Easier to Run (15 page)

“Nah, I couldn’t even have a door on my bedroom. No internet unless I was on the computer in the living room. And they checked the browsing history or watched every site I went to. No boys, no going out, no phone unless I sat in front of them while I talked. I tried to leave when I graduated, but by then I already felt so broken down and guilty that I just didn’t have the energy to fight it. I was afraid to come back here, afraid to reach out and fall down a hole I wouldn’t be able to get out of. I knew life here would have moved on without me and I didn’t think I could ever be a part of that again. Instead, I did some photography workshops, and through them I met some people into filming. I finally moved in with two other girls.” She stared down at the food.

I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to talk about it, but she didn’t look terribly panicked, so I hoped that getting it all out would be for the best.

“I knew they were into film stuff, but I didn’t realize exactly what that meant until I walked in on them filming in the apartment. I found out how much money they were making while I’d been living off my savings and part-time cleaning job. I lived there for a year, but I minded my own business. I stayed out of it. I took sleeping pills to get through the night. Depression meds during the day. I was a zombie, but as long as I could keep going through the motions—it was tolerable.

“But a few months ago, I got a call about Mitchel. He was trying to arrange his release. I fell apart on the inside. On the outside, I just kept going—faster and faster. Taking on more and more just so I didn’t have to think about anything. I asked about the videos and they set me up.” She rubbed her eyes, then picked up a piece of pizza and stuffed it in her mouth. After she swallowed, she bit her lip. “I don’t want to talk about the videos.”

“Then, don’t. You don’t have to tell me any more than you want to.” I opened the chicken wings and picked up one of the legs. I had questions. A billion things I wanted to know and didn’t at the same time. “Just tell me one thing. Were you safe?”

She smiled faintly and nodded. “Yeah. And they tested me for everything by the time I got out of the hospital anyway. Clean bill of health—aside from being slightly crazy.”

“You’re not crazy. Maybe a little wacky, but—”

She elbowed me in the side and laughed. “Look who’s talking.”

“I’m totally normal,” I said smoothly before taking a bite of chicken. The hot sauce stung my lip, but the taste was worth it.

“Right,” she said around a mouthful of pizza. “The man who just got flattened by his ex-girlfriend is totally normal.”

“I tripped.”

“Uh huh. She still gave you quite a fat lip.”

“She’s the crazy one,” I said digging for another drumstick.

“Sorry,” Cassie said.

“It’s okay.” In fact, I was relieved that she was trying to get a dig at me. It almost felt normal again. “I feel like I should try to talk to her again—”

“Really? Maybe with some protective gear.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? Just”—I shook my head. “Just, what? Wait for her to make a decision and deal with it? How much of a jerk would I be if I just asked for proof?”

“Depends, but considering she tried to pound you into the floor with her purse….”

“And shoe.” I rubbed the bruise on my side.

Cassie shook her head. “I don’t think worrying about being a jerk is really relevant here. Is she always so… temperamental?”

“She didn’t used to be, but lately, yes. I want to defend her—mainly I want to defend my own judgment for being with her—but I don’t know what to say or where to go from here.”

“I know the feeling,” she said softly.

I stared into her eyes for a few moments, until she broke away and continued eating. Now wasn’t a good time to even consider falling for someone. For Cassie of all people. I had been there when she graduated Kindergarten. She’d been the nine-year-old who tagged along to my high school football tryouts. The fourteen-year-old who went out with me after I got my CDL and started hauling small loads for my dad. I had watched her grow up but missed the opportunity to see her graduate high school, get her license, or even grow into the woman that was sitting next to me.

Now, she tugged at me like a magnet. I wanted to make everything okay. I wanted to hold her and soothe her.

I wanted to love her.

I swallowed down a bite of pizza—I wasn’t even sure if I had chewed it. I just wanted to swallow the lump forming in my chest and throat.

Why did everything have to happen at once?

Did I want her just because I was going through my own hell, and I thought she could make it better?

Keep her safe. Get through one crisis at a time
. I told myself. So that’s what I resolved to do. Keep everything together, and keep just enough of an emotional distance to make sure we didn’t get in over our heads too fast.

After we ate, Cassie showered and changed into her pajamas. Then, we sat on the couch, and she curled under a blanket, laying her head on my chest. I kept reminding myself of my silent promise while I dragged my fingers through her hair, and we both drifted to sleep.

Ben

Something thudded and I jerked awake. The kitchen light flipped on, illuminating the dark room, and I groaned as Cassie stared up at me, frozen and wide-eyed.

“What the hell, man?” I yelled over the back of the couch.

“You’re asking me that?” Brantley said. “What are you even doing here?”

I groaned and squinted against the unwelcome intrusion of light. “Dad called me back. Don’t ask.”

“You talk to Liz?” he asked, but he froze when he saw Cassie over the back of the couch.

