the edge of the cliff before he even looks to see what’s waiting for him. He still had his shoes on.
Corso and Reid aren’t the least bit worried, they sit next to the bags Talia dropped on the ground and start unlacing their boots. Meanwhile, I still haven’t heard a splash and Jasper, Nathan and I are scrambling to the edge of the cliff to see whether or not Talia and Kaleb made it. Alex, the asshole, is already in his boxers and planning his jump.
Looking over the edge I see Talia emerge from the surface of the lake. It’s only about twenty feet below us. Just a short little jump off a cliff. I scan the surface waiting for Kaleb to come up. When he does, he’s cursing, I can hear him all the way up here. I can also hear Talia’s cackling laughter.
“So…I guess we’re jumping off a cliff?” Nathan asks as Alex rushes by us and jumps over the ledge.
“Guess so,” I answer.
“It’s one of her favorite spots. We brought her here the first weekend she came to us. She likes being here, even when it’s too cold to swim. She likes to come here after bad things happen. You get used to seeing her jump over,” Corso says with a crooked smile, “mostly.”
Chapter thirty
Talia
Kaleb is swimming toward me. He isn’t happy. He’s barking curses as he makes his way to me. When he gets close enough to me, he grabs the front of my shirt and drags me to him. “Don’t fucking do that, or anything like it, ever again. Do you understand me?”
I’m trying very hard to keep from laughing. Kaleb is very upset with me, and I shouldn’t laugh at him. He’s probably right, if he’s never been here before, which is likely, there’s no way he could have known that I’d jump. “It’s just a lake, Kaleb. Don’t you like swimming?”
My question doesn’t improve the situation.
“It’s just a fifty foot drop into a lake of ice water with an unknown depth,” he clips, “and, no, actually. I don’t particularly enjoy swimming. Or jumping off cliffs.”
Oh. Is Kaleb uncomfortable with heights?
