Their time together had been sweet. But like all sweet moments, it had ended too quickly. Casey had been curled up against Derek's chest, an unladylike pool of drool on the covers beneath her, when the cell rang. And rang, and rang, and rang. Its whining cry was tortuously perpetually ear-jarring, and Derek grumbled when he stirred out of his slumber.
Pushing aside the pizza box, he sloppily felt around for the cell and answered it.
"'Ello?" he mumbled sleepily, settling back into his position and feeling for Casey's hand, just to be sure she was beside him.
"Derek Michael Venturi!" His father bellowed, in a rage that had only been provoked a handful of times, and usually it was the eldest children that did provoke it. No one else, so far, had lived to tell the tale. One of Casey's blind dates ended up sprinting out of the house and squealing out of the car just because he had heard George's anger aimed at his oldest son.
Derek groaned. He looked at Casey and mouthed Dad. She bit her bottom lip and took the phone.
He let her have it without a fight; he wasn't fond of having father-to-son chats while said son was in bed. At a hotel. With his girlfriend—oh yeah, and said girlfriend was his stepsister.
"George?" Casey said, in the softest, most innocent voice she could muster. Derek smirked at her. Oh, he had taught her well. "We just stopped at a rest stop. We were really sleepy and didn't want to get into an accident," Casey explained wisely, but in a voice Marti couldn't even beat.
George, notorious for his passiveness and, frankly, obliviousness, had another source. "I can't believe you're lying to me, Casey. You, of all people." He uttered in a low tone. Casey's heart caught in her throat.
"Ah." Casey recovered, "Um, what do you mean?" She faltered, and she knew she was losing.
"Casey, I know you're at a hotel. I also know you've spent the majority of the day there. And curiously, Derek seems to be there as well. Get home. We need to talk."
"But—"
George offered no mercy—he hung up on her.
And in that moment, Casey burst into hysterical tears, digging her fingernails in Derek's flesh as she hyperventilated.
"I should have kept the phone," he whispered to himself, and ignored the pain of her fingernails against his flesh. He deserved it, anyway. How could he have been so stupid?
"Turn off the phone." Derek whispered, pressing his lips against her ear. "We aren't leaving tonight."
In Casey's anxiety-ridden mind, it seemed logical, so she did. He pulled her against her, feeling her heartbeat's racing throbs. The fear and anxiety ate her up, twisted in her stomach and just completely devoured her; she was shaking and developing a massive headache on top of it.
"Casey." Derek said, trying to hold her still. "Casey. Stop."
She'd looked at him then, her eyes bloodshot and her lip quivering, hinting at another onslaught of tears, and all Derek could think about was how it was all his fault.
"I love you." He said, in a listless tone that suggested to Casey he was only trying to make her feel better. Casey simply nodded in response, pressed harder against him, and shut her eyes, trying, trying to forget.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Casey, was at best, morose when she sat in the passenger seat next to him. There were dark circles around her eyes, and as far as communication went, the only thing she'd uttered to him was, "I'm not hungry."
Derek tried to understand. Really, he did. But he also knew Casey had a tendency to blow everything out of proportion. Still, he spoke in the gentlest voice he could and didn't even snipe at her when she took his favorite shirt to wear.
Why she wanted to wear it in the first place, he had no idea. It probably wasn't the best idea, actually, but again. He was trying to be The Perfect Boyfriend. Because Derek was the one who had screwed up.
"Got everything?" he asked.
Nod. Casey didn't even look at him after the detached gesture.
They drove without speaking, music also absent from the surroundings—the silence was about to kill him.
He pulled into a gas station an hour and half later. The car didn't even need gas—there was a quarter of a tank left—but it was the silence that drove him out. Ignoring the stench of gasoline and tobacco—yes, he'd chuckled wryly at the contradiction—he filled up the tank and pretended to be so busy with the car, he couldn't even look at Casey.
Who, at this moment, was staring at him with such blank eyes it made him uncomfortable. Like that little kid on The Grudge.
A minute later, he got into the car, a false smile on his face. "Ready, Princess?" he asked.
Nod. Not even a glance.
He took her face into his hands and kissed her, long enough for the cars behind him to start honking, and hard enough that her lips were red. "It's going to work out, Case."
The honking was growing more frequent, and Derek flipped his middle finger to the annoyed drivers.
"You're my stepbrother, Derek." Casey spat out, like he was completely and utterly stupid.
