A Promise Gone Wrong

Chapter Nine: Breaking and Mending

IMAGE OF: CODY RIVERA

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Waking up early comes easily with the sun's shining in through the basement windows, reflecting off the white walls and carpet and I'm not the only one to start unraveling myself from blankets when the smell of bacon, eggs and pancakes drifts down the stairs.

"I love your mom so much," Pat sighs from a spot on the floor by the pool table, rubbing his eyes and sitting up.

"She's cooking for us?" Cody sits up next with line indentations on his cheeks from the patterned pillow he borrowed off a couch.

"It smells incredible," Dylan murmurs next from a couch adjacent to me.

I just gaze over my friends, feeling a moment of peace because they got to wake up this way instead of in the Hells they have to call home. But when I don't see Jack anywhere, I frown.

"He never came down last night?" I ask them since I fell asleep before everyone else.

"No, he was still knocked out on the couch upstairs by the time we stopped gaming so we didnt bother him," Pat replies, standing and folding the bed of covers he crafted.

Huh.

I don't think much more of it, getting up to wash my face and brush my teeth upstairs in my room while the rest of the guys freshen up in the basement.

Then I join my mom in the kitchen, planting a kiss on her cheek as I pass by her at a counter and then ruffling Luke's hair before offering high-fives to Max and Lily.

"Cameron, I think I talked Max into joining the soccer team at school," my brother perks up in his seat, wiggling his spine and tapping his hands eagerly along an edge of the bar counter they're sitting at.

"Yeah?" I ask, glancing over at Max whose skin is even more pale in the morning light, making his blush more noticeable.

"I have to ask Dylan," he insists.

"Well, I doubt he will say no," my mom grins. "Tell him I could drive you to practices and games. We are moving to a neighborhood a few minutes from yours."

"No way!" Lily gasps, her blue eyes widening in delight.

"That means we can hang out more," Luke beams as well, and then starts coming up with a few hundred ideas of things the three of them could do.

Lily only encourages him by adding a few of her own but Max makes me laugh from the way he looks overwhelmed by all their enthusiasm and plans.

"Has anyone seen Jack?" I ask when I glance over to the living room and only spot his guitar resting against the couch he slept on.

"He took some trash out to the garage for me. I think he might be out front somewhere," my mom answers as she flips some bacon and stirs a skillet of hashbrowns.

Curious, I slip on a pair of shoes and head outside where I find the smaller garage door has been opened, and make my way out to the driveway where I find Jack sitting with his back against the brick of the house smoking.

His knees are pulled up for his arms to rest on and the closer I approach him the more I notice his casual posture is accompanied with a heavy sorrow from the slightly pink, swollen skin around his eyes and puffy cheeks.