Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4) (41 page)

If I’d known the irony of that statement at the time, I
never would have said it. If I hadn’t given in to Clay’s request,
maybe time wouldn’t have been in danger of running out. But I
did and it was. When I opened the door of that car, and set my
feet in the opposite direction of the main road, I effectively
kicked the hourglass of time even harder than the baton at the
track meet. I just didn’t realize it. Yet. But before those five
minutes were up, I was going to.

Clay led me to the once shallow pool where the police
found my car. When he got to the edge, his eyes glazed over
and I knew that the memories were coming to him. “Clay?
What do you remember?”

Zero response. He was practically catatonic and didn’t
seem to know I was there. Now afraid to disturb him, I began
to walk away.
I was nearly ten feet away from him before I
realized that I
was
ten feet away.
Whatever recollections he
was having, had to be powerful for them to break or at least
weaken our bond. I didn’t relish the thought of walking home
alone in the dark rainy night, but it looked like I might have to.
I moved cautiously around the lot trying to get a signal on my
phone one last time.
The rain was dying off—perhaps the cell
tower would be functioning again.
I heard the faint noise of
what sounded like a vehicle approaching.
Even though the
message still showed as pending in my phone, Zach must have
received it anyway. Thank God for Zach. What would I ever do
without him?

“Looks like you’re stuck,” a tiny voice rang out from
behind the trees. “Don’t you know you should always be
prepared?”

That wasn’t Zach’s voice or any other one I recognized.
I started to turn around to see who was speaking to me and
crushed the hourglass firmly beneath my feet. I heard the shrill
call of a bird then two familiar voices chiming together in one
ominous phrase. Then my world as I knew it, ceased to be.

Why was I so stupid? Yes, I still loved Sophie and part
of me always would but I had Ruby now. She could see me and
talk to me.
The most Sophie would ever be able to manage
would be to believe in the possibility that I still existed. Ruby
didn’t have to believe—she
knew
. My future was with her. She
hadn’t said that she loved me yet but I had to give her time.
When I told her that I loved her, she didn’t even flinch. She felt
it—she just wasn’t ready to say it. I mean, why else would she
have broken up with Zach last night? She never cared about me
overhearing their conversations before so I knew what was
happening when she took her phone into the bathroom with
her.
I felt bad for him—I know firsthand how devastating
breakups are. I would have hung up on her, too.

The closer I got to Ruby, the less my past mattered to
me—the less I cared to remember what I’d forgotten. The only
reason I agreed to try was because she seemed to need it so
badly. I guess she thought that I needed to remember so that I
could forget about Sophie and move on.
I knew Ruby well
enough to know that she wouldn’t be satisfied with anything
less. Once a dom, always a dom. God that girl’s determination
made
me smile. She wasn’t tough like the girls in my
neighborhood—she was strong in the
right
way.

Ruby knew how to fire me up—how to push my buttons
in the most frustratingly sweetest of ways.
Just like Sophie
used to do.
So as I now sat there in that car looking at the
expression on her face when I remembered that Sophie was
pregnant when I died, I felt terrible. I didn’t mean to make her
jealous. I didn’t mean to upset her. It was the first memory I
had of that night and it rolled off my tongue before I knew it. I
did want to see the baby, though—at least once. And then, I
could let it go.
Sophie was capable of raising that kid alone.
There wasn’t anything I could do for them anyway. They would
both be better off without me.

I resisted the urge to ‘compliment’ Ruby on her driving
skills when she got us stuck in that puddle. When she said she
was borrowing someone else’s car, I wasn’t expecting to be
chauffeured around in a Matchbox car for the day.
I really
should have known it would end up out of commission. Damn
foreign cars anyway. My Mustang would have—.

My Mustang. I saw a weird flash of it in my memory,
parked at Silver Lake but not trashed the way they said it was
the night I died. That memory was
from
the night I died, I could
just feel it. That flash was fleeting but I knew exactly where it
was parked—near the spot where Ruby’s car was demolished.
Maybe there was something significant about the way Shane
and
Dylan
left it.
While my
brain
was
still firing
on all
cylinders, I needed to try to figure it out.

As we walked to that spot, I could feel that something
was happening—that something was changing inside my head.
Ruby gave me exactly five minutes to do what I needed to do.
Five minutes
had
to be enough time. I wanted to move on with
my ‘life’ and I finally felt close to being able to do that. Ruby
made me want to remember so that I could finally forget.
When I stopped at the water’s edge, images begin to race
through my
brain.
I watched as
a
blur of scenes
moved
backwards until I got to the beginning. I was no longer at Silver
Lake.
I was no longer dead.
My memories created a time
machine that transported me somewhere far from Ruby yet so
much closer to the truth.

My stereo was blasting to drown out the sound of Mom
throwing up on whoever that lucky guy was she brought home
with her from The Crow Hole tonight. That made this the second
man-vomiting incident of the month but her third bar conquest of
the week. That I knew of. And that stupid bitch wondered why I
spent so much time away from home.
Half the time, I was here
and she didn’t even realize it. The other half, I was busy getting
loaded myself. I picked the worst time to be sober.

The music was so loud that I didn’t hear my phone ring—
the vibration on my leg was the only way I knew that I had an
incoming call. I didn’t usually answer calls from unfamiliar
numbers. What made me want to do it now? I was hoping it was
some random person looking to score a hit, that’s why.
I didn’t
choose to be sober tonight. I ran out of money.
I put every last
cent I had from last night’s deal into getting the final part I
needed for the Mustang.
I had plenty to sell but no buyers.
I
wanted to escape from reality but I didn’t want to dip into my
own inventory to do it. It wasn’t smart to smoke up potential
profits.
I preferred beer anyway.
The time flipped forward one
minute to exactly midnight as I answered it.

