haven ; 𝐛. 𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐬 , 𝟏

014. secret-keeper

FOURTEEN—SECRET-KEEPER
————————————————————

HE FURROWED HIS eyebrows. "You're letting them stay?" He held his hand up in the air, a gesture that would have been harmless, had a gun not still been in his hand, probably loaded and ready to fire.

"Would you put that thing down?" I cringed, holding out a hand and taking a step back. I got virtually nowhere, though; I'd chosen to pull him into the linen closet furthest from the living room where my parents ended up. Given the stiflingly small space, my attempt at widening the distance between us was futile, pushing my back gently against the cold wall. "How did you even get it, anyway? I seem to remember that you avoided that certain question." I tried to cross my arms and jut a hip to one side but the narrow closet prohibited me from doing so. I only got as far as a twitching movement of my hips, stopped by the door to the closet.

Bucky cocked an eyebrow. "I've had them since I got here. In my room."

My room. How sweet. Hold on. Them?

"There's more than one?" I hissed, hoping my absence from my parents' eyesight hasn't been long enough to be unusual. Then again, I was supposed to be home alone. Arguing with a 1940s ghost story in my linen closet took it a little off schedule. I shook my head lightly. "Never mind. We'll talk about it later."

He sheepishly put down the gun, putting the safety back on and stuffing it in the waistband of his jeans. "Sorry," he whispered hastily, "I just thought..."

"I know. Me too."

He sighed shakily, his hot breath clouding my senses for a few glorious moments where I wasn't stuck in a closet with my parents nearly twenty feet away, unaware of anything out of the ordinary going on in their daughter's house. Where I wasn't me and he wasn't him and we were just two people, a measly six inches apart, so close I could touch him, hold him, if I so desired. 

But no. Life was much more complicated than that. 

"Your parents." His voice, had it been at a normal volume, would have instilled an icy waterfall down my spine. "Did you know they were coming?"

I shook my head vigorously, anxious for the coming days to play out. "No, I swear. If I did, I would have told you."

"Why are they staying?"

My eyebrows furrowed. "They're my parents."

He stared at me in the darkness. "So?"

I lifted my eyebrows, trying to relay a message without making too much noise. "So," I drawled in a loud whisper that threatened to float outside into the hallway, "I can't just send them back to Arizona. They flew across the country to see me for their anniversary."

"That you forgot," he pointed out, taking a hot poker and stabbing me through the heart with it. 

I rolled my eyes. "Thank you for that kind reminder." Waving a hand dismissively, I continued, "As far as they know, I've been living alone without a job, tending to my garden and being an anti-social lump of skin and bones."

His nose scrunched up in gentle disgust. "That's a bit morbid."

Nodding, I crossed my arms. "If it weren't for their money helping me out, I would have been out on the streets a long time ago, and you wouldn't have even met me." I pointed a finger at his chest, nearly brushing my fingertip against his shirt. 

"That doesn't give them an excuse to degrade your successes."

I covered my blush with a light chuckle. "There you go again. Dropping your wise words like it's nothing."