"Are you actually moving or did you get stuck at your computer?" I question Mylan as he closes the door to his room behind him.

I needed to go back to the hotel to grab my stuff, and as I was on my way out Mylan decided he wanted to come with me.

"I just thought of something to add to my code," Maylan replies, shrugging his shoulders.

"Oh, what type of code?" I ask, as we walk down the hallway into the garage.

"Just a simple decryptor, Lucien needs it for something," Mylan shrugs, getting into the driver seat of his black, tinted SUV.

"Is someone sending letters?" I look over to Mylan to better gauge his reaction.

"Geez, stop looking at me like that. You look like you're trying to rip my head off." Mylan mumbles the last part to himself. "Look," he turns to face me. "I promise you I have no clue what Lucien needs the decryptor for."

"Ok," is the only word I say, giving him a chance to switch topics.

"Are you ever gonna tell us why you ran? I know Matheo has some sort of idea, but you know him, you can interrogate him all you want, but nothing ever comes out of his mouth. Dad taught him well," Mylan laughs.

"Yeah, I guess he did," I give him a half smile while trying not to think about his first question. That was not a question I was allowed to answer. That answer could ruin not just my life, but Aiden's, if they saw us together. The rest of the car ride I clamped my mouth shut and hummed to the rest of Mylan's questions.

————————

"Was this it?" Mylan questions, rolling my one suitcase out of the hotel door while I had my backpack.

"Yeah, I don't need much," I say, slightly glazing over the fact that I would only be here for a week.

"You always did have no fashion sense. I was hoping that would've changed as you've gotten older, but it seems that not everything can change." Mylan sighs dramatically, shaking his head.

"Oh yes, says the 'king of fashion'," I say, holding up air quotes. "With his Majesty in plain shorts and baggy shirt, with the motto saying, I sat through school so I could call myself smart. That's a real crowd pleaser," I say to the invisible figures.

"You know Cameron, I think you may be more nerdy than me now."

"Nothing's more nerdy than those shirts, Mylan."

"These shirts are fashionable." Mylan argues, wrapping his arms around himself in a hugging motion.

"If you're blind," I argue back, glaring at him with my eyes to see what he responds with next.

"Geez kid, not your eyes again." Mylan jokes from the driver's seat. "Hey, do you want to go to a coffee shop? I know a good one right around here."

"Sure," I shrug. I have nothing else to do today anyway. Well, maybe after figuring out what Lucien needs a decryptor for.

Mylan pulls into a parking spot and we walk across the street to a small cafe. There's a glass window covered with fake desserts and from the outside, you can see the busy staff filling out all the orders.

We file into the cafe, one after another, and I find a table all the way in the furthest right corner.

"Hey Cam, I'm going to go order, what do you want," Mylan asks, standing in front of the table I choose.

"I'll just get the same thing you are getting," I mumble, laying back onto the cushioned chair.

"Ok," Mylan smiles. " I will be back in a few." And then he is off, walking to the cashier.

"It says here that 1+1 = 0 Holly, I told you I'm not stupid," states a boy, who looks to be in high school, in the table across from me.

"How the hell does 1+1 = 0, it doesn't even make sense. How can you take two things and turn them into zero things?!" Questions a girl who looks to be the same age. Rows and rows of paper fill the table and two empty plates and cups sit at the edge.

I watch as the two flip through their giant textbooks and papers trying to look for the answer to something. I realize my mistake when the eyes of the boy lock with mine.

It was like something clicked for the boy, and he immediately scurried over to the front of my table. I don't know what came over me, but as soon as that kid came over to me, a fake smile filled my face, and I couldn't remove it.

"Hello," I give him my best fake smile. It reminded me of something I would do in America, sometimes unknowingly. Like I couldn't not be fake. Not having a smile on my face. I felt trapped in a cage, surrounded by people who expected my perky attitude. Who expected me to smile at everything. The only time it wasn't was when I was with my boyfriend or by myself.

"You know computer science," he said in French.

"Yes, I do, why are you asking?" I ask, already knowing the answer.

"Can you help me and my friend with computer science? My teacher can't teach, and he gives us homework expecting us to know the answers when we haven't even learned it in class." The boy complains.

"Sure, what are you learning?" I ask, standing up from the table to walk over to theirs.

"We are learning to convert binary numbers into decimal numbers."

"Ok, that's not too bad. Do you have a piece of scrap paper that I can show you on?" This time I ask the girl looking at me with platinum blonde hair this is braided into two strands.

"Sure, here you go," she says, passing me a pen and a piece of lined paper.