"Is that always going to be your argument? I'm your stepbrother, so therefore you can't be with me? News flash, Case, it's a piece of fucking paper! It doesn't mean a goddamn thing! We're just two teenagers who ended up in the same house, and by your terms, a freaky, unholy thing happened: we had chemistry!"
Chemistry was Derek's substitution for admitting he was in love with her; he really did hate admitting it, and his own I love you's to Casey were fairly infrequent.
Usually Casey made some retort about his inability to admit it, but she just turned her head so she could look out the window, and Derek knew the conversation was over. This was so not turning out to be trip he'd hoped it'd be.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
As expected, George and Nora were waiting for them with tired eyes, Lizzie, Edwin and Marti conveniently absent—probably to spare their youngest from the slaughtering that Derek and Casey were just about to undergo.
"Just put your stuff down." Nora said in a hollow, cracked voice. They both did.
Casey didn't look at him—he hoped this wasn't going to become a habit of hers—as she walked past him and took a seat at the dining table.
After a few seconds of Nora and George staring at him pointedly, expecting the same, he sighed, and took a seat next to Casey. She flinched as she heard the chair next to her move. When he tried to take her hand underneath the table, she shook it away.
The important question was asked first, Derek noted with bitterness.
"So how long have you been…intimate?" Nora asked, looking at her daughter in such despair it was probably breaking Casey's heart.
Casey whispered it so softly, he barely heard it. But he already knew the answer.
George looked at Derek, expecting a different statistic from him. "She's telling the truth," he said simply.
"Well—" Nora began, her tone clearly suggesting a long, winding tale of sexual intimacy and its dangers; Derek cut her off.
"We don't want the talk, Nora." He said bluntly, and George glared at him.
Nora smiled at him, that same smile he'd seen before, the strained and stressed one. "Yes. Well, I suppose…" she trailed off, not finishing her thought.
"Well, how long have you been dating?" George blurted out, like a small child would.
"Seven months." Derek answered.
"Seven and a half." Casey whispered, hair hiding her face.
"Okay, seven and a half months."
"But you were screaming like bloody murder at each other two months ago!" Nora protested, more than a little hurt at the depth of the deceit of the action.
"We worked it out."
George looked at his son with a disbelieving expression. "How? You never 'work' anything out!"
"I did for her," he said simply, and then mentally slapped himself for saying such a thing.
"So…" Nora began slowly, still processing the small bits of what she had heard, "You've been lying to us, lying to this whole family, your friends…for a relationship?"
"When you put it like that, Nora, sheesh, it sounds so wrong. Trying to make a point?" Derek growled.
"Knock it off." His father warned, his own anger glinting in his eyes.
"I can't believe you'd lie like this, Casey. Purposely let me worry about you. You're supposed to be the responsible one!"
There was an eerie silence. Then she spoke.
"Sometimes, mom, I want to be a teenager. I don't want to be you yet."
Casey had said this in such a calm, flat tone, Nora didn't even slap her. Her hand raised, poised for the action, but something about her daughter's demeanor had stuck her motionless.
"Derek," a bag hit his chest, knocking him out of his reverie, "I already called and arranged Sam's parents to take you for tonight. You can come home tomorrow. Nora and I still have some talking to do, and it's best the two of you aren't under the same roof right now."
"You didn't even listen to us," he said hotly.
"Don't bother, Derek." Casey called from the top of the stairs, "Just don't bother."
The door slammed shut.
"I'm your son," Derek hissed.
George looked at him, sadness in his eyes. "It hurts me to do this. Really, it does. But it's just…easier if you're away from Casey right now."
"Why?" he demanded.
"Do you know how much it hurt us—all of us—when you had just left like that? We didn't know what to think, we didn't know where you'd be, or if you'd be back? And with everything that's just been said, do you completely blame us for wanting to be sure you'll stay here?"
"That's BS, dad." Derek growled.
George looked at him seriously. "Marti thought you were dead, or gone forever. She'd spent the whole night crying."
"This isn't how I wanted it to be." Derek said. "I was just trying to take her from all the stress and—"
"I know, Derek. I know."
But Derek was pretty sure his father didn't know—and who could blame him, it had all been a secret. The familiar guilt clouded around him. Nora hated him. Marti thought he had abandoned her. His dad was a strange mix of sad, angry, and disappointed. And Casey—the worst of all, Casey wouldn't even speak to him.