Chapter 20 - Part II

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"Raine! Ryan! Open the door! Now!"

The door rattled violently as I banged it incessantly, but the noise created by the door wasn't enough to scare the two brats at the other side. This was the fourth time in the week that they had managed to follow me like a shadow, caught in to my carelessness and locked me inside my own bedroom.

"Raine! Ryan! Open it, now!"

I twisted and turned the knob again, but to no avail. Unfortunately, for me, the twins had learnt to bolt the door, indeed, but they somehow managed not to learn how to open it.

This was the only thing that had recently started to annoy me when it came to Terrence's house. Apart from having a keyhole at the doorknob, the doors also had the conventional bolts in case Terrence was careless enough - though he never was careless - to forget the keys. It might have worked in his favour a time or two, but it definitely wasn't working in mine!

"You are Momo's sweethearts, aren't you? Please, please, please! Try to open it!"

Bah! I knew they were not going to open it even if they wanted to.

Usually, I called the guards or Terrence to open the door, however, this time I clearly remembered leaving my phone in the kitchen. Raine and Ryan were still giggling at the other side and for a moment I wished I had enough strength to break the door.

I fell back on the bed, frustrated, because even though they were having fun, they would soon start crying when hungry and bored. I looked around for some divine intervention when my eyes fell on my only way out.

The intercom.

I had no idea if it would work or not. The last time I had to use it was three months ago and that was before Terrence realised that we hadn't christened this particular table. While christening it, we somehow managed to ignore the presence of the poor intercom and it fell down, crashing.

Terrence had fixed it to some extent - so keeping faith in his work, I rushed to the intercom and dialed the number, hoping it would reach the guards.

"Ms. Reynolds?"

*It works! It works!

"Hey, Beckett." I muttered sheepishly.

"How can I help you, ma'am?"

"Um...the twins have locked me in the master bedroom. Can you please come in and open the door?"

"Sure, ma'am." He replied and hung up the phone, but the amusement was quiet evident in his voice. This wasn't the first time he had had to do this as sometimes - with the time he required to come and rescue me - I wondered if he kept waiting for my call so that he could come rescue and be the hero.

The squeals and giggles outside alerted me of Beckett's presence and after a few moments later, the door opened - to a smiling Beckett who had my two little monkeys hanging on to his legs.

"Thank you." I said, and my cheeks flushed.

He gave me a nod and began to move when Raine protested, "No!"

He crouched down slowly and Raine grinned at him - he almost swooned. "I need to work, okay Raine?"

Raine frowned. She had heard these words many times from me and Terrence, and she understood that it meant that we couldn't spend time with her.

This time, it was Ryan, "No!"

And then they started screaming. Beckett laughed as the twins held onto his legs for dear life and babbled to him making weird faces.

Raine and Ryan were surely going to be the death of me.

"Did you two lock her up again?"

Lo and behold, my best friend make a grand, wide - eyed entry as she regarded the situation with amusement. Along with Terrence, she too had to bear my groaning and complaining of the twins locking me up in any room they found.

I glared at Allie and she laughed at me.

"They did? Oh my God! You are two little darlings, aren't you? Come to Aunt Allie!"

And just like that, Beckett was forgotten as the twins used their newly learnt walking skills to waddle towards my best friend.

"They learned to walk?" Allie looked overjoyed as Raine and Ryan bounded towards her. She knelt down and took them in her arms in an instant and kissed their cheeks, "When did they take their first steps?"

"Just yesterday." I said, and smiled sheepishly at Beckett who returned the smile and went away.

"You must be so proud of them!" She gushed and kept on cooing the tickling the squealing brats. Her bright eyes twinkled with joy as she talked to them, ruffling their hair and pinching their cheeks.

Her cheeks were flushed and she looked in a very, very good mood.

I smirked at her.

"Got some? Last night and this morning?" I asked her and as soon as the words registered, her face whipped towards me at neck breaking speed.

She narrowed her eyes at me, but the blush creeping up on her face had me laughing, "Nothing like that happened!" She snapped.

*Oh how the tables turn!

"Oh really?" I sang, "After your date last night, I thought you might finally be able to get in his pants." I crossed my arms.

"It wasn't a date." She gritted out, once the twins went back to scribbling the walls.

I smirked, "Oh. What was it then?"

"A friendly meeting." She stood up and glared at me.

"A friendly meeting where you, once again, offered to be friends with benefits?"

I could almost hear her grinding her teeth.

My poor best friend.

Even though Allie refused to acknowledge it, Aaron and Allie had been dating for the past two and a half months - their first date being on Allie's birthday. That girl had finally conceded, and the two actually sat down and sorted their differences out. Where on one hand, Aaron was desperately trying to take their status up to a relationship, Allie strictly stuck to the friend zone. The worst? Allie had learnt, that Aaron was capable of annoyingly amazing self -restraint which was one of the reasons why Allie had been sexually starved for three months.