“Brantley, Cassie,” I waved my hand. “Cassie, my roommate Brantley.”

“Hi,” Cassie said quietly, with a small wave.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, then he held up his grungy stained hands—it was difficult to tell where the grime ended and his sleeves of tattoos began. “I’d offer to shake but I’ve been crawling around a trailer.” His clothes were just as dirty and stained like he’d decided to crawl around under his truck and possibly climb through the engine a couple of times. He was a couple of years older than me, and with the full beard and head full of untamed brown curls, he looked like he just climbed down out of his mountainside cave. 

“I was going to call you,” I said. “I didn’t think you were back today, but Cassie doesn’t have anywhere to stay, so I told her she could have my room for a while.”

“No problem,” he said slowly. With any luck, he’d keep his comments to himself until Cassie was settled. He loved to get a rise out of people, and most days I was lucky if his mind was only living in the gutter. “I’m back out in a couple of days, but I’m just getting washed up and meeting Paige tonight.

“There’s cold pizza in the fridge if you want any.”

Brantley snorted. “You could feed the girl something better than pizza.”

“We were too lazy. And to answer your previous question, Liz was here earlier.”

“Ahhh,” he glanced over the fridge door. “I’m sure that went brilliantly.”

“What do you know?”

“Enough not to gossip.” Brantley tossed the pizza box on the counter and took a slice. “Paige saw her a few days ago and said she was….” He twirled his finger in a circle next to his head rather than finish the sentence.

“Helpful.”

“She was just wining about you I guess. I figured she tracked you down again.”

“Unfortunately.” I groaned. “I don’t think I’m ever getting rid of her.”

He gave me a flat look. “Why? Dumping her was the best thing you did in that relationship.”

Cassie squeezed my arm and laid her head against the back of the couch facing me.

“It’s complicated,” I said. Lacing my fingers through Cassie’s.

Even though Brantley couldn’t see our hands, he looked at her for a long moment, then at me. “I’m not going to ask.”

After scarfing down the last of the pizza, he grabbed his bag from the kitchen counter and headed into the bedroom.

“I should go,” Cassie said, suddenly tensing.

“Why?” I tried to pull her back, but she broke my grasp and stood.

“I’m just going to make t-things worse. People are going to th-think—”

“What?” I stood and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Nothing that anyone thinks makes any difference.”

“But it does.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because, you have your own life.” She kept her volume to a whisper, but it turned into a scream inside of my head.

“And I want you in it.”

Tears brimmed her eyelids. She shook her head and looked everywhere except up at me. “I-I don’t want to s-screw things up. Make things worse. I don’t want to be the girl everyone is whispering about.”

“Sweetie,” I didn’t want to ask her to be that either. And I hadn’t really stopped to think how my situation affected her. What I wanted made her the other woman. Potentially dating a man who’d knocked up another girl. That alone put a target on her back, and she had her own secrets to keep hidden away. “I understand. I don’t want to ask that of you. But, don’t leave, Cas. My parents have a spare room.”

“I don’t want to stay with your parents.”

“What do you want?”

She shook her head.

“Don’t think, don’t edit, just tell me what you want.”

“You,” she sobbed. “That’s the biggest problem of all.” Then she spun and ran into my room, pulling the door closed behind her.

I took a deep breath and stared up at the ceiling for a minute. Brantley stepped out of his room and opened the bathroom door. “Dude, you kind of look like someone just dropped you into a foreign universe.”

“That’s a fairly good assessment.” I looked at my bedroom door, then to my roommate.

“Paige told me something else,” he said.

I sighed.

“She said Liz mentioned being pregnant.”

“I know.”

“Well, she also mentioned her being with some other guy a few weeks ago. Shortly after you broke up.”

I scoffed, and my knees nearly buckled from under me. I felt oddly uncomfortable at how hopeful that news made me feel. “She
failed
to mention that one.”

“I guess it didn’t go well. He uh,” he lowered his voice even more. “Roughed her up. I tried talking to her about it. Tried to find out who it was, but she wasn’t having any of it.”

“Does this have to get any more complicated?” I rubbed my hands over my face and through my hair.

Brantley grunted and looked toward my bedroom door. “Talk about complicated. I take it she’s
the
Cassie?”

“Yeah.”

“As in last time you saw her she was fifteen?”

“Yeah,” I exhaled, realizing I probably talked about her far too much.

“How long has she been back?”

“Showed up before I left on the last run. She went with me.”

He nodded giving me a wide-eyed look. “It has been a long time, think maybe you should take a step back?”

“Why?” I considered telling him how much he sounded like my dad—that’d probably shut him up for a while.

“Six years… that’s a long time to just—just—” He flopped his hands in the air.

“Just what?” Maybe Cassie was right.

No
, I wouldn’t let her be.

