Chapter 27 The Bus
POV: Carly
The bus stop was two blocks from the wall.
Niko knew exactly where it was and exactly what time it came and she had not expected that. She had not expected a lot of things about Niko Monroeson and that list kept growing every time they were together.
They sat beside each other on the metal seats near the back. The bus was mostly empty. A few people scattered toward the front, earbuds in, completely unbothered. The driver hadn't even looked up when they got on.
Outside the window Black River Falls moved past slowly. The fog sitting low on everything the way it always did at night, the amber streetlights cutting through it in warm strips. She had lived here her whole life and it still looked like somewhere you could get lost in if you weren't paying attention.
She watched it go by and felt the specific kind of quiet that came with being somewhere nobody knew where she was.
It was terrifying.
It was also the most relaxed she had felt all week.
"You've taken the bus before." She said. Not a question.
"More than you'd think." He said.
She looked at him. "You're the wealthiest family in Black River Falls."
"And?" He said.
She turned back to the window. "Nothing. Just surprising."
He stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankle. "My aunt lives across town. When I first moved in with her I didn't have a car yet and she wasn't always available to drive." He shrugged. "You figure it out."
She filed that away. Another small piece of him that didn't fit the version she had been carrying around for five years.
"How old were you." She said. "When you left."
"Fourteen." He said.
She looked at him.
He was looking at the seat in front of him. "Technically I was much older but fourteen was when I made the decision. It took me until I was eighteen to actually do it."
She turned that over. Four years of deciding. Four years of living in a house he wanted to leave before he finally left.
She understood that more than she wanted to admit.
"My dad left when I was thirteen." She said.
She didn't plan to say it. It just came out the way things came out when the bus was mostly empty and the fog was outside and someone wasn't looking at you when you said it.
Niko didn't react dramatically. He just turned his head slightly toward her and waited.
"Same week I got my powers actually." She said. "Which is fun timing." She laughed once, short and humorless. "My mom threw herself into making me the best witch possible after that. I think it was easier than dealing with the other thing."
"The other thing being." He said quietly.
"Him leaving." She said. "And what that did to her. To us."
She picked at the hem of her jacket.
"She's not a bad mother." She said. "She's actually incredible at it in a lot of ways. She just. She loves me like a project sometimes. Like if she gets all the details right then everything will turn out okay." She paused. "I used to think that was just how love worked."
"And now." He said.
She looked out the window. "Now I'm less sure."
The bus moved through a turn and the lights of the town shifted outside the glass.
Niko was quiet for a moment. She could feel him deciding something.
"My mother practiced magic." He said finally. "Comes from her side of the family. Generations of it." He turned the leather bracelet on his wrist slowly. "She banned all of us from anything related to it when we were growing up. Said it wasn't safe for us."
"But she practiced it herself." Carly said.
"Yes." He said simply.
She waited.
"My father is." He stopped. Started again. "Victor is a very particular kind of man. Generous publicly. Something else privately." He said it carefully, each word chosen. "Growing up in that house was. Complicated."
She didn't push for more than that.
He seemed to notice.
"Gasper used to say I was the only one brave enough to see it clearly." He said. "I used to think that was a compliment."
"And now." She said, using his words back at him.
Something moved across his face. "Now I think maybe he was just glad it was me and not him."
She looked at him.
He looked at his hands.
"Freida and Tomas are the oldest." He said. "They moved away two years ago. I haven't spoken to either of them since." He paused. "Gasper is. We were close once. The family tension made that complicated too."
"And Reba and Deacon." She said.
He almost smiled. "Reba shows up uninvited to my room on a regular basis and gives me grief about everything I do." He said. "Deacon is quieter. Watches everything. Doesn't say much."
"She came to your room?" Carly said.
"She does what she wants." He said. There was affection in it that he wasn't trying to disguise. "Always has."
Carly thought about Reba on the cheer team. Showing up to every practice in full uniform. Working harder than half the girls who had been there for years. Never once asking for acknowledgment from any of them including Carly.
She felt a small flush of guilt about that.
"She's actually really good." Carly said. "On the team. I don't think I've ever told her that."
Niko looked at her.
"You should." He said quietly.
She nodded. "I know."
The bus slowed and she could hear it before she saw it. Music. Live and loud and spilling out of the park into the street.
She leaned toward the window.
The lights came first. Strings of them covering the entire park entrance, bright and warm against the dark Washington sky. Then the crowd. Hundreds of people moving and laughing and existing in that specific way humans did when they had nowhere else to be and nothing pressing down on them.
Her chest did something she didn't have a word for.
"Is that." She started.
"Yeah." Niko said, watching her face.
She pressed closer to the glass.
He stood up before the bus fully stopped and offered her his hand to get up and she took it without thinking and they were already moving toward the doors before she remembered to be careful about any of it.
Author's Note:
He left at fourteen and spent four years deciding. She lost her dad the same week she got her powers. These two have been carrying things alone for so long and now they're on a bus telling each other the quiet versions and I genuinely need a moment. Drop a like and tell me in the comments what hit you hardest in this chapter because I have feelings and nowhere to put them.