And that was the longest she had went without it.

He was being a stuck up prude - her words not mine - and no matter what she did, he refused to sleep with her before he made her his girlfriend.

The tables had really, really turned.

"An offer that was declined, again!" She groaned after sometime, "It doesn't matter if it was a date or not."

"Aw, poor girl," I cooed, "Come let's talk. I'll get some coffee for you."

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"The last time I had sex, it was with Darren. So you can do the math and clearly long it has been. Above that, Aaron refuses to even touch me! So I did what I had to: I went to this club last night and waited for a hot guy to come along for a hot short one night stand. I had found a guy, you know! We were flirting, drinking together and then suddenly, out of nowhere Aaron turns up!"

I shook my head imperceptibly and sighed.

"He dragged me out of there! And no matter how much I tried to seduce him, all I got was a kiss! Just one measly little kiss! If he hadn't had a hard on right then, I would've actually questioned my seduction skills!" She yelled, glaring at the scribbled walls murderously - with other emotions clearly flitting across her face.

"Puh-lease!" I objected, "That was something you expected. You should look at your face right now. The silly little look in your eyes tells me that you actually went to the club to get Aaron out of his self imposed celibacy bubble and finally fuck your brains out, though that didn't turn out to work, too."

She protested but I cut her short, "And you know what? You are actually happy that he doesn't want to rush in and sleep with you." I sighed, "He's trying so hard to get you back, why are you making it so difficult for him?"

"Because he's being genuinely fucking perfect and it's scaring me! I feel like he is enjoying this whole charade just because he likes that chase and once he gets me, it will all be over!"

I looked at her intently and she sighed, "I don't want to get hurt again. What if he's the same Aaron who played with me all those years ago?"

I frowned at her, "Did you two even bring up that topic? Sorted it out?"

"Yes, we did."

"What did he say?"

"He said he was confused - so typical of him - and he didn't like it at all that I was comfortable being friends with him. He had started getting jealous of my interaction with the other guys at the university and he wanted to get me out of his system that day. After the deed was done, and I had walked out was when he realised the mistake he had done."

"Oh." I paused, "Did you tell him that you still love him?"

"And leave my heart vulnerable for him to crush? Hell, no. And we really haven't discussed the feelings involved between us." She squirmed when I threw her a look about how stupid I thought she was, "We want to start over, with a clean slate."

I snorted, "It is always better to lay out all the cards on the table and then decide what to do with it. There are a lot of differences still left for you to sort out. He told you he loves you, didn't he?"

She scoffed and I narrowed my eyes at her, "It was a drunk confession. Hardly reliable or believable."

Well, she was right there, but I wasn't going to convince her otherwise. That was Aaron's job to do.

"Alright. But the clean slate bullshit? You, my dear friend, are still holding on to whatever he did seven years ago. You're cowardly offering to be a sex buddy in replacement of a girlfriend."

She scowled at me, "It's not my fault that this is how I've been dealing with all my past relationships with all the guys."

"Did you just categorise Aaron with 'all the guys'? He clearly means much more than them to you. And you treated all your past relationships because of Aaron —"

"— And Aaron will be treated like all my previous relationships because of his own mistakes. It's not called cowardice, it's called self preservation. As I said before, he could still be the same guy who fucked a girl in the same bed where he took my virginity a few hours prior." She was still scowling.

I pulled Allie towards me and hugged her tightly. She was stiff as a board for a moment, too surprised, but then she relaxed and wrapped her arms around me tightly.

It was at that moment when I realised how much I missed hugging my best friend and how the two of us could stay awake all nights during our sleepovers. There wasn't one thing that we didn't share with each other and always had each other's backs all the time.

"I'm scared, Lisa, I'm scared." My best friend's voice came out muffled with her face buried in my shoulder, and I patted her back soothingly.

In the past six years, the one thing I had come to know of Alexandria Evans, very well, was that she was probably the most unforgiving person on Earth. She definitely didn't believe in being the bigger person and forgiving the other to lighten her heart.

No, she was a staunch believer of tit for tat, and didn't forgive anyone without having her revenge. Aaron, by far, was the only person whom she didn't want to hurt. Rather than attacking the other person, which had been her modus operandi for so long, this time, she built walls around herself and preferred self-preservation.

The things love does to people.

If only Aaron hadn't been an idiot then.

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There was a tense smile on Terrence's face when he came back home that day. With a quick kiss, he left to greet Ryan and Raine, leaving me wondering what was wrong. I followed him inside the room and found him struggling with the buttons of his shirt. I didn't say anything; I just swatted his hands away and unbuttoned his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders.

He pulled me in a tight embrace the moment his shirt fell.

"Dad called today."