"All right," I say, sitting down at one of the empty chairs, with the two highschoolers sitting across from me.

It seems that my club work has come in handy. Gosh, my ex boyfriend would be laughing his ass off if he saw me now.

I start from teaching them the number two powers, then start applying it to the binary numbers.

Half way through, Mylan returned from the cashier, with two coffees. He had given me a once over but then it just shrugged and helped me answer some lingering questions the two highschoolers had. By the end, we were able to show them how to create words with the few skills we had just taught them.

"Thank you so much for your help," said Holly, the high school girl.

"Yeah, we have a test tomorrow that I'm pretty sure we would have failed.."

"We would have just cheated," Holly pipes in.

"..But now we don't need to cheat because we understand the information," Evan cheers.

Mylan and I gave each other side glances that told each other we knew that wasn't going to happen. We then waved goodbye and left to go back to the house.

I could tell Mylan had another question he wanted to ask me after we both got into the car, but he started with: "Have you ever tutored before?"

The subject tutoring was an interesting topic for me. I can never say that I expected myself to be tutoring school children in computer science. I never had the patience and even the fake amount that I did have, wearied thin around children.

I put the "blame"on my ex. My ex boyfriend told me that I was a cute bump on the road and pushed me to go find something to do to put onto my job résumé. And with a little convincing, I joined the club with the least amount of hours possible, which was the Children's Tutoring Club. Yeah, I know, I wouldn't be surprised if he found someone to hack the numbers, but I joined, and it wasn't the worst experience possible.

Well, like anything could top Mylan accidentally hacking into my computer in high school and deleting my entire 20 page research paper the night before it was due.

"Yes, in college, I was part of a club that tutored children. I opted to teach computer science, because that was my major."

I look back over to Mylan whose hands were tightly grabbed onto the steering wheel. I sigh, "Ask me the question you really want to know."

"Were are you ok in there, I have never seen you smile like that before," Mylan asks immediately, words flying out of his mouth like a rocket ship flying into space.

"I was and am fine. What, you've never seen someone smile before." I try to land a joke but it falls flat.

Mylan silently drives for a few minutes then asks the question I wish I could remove from my ears.

"Is that what you acted like when you ran away, a fake shell of a person with no emotions."

"And..., what of it."

"Don't you run away to be free, not lock yourself into another prison."

"So.."

"Why the hell would you run away, if you allowed yourself to be stuck in the same position as you were in our house apparently with the mafia!"

"Because I wasn't!" I shout, silencing Mylan from any other comments. "In that house, I knew I could never be free in the way I wanted to be. You know, Dad always said, you have to lose a little to gain a little more, and that's exactly what I knew I was risking the day I ran."

The last few minutes in the car ride were quiet. We barely allowed ourselves to breathe in order to keep the quiet atmosphere. As the car rolled to a stop, I pulled my suitcase and bag as in the car and walked quickly through the back door of the house to my room.

Knock, knock.

I pray that the person knocking would just go away, but I don't get that lucky and the door slowly creaks open.

"I didn't say that anyone could come in," I mumble with my face planted into a pillow.

"Oh sorry Cam, I thought I was able to be an exception to that rule. I saw you running back to your room... oh mon amour what's wrong."

I feel warm hands wrapped around my waist and pull me into a lap.

I tilt my head back onto Aiden's shoulder and he leans in to press a gentle kiss to my lips.

"Just life, I guess. It's my fault, trying to warm up to people is stupid and I promised myself I wouldn't try it."

"It seems you're holding a lot in and trying to not unpack it on others."

"How can I? They assume it's one thing but it's really another thing that they don't even know about. They think if they know the reason I ran away they can convince me to stay or something. They don't know that the reason only pushes them even further away from me, if that's even possible."

"Or maybe you can just tell them?" Aiden says, combing his fingers through my hair.

"Or maybe I can also get you kicked out of the house," I shout, regretting my words immediately. Aiden's fingers stop moving through my hair.

"Shit, I'm sorry Aiden, I don't know why I said that," I apologize, pushing my face into my hands. Great, now I lose him too. Exactly the thing I needed but not the thing I wanted.

"Apology accepted, amour." Aiden says, after a minute.

I turn around in Aiden's lap and raise my eyebrows. "How can you say that, you're too forgiving. How have other people in the mafia not completely walked all over you," I place both of my hands on his face.

"Trust me Cam, only you see this side of me." And before I can respond to his answer, he pushes me onto my back with him on top and pushes his tongue into my mouth.