Runaway (10 page)

Chapter Thirteen

I laid out on the bed back at the house, the side of my face pushed against the mattress as I tried to come to terms with everything that had happened. The city, my career, my world… None of it mattered all that much anymore in the face of Jack, the man who I had just lost thanks to my inability to tell him the complete truth.

Casey had comforted me, told me that it wasn’t my fault that this whole thing had started, that I shouldn’t dwell too much on Jack if he was willing to react this sharply to the whole situation, if it wasn’t meant to be it wasn’t meant to be…

But I wanted it to be. More than anything. I understood him fully, felt like he was one of the first real people I had ever met in the last few years rather than some exaggerated caricature…

And I loved him.

I did.

Hours passed that way, as if they had transformed into the polar opposite of exactly how I had felt the day before, when we had spent all that time together in Jack’s house and had still wanted to be with each other as every minute passed.

But now I was at a loss, uncaring about anything I had left in my life… And that was when I heard it.

Around the time the car engine pulled to a stop outside of the house, Casey shouted up the stairs.

‘Em? I think… I think Jack’s come back to see you.’

I froze where I laid, looking about with my eyes before sitting up and wiping my eyes dry. For a moment it occurred to me that perhaps I had fallen asleep in my haze of self-pity, that I was imagining this whole thing; I even pinched myself, before sitting up and deciding that I was not in one my dreams, or in one of my movies.

I got up from the bed and made my way quickly through the house, sliding past Casey at the bottom of the stairs who smiled at me as I went.

‘I’ll be right here if you need me,’ she smiled.

‘Thank you,’ I said, knowing that she was always would be and that I would never be fortunate enough to have a better friend than her to get me through the worst of times.

As I made for the front door and began to unlock it, the blood seemed to pump through my veins more intensely that it ever had, a more striking nervousness hitting me than I had experienced before, no matter the situation.

And I guess that just reflected how much the next few moments meant to me.

I took a deep breath and opened the door, feeling the cool, midnight breeze hit me as I wrapped my arms beneath my chest and shut the door behind me. I made my way across the porch and through the garden, seeing Jack’s truck parked a little onto the driveway, the backend hanging off onto the dirt road. I crossed to the driver’s side door slowly, looking inside to see Jack sat there, a look of absolute hopelessness and regret stamped across his face.

I opened the car door wide and stood there by his side, unable to take my eyes from him. His irresistible figure, while still handsome and everything else, looked more beat than ever. He was wearing nothing but a white vest which gripped his lean figure, jeans and a pair of boots. His arms were covered in scrapes and bruises, his eyes looking as if he had been awake for days, even though I had only seen him hours ago.

‘Y’know…’ He started, ‘There was a moment, back there in the yard, when I was lying face down on the concrete… I felt like I could just stay there. Like I could just phase into everything around me and disappear. Like apathy. I didn’t care. I wanted to just…
Go,
I guess. So that I wouldn’t have to hold into any of this stuff anymore.

‘Ever since… Ever since it happened, I’ve always thought that maybe I would hear them, that they would… Give me a sign or something. I never believed in any of that stuff, but afterwards I would have believed in anything if I could see them again. But… I never did, and I never heard them in my dreams or in my mind or anything…

‘Until tonight. When you came and turned me over and I was in some haze between waking and just letting myself fall away… I heard them. Speaking with some unified voice, both Clare and Noah… Telling me to come back to you.’

I looked down at Jack in his car seat, suddenly looking the opposite of the man I had come to know; beaten, fragile and utterly lost in the world. A tear rolled down my cheek uncontrollably as I brought my hand to his shoulder gently. He brought a hand up and rested it atop mine, caressing my skin lightly.

‘But I pushed you away,’ he continued, ‘And I didn’t mean to… Because honestly, the truth is… I do love you, Emma. Even if it’s only been three days, I’ve never felt anything more clearly in my mind…’

Jack up at me, shifting in his seat before pulling himself carefully out of the car, I helping him as best I could to stand.

‘Can you forgive me?’ He asked, standing before me, taking my arms in his hands as he looked down at me with those dark eyes of his that never failed to make me feel completely lost in him. And I knew my answer without thinking.

‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ I smiled quietly, thinking back to the first time we met when he had uttered those exact same words to me.

I wrapped my arms around him gently, feeling him do the same to me as I buried myself in his chest and closed my eyes, feeling truly safe, completely myself, for the longest time since I could remember.

One Year Later

‘Nervous?’

‘A little… But I always get nervous before these things.’

The limo rolled along the street, I sat in the back wrapped up in a black dress, my hair and make-up done up to the nines. I felt a hand come to rest on my leg, with the gentle roughness that I had longed after every day since I had first felt it press against mine, back outside the lakehouse in Watertown.

I looked up to my right, seeing Jack smile back at me as the screams and shouts of the crowd began to come into earshot.

‘I don’t know what you’re so nervous about,’ Jack laughed lightly, ‘I’ve always wanted to go to one of these things.’

‘It’s not so much nerves… Just the whole show of it all. On set I can retake as many times as I need. Here, I can’t… I just have to run with it. And if my skirts tucked into my underwear, I just have to live it down.’

‘Well, there’s always that…’ Jack smiled.

Things often have a tendency to move faster than you expect, life especially. It had been a year since that week when everything had changed, when I had gone to that one place and randomly ended up meeting that one person who made me feel like myself… Who made me feel like I didn’t want to be anywhere else but by his side.

And now we were here, around about where our story started. I was on the way to the premiere of the movie I had shot since then, a drama about… Well, it doesn’t matter. I would always love what I did, but when it came down to it, the only thing that really matters is figuring out what you want.

For me it was the equally damaged, deeper than I could imagine, impossibly handsome guy who sat next to me. And he needed me. That was the one thing I knew every time his dark eyes met mine, every time he kissed me, every time he smiled back at me no matter where we were…

Jeez, listen to me.

The car pulled to a sudden stop. I took a deep breath, turning to jack and clasping his hand in mine, feeling it clench against me tightly.

‘Ready?’

‘Ready,’ I smiled, nodding back at him. He kissed me lightly on the cheek and hopped out of his side of the car, that familiar wall of noise striking me hard before it went away briefly as he closed his door.

I sat there in the silence for a moment, everything seeming to slow down as my mind raced over it all, over everything, the overcoming, the need, the man.

And even though it was one of those occasions I wish I didn’t have to be involved with, even though I had
yet again
forgotten to wear deodorant… I felt happier than I could ever have remembered having felt.

The car door opened, and a hand reached out to take mine.

The End.