Baby Just Say Yes

"Dude, you don't have a week!" Charlie said into the phone exasperatedly. "Everybody's getting real pissed off here, me included. We don't even know if they have a day! They need to get out of there now!"
"I need time, dude! They're real picky, you know that." The source said onto the phone.
"Then persuade them. I don't care how you do it; Ray and Brian, Lacey and Cayden...they're all innocents, and they don't need to be tied up in all this shit."
"You think I don't know that? I'm Rayleigh's long-lost half brother, remember?"
"She's never met you, Ethan. You've never met her. You're as good as strangers."
"We share the same psychotic father, Charlie."
"Then get your sister away from said psychotic father." Charlie mumbled. "Johnny almost--"
"Let me talk to him." Johnny said from behind him angrily. "I mean it."
"Johnny, maybe you should ju--"
"Give me the goddamn phone, Charlie." Johnny said in a don't-fuck-with-me tone of voice. Charlie merely nodded and handed the phone to Johnny. "This is Johnny. I don't give a flying fuck who you are. If you don't get them all out of there, I promise I'll find you and kill you in the--"
"Enough with the threats, dude. You don't even know who I am." Ethan said to Johnny. "I'm working on getting in--I already told Charlie that. If I try to force my way in, they're going to know something's up, and then they'll just kill me. Which means none of them will have a chance to get out alive."
"I don't care. You have a day, like I said before. And if any of them are hurt, you better pray that I don't find out who you are." Johnny said darkly into the phone before hanging it up. He handed it back to Charlie and then mutely walked upstairs to his and Lacey's room, where he lay thinking about the events of the last few years.

He remembered when he'd first met Rayleigh. By the time he'd joined Avenged Sevenfold when she was fourteen, she'd already known Brian for seven years and the rest of them for five. He remembered feeling awkward when she'd first walked into practice, demanding to know who the new 'short shit' was, and remembered that when they told her he was the new bass player, she told him that she had to make sure he sounded as good as the rest of them were, so that someday they'd make it big. After playing the first bass riff for her, she'd smiled, and without another word tackled him onto the floor, hugging him like they'd known each other for years. That was back when she'd been careless.
Before she'd known that her father was secretly hoping to have her killed, preferably sooner rather than later. All he'd known about her when they'd first met was that she wasn't supposed to hang out with them, and if she got caught she'd be in big trouble. That didn't surprise him; lots of parents wouldn't want they're well-brought-up teenage daughters hanging around a gang of rowdy, rude rockers in a garage band. But like so many other rebellious teenage girls, she hadn't listened to her parents, which made him like her even more. She'd been the one who introduced him to Lacey, the love of his life. And it was her who had helped him to dress on his and Lacey's first date because he'd been so self-conscious that he didn't think he looked good, which she assured him he did.

It seemed like this had all happened just a few days ago. He remembered the Yesterday Rayleigh, the one who wasn't afraid of anything, who was reckless and daring. Before her kids, the several murder attempts on her life, and the trauma of losing her mother not once, but twice. The door opened, and Leana walked in.
"Hey, how are you holding up?" She asked him, sitting on the edge of the bed.
"I'm scared shitless for the first time in my life, Leana." He admitted, his voice cracking. "So many of my friends and family are being taken away, and I feel like I can't--"
"Stop that." She said, placing her hands on his shoulders. "Just stop thinking negative stuff. They'll come back, Johnny."
"How do you know, Leana?" He asked her. She sighed, and for the first time since she and Jimmy had broken up for the first time, he saw tears in her eyes.
"Because they have to. We wouldn't be us without them."