Destinata (Valguard) Read Online Free Page B

of the shower on the best of days but today was particularly worse. She felt safe, she felt comforted and she felt mostly at ease but she knew in order to get up the courage to walk out the door and talk to Mikal, she would have to get moving. Courage wasn’t easy to come by and she would need to use all her pent up anger and resentment to pluck up the strength to have the conversation she was dreading and so it was time to move.
    Charlie turned the shower off reluctantly and started to dry her hair but just as she was about to tie her hair up in the already too wet towel, she heard a familiar low voice. The sound carried up the stairs like he was speaking through a megaphone and she knew instantly who it was. Frantically trying to put some fresh clothes on she stumbled and fell hitting her already bruised head on the door handle.
    “I need to speak to Charlie now Eloise, it’s important, she’ll know what it’s about.”
    Oh god no! There is no way in hell I am having this conversation with him again tonight.
    “She’s in the shower Zane, but you’re welcome to wait.”
    Charlie heard the door squeak slightly as Eloise opened it to allow Zane to pass through. She was probably happily waving him on into the lounge never knowing that she was letting a would-be rapist into the place.
    Crap! Now what?!
    Once she was dressed she took to the stairs two at a time, hoping that she could rush passed the lounge without being seen by Zane and into the dark night to find Mikal.
    “Charlie! We need to talk.”
Crap! Really? El and Matt let me go without so much as a stern talking to about being in the woods close to midnight and yet getting passed Zane was just too much to ask for.
    “No we don’t Zane, I think we said everything we needed to out there in the woods don’t you?”
    She could see El’s face peering around the corner of the lounge door, her eyes as wide as saucers, clearly realizing that Charlie had been lying to her earlier but Charlie just shook her head slightly willing her to leave it until later. Right now she had to get out of the house and away from the distracting man who stood in her way.
    “It’s not about that Charlie, it’s something else. We can’t talk here, just come over to…”
    “No! No way Zane, I am not going anywhere with you. Especially not now. Not after…”
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… You know I didn’t want to…”
    “What? You didn’t mean to… didn’t want to push me down in the middle of the woods, cut up my arms, pin me down and feel me up? Because it sure felt like you did Zane! I have nothing more to talk to you about, now if you’ll excuse me I have things to do.”
    “At midnight? Where the hell are you going now?”
    It wasn’t Zane who spoke to her that time; it was El’ in her most convincing motherly tone of disapproval. It didn’t much matter at this point though, she had plucked up enough bravado now to confront Mikal and she wasn’t afraid of using up some of those resources on El’ first.
    “Yes El ’. At midnight. I’m a big girl, I can do what I like without your permission.”
    “Be careful Char.”
    “Always.”
    Charlie pushed passed Zane who closed his eyes and exhaled slowly – he really was a fan of the whole deep breathing thing – as she walked out into the dead of night to find the man she was told was her father.
    Glad that she grabbed her coat on the way out the door, she shrugged it on her shoulders and hunched into herself, trying to get a slight repriev e from the unrelenting cool breeze. Though she suspected half of the chill she was experiencing wasn’t from the breeze at all but the sense that she didn’t know anything about herself anymore, she was lost. Everything she knew about her life was a lie and now she would go searching for the truth and her first stop was only a five minute walk.
    She reached the small coffee shop in record time but now that she was here she didn’t know if she had the nerve to go in.