Brantley licked her lips. “Look man, it’s your life. It just seems like you’re making some big jumps while there’s already some heavy shit floating around. I’ll have your back either way, and I don’t have a problem with her staying, but don’t make a bigger mess.”

“I’ll try to avoid that.” I rubbed the back of my neck, and Brantley continued into the bathroom.

I knocked on my bedroom door. No answer. So, I pressed down the handle and pushed it open slowly. “Cas?”

She was sitting on the foot of the bed, staring down at her feet.

She took a shaky breath as I sat down next to her. I pushed the hair over her shoulder and straightened it down her back. “I can’t promise an easy road,” I said. “I can’t control what anyone else says or does. And I can’t go back and fix the damn roads we’ve taken up till now. But I can promise to stay by you, and we can figure out every obstacle as we go. I want you with me, Cassie.”

She sniffed and tucked her arms around herself. “I want that, too. But I’m afraid I want too much.”

“Am I going to have to kiss you again?” I just wanted her to smile, to let go and open up again.

She laughed and rubbed her hands over her face. “Not while my face is leaking. You have any tissues anywhere?”

I snorted. Brantley and I were just a couple of guys who barely kept up with the apartment let alone stocking it with anything. It was just a place to sleep when we weren’t on the road. “I have no idea. Maybe.” I rubbed her back and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll go check.”

I managed to dig a box out of the top of the closet from when Brantley had come home and shared his flu bug. I peeled back the top on the way back to the room.

“Here you go, Bug. You get a whole box, don’t use them all in one night.”

She shook her head and snatched the box. But at least she was smiling.

After she blew her nose and wiped her eyes repeatedly, we both laid across the bed.

“What now?” Cassie asked.

“I should find some clean sheets and you should get some sleep.”

“Has your ex been in this bed?”

I shook my head. “Not in a very long time.”

She grimaced, then stretched back. “These sheets are fine, then.”

She blinked her eyes and stared at the ceiling for a few minutes. “You and my sister never…. Never mind. I really don’t want to know.”

I snorted and took her hand into mine, lacing our fingers together. “No, Rachel and I never slept together.”

“Said I didn’t want to know,” Cassie mumbled.

“But you want this?” I squeezed her hand. “Because if so, we have to be honest with each other.”

“I’m not”—she licked her lips—”It’s just hard to think about it. The past isn’t something I’m fond of—it torments me all the time. And thinking of you with anyone else isn’t exactly appealing either. I laid my claim on you the day you introduced you introduced yourself.”

I chuckled and tugged her closer. “Well for the first few months you had a very strange way of showing it.”

She tried to hide her face. “I was afraid you’d make f-fun of me as soon as I opened my mouth.”

“Yeah,” I grunted. “So, it took me four months.”

She grinned and a pale pink flush washed up from her neck and over her face. “So, do I want to know how many girls you’ve slept with?”

Why’d I make the comment about being honest
?

“Kaylee, Liz, and five girls you probably wouldn’t know.” That included a couple one-night stands I wasn’t proud to admit to. Liz was my not-so-grand solution to all of that. Granted if not for our wacky relationship that number would have been well into the double-digits, I wasn’t sure at this point that the payoff was worth it.

“Kaylee? The track girl when you were a senior?”

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“Well, you know all about mine,” she shifted and stared across the room, refusing to look in my direction.

I tried to find something to say, but the more I searched, the harder it seemed. “They don’t count.”

She scoffed and pressed her head deep into the pillow. “The videos were my choice.”

My breath escaped like someone kicked me in the chest. “No, Cas, I don’t—”

“I
chose
to do them. I asked for it to be set up.” She sounded determined to convince one of us, but she still couldn’t look at me.

I propped myself up on my elbow. “And then you went home and swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills.”

“I don’t need a reminder,” she said, glaring up at me.

“I mean you weren’t in the right frame of mind to judge yourself based on what happened. You were struggling to cope with something bigger than any of us could handle on our own. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“Easy for you to say.” She lowered her eyelids but didn’t close her eyes completely.

I squeezed her fingers, then traced her chin back to her jaw and angled her face to me. “Give yourself a break.”

Everything Dad said, everything I’d been telling myself disappeared from my mind as I stared into her brown eyes. I pressed my lips to hers and cupped my hand against her cheek keeping her close to me. She inhaled sharply and moved her hand to my arm, but she pressed herself into the kiss. I flicked my tongue against her lips and they parted in open invitation. Her hand moved down to my side and she pulled her own body against mine.

I pressed my hand to the small of her back, pulling her even closer.

My breath came in short pants—all I could smell and taste was her. I wanted her to be the only thing I could feel as well.

Cassie

I didn’t want to come up for air. I wanted to sink so deep into the kiss that the rest of the world around me faded to nothing, leaving only me and Ben. His tongue pressed against mine. The fire in my belly burned brighter, aching for him.