White by Aria Cole Page B

bottom lip, thinking it would be against every rule I’d promised not to break, but hadn’t Asher broken rules? He’d lured me here under false pretenses, and maybe this morning I’d thought I could forgive it, but when I’d needed him here to talk it through, he’d bailed and left me a single note and a cryptic apology.
    I had to learn to survive on my own, and surviving without Julian in my life wasn’t an option. I just had to talk to my little brother. I had to have some help ironing all this out in my head. What kind of person did it make me if I stayed with someone who had witnessed my parents’ death all those years ago?
    I picked up the home phone and dialed the number of a cab company I had memorized. A kid on the streets could never be too smart—Judy had made sure of that—and then I stepped outside, walking slowly to the gates, down the long, tree-lined lane, before I reached the end of the road where the cab would pull up. I assessed the strong, rusted, iron gates that locked me into this palace.
    I tried the latch on one side and found it locked before I spied a gaping hole between the iron bars. I could probably squeeze through that. Tossing the small bag I carried with me over my shoulder, I slid through the rusted bars, just barely shimmying through before I found myself in the outside world, the yellow and black cab barreling around the corner just in the nick of time.  
    This was it. Now or never. I was escaping.  
    I gave the driver the address to the house next door to Judy’s. Julian would be headed out in another hour or so. If I was lucky, I would catch him alone after the boys were done with their homework, but before dinner had started.
    The cab raced through the city streets, taking alleyways and avoiding the main thoroughfares, and fifteen minutes later we pulled up across the street from the rambling, dilapidated Victorian I’d called home the last twelve years. I sighed, swiping a twenty from my pocket and thanking the driver. He nodded before he was off again, and I was left standing right where I used to be, in front of this house, at the footsteps of Hell.
    I pulled the bag over my shoulder and walked a few steps down the sidewalk, hiding myself in the shade of a giant hemlock as I sat poised and waiting for Julian to appear. I sat, silently picking at my nails and going over the last twenty-four hours in my head with Asher.  
    Thirty minutes later, Julian still hadn’t appeared. In fact, the house was still eerily silent. I scrunched my nose and looked up to the dormer window where I knew the boys camped out most of the day hiding from Judy.  
    Just as I was about to go throw a few pebbles at the window to attract some attention, Judy’s battered blue Toyota turned a sharp corner and skipped over the curb, slamming into park in the driveway. My eyes widened in shock as I tucked myself further behind the tree, wondering what the heck would have her out at this time of day. I prayed she didn’t see me.
    Judy swung the creaking door of the house open wide and called. My heart hammered in my chest as I waited for him to appear, his angular face and the kind, dark eyes peering out of the darkness.  
    “Have you heard from that little slut?” I made out just as Julian came into view and the door banged closed. The slut? Me? Oh, God. Asher had said he’d make a call about Judy’s neglect. Had she already found out we were on to her?
    Before I could even second-guess myself, I launched from my hiding spot and sprinted across the road and up onto the lawn of the old Victorian. I hunched and hid behind a giant flowering bush that obscured part of the porch.  
    “I haven’t seen her. You’d best leave it alone!” I heard the hollering and the angry stomping before the door opened and banged closed again, heavy footsteps echoing down the steps.  
    “Julian,” I whispered, desperate to get his attention. His head whipped around, and just as his eyes landed on mine, the door