“Yeah, What do you need?” I grumbled while turning
down the music.
The sound of more heaving from Mom’s
bedroom made me add one more thing. “And make it quick.”

I
sat up
in bed immediately
and
smoothed back my
tangled mess of hair as though she could see me through the
phone. “Sophie?” I replied quietly. “Is that you?”

We hadn’t spoken since the night we broke up—exactly
one month and three days ago.
That was the day she found out
that I was dealing again. I promised her once before that I would
stop but I lied. She didn’t understand why I did it. She didn’t
know how it felt to be a poor kid like me and dating the richest,
most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. She would never understand. I
just needed to keep doing it until Jeremy and I had enough money
put together to open up our own garage.
It would take some
hard work and a whole lot of grease, but we had big plans,
Jeremy and me. Someday, we would be able to earn big bucks the
honest way. Until then, selling drugs was my only option.

I knew the tone of her voice well—she was jealous. There
wasn’t any new girlfriend. No girls period. If I couldn’t have
Sophie, I didn’t want anyone.
She was my first and she would be
my last. But she was in Ohio and she had no way of knowing that
I’d turned down offers from several hot girls willing to exchange
sex for drugs. I loved Sophie and that was that.

She wasn’t coming back to me. I had to abandon that
hope. So I acted like an asshole to keep my feelings buried. “Nah,
I left that bitch’s house earlier. Gave her what she wanted and
walked out before she had time to start asking me what I was
thinking about.” Sophie always used to ask me that question
right after sex. I would always answer her by saying “you” and it
was never a lie.
I missed those days bad but not for the obvious
reason. I missed them because I was still in love with her.

“Clayton Arnold Roseman, when are you going to get it
through that thick skull of yours that I can always tell when
you’re lying to me?” She still sounded pissed. Pissed yet relieved.

I didn’t even cringe at the use of my middle name like I
normally would have.
Our conversation felt more like the good
old days, the days when she still loved me as much as I loved her.
But I had to stop wishing that we could be together again.
Wishing hurt.

“What do you want, Sophie?” I tried to sound tough but it
all fell apart when I got to her name.
Her name was soft and
sweet on my tongue—just like she was.
I squeezed my eyes shut
and tried not to think about how bad I missed her. Impossible.

“There’s something you need to know, Clay. My parents
forbid me to tell you this. They said it wouldn’t make any
difference. Prove them wrong. Prove to me that you’re the guy I
think you are.”

My heart started racing in my chest.
Did I want to hear
what she had to say or was it only going to leave me more
brokenhearted than I already was? I remained silent, waiting for
the ax to fall on me again.

I never expected to hear those words come out of her
mouth. We were always careful. But there
was
that one mishap
shortly before our breakup.
She took a home pregnancy test but
told me that it was negative.
How could she lie to me about
something like that?

“I didn’t lie. My mom took me to the doctor a few days
later and the results were very different. I’ve seen the sonogram,
Clay. I’m definitely pregnant. The real question here is, what are
you going to do about it?”

“I want you to get in your car and drive to Marklin, Ohio
right now. That’s where I am. It’s a small town near Pendleton
University. I want you near me. I have enough money for you to
have food and a roof over your head until you can find a job. But
it has to be an honest job.”

I didn’t have enough money for gas to drive that far.
I
would have to go downtown and hope to find a few buyers first.
It was getting late—I probably wouldn’t have any luck with that
until tomorrow night. “I can’t tonight. I’ll be there in a few days
though—Scout’s Honor. I wanna go make some money first.” I
was too ashamed of myself to admit that I
needed
to make
money first.

“You better be. When you get close to Ohio, text me at
this number. And you better not bring any drugs with you. If you
don’t text me back, I swear I’ll run so far away that you’ll never
find me. Scout’s Honor.” Click. The line went dead.

The first thing I did was call Jeremy.
He might have
enough money on him to get me to Ohio tonight. He always came
through for me in a pinch.
Plus, I couldn’t wait to tell him about
the baby. I wasn’t going to let this kid grow up without a father
the way he and I both did.

“What?” Jeremy responded when I told him the good
news. “Ohio? Tonight? What about our plans for the garage?
You can’t leave Charlotte’s Grove now!”

Jeremy didn’t sound like himself. I must have woken him
up. I’d slept over at his house enough times to know that he was
cranky as hell first thing in the morning.
That had to be why he
didn’t sound as happy for me as I was expecting him to. I also
knew that when he was in one of those morning moods, there was
no getting through to him until he was fully awake. I wasn’t
getting any money out of him any time soon. I was going to have
to score one final deal.

Yeah, busy sleeping. I was going to have to do this myself.
I took a quick shower, put on a red flannel shirt and some jeans,
and stuffed what possessions I could into an old duffel bag.
I
snuck out my window so I wouldn’t risk running into my mom or
her flavor of the day.
As I fired up the Mustang, I took one last
look at the house I wasn’t going to miss. Goodbye, Spring Avenue.
Hello, Ohio.

Hopefully. An hour later, I still had a full bag of weed and
five pennies in my pocket. I tried all of the usual spots but there
wasn’t a potential customer in sight. That meant only one
thing—there was a party somewhere in town where everyone
was getting high together. If I could find that party, I could easily
talk some dumb pothead into buying the whole bag if I cut them
a good enough deal. The first place I decided to look was Silver
Lake. There was an old camp there where people partied during
the summer. It was always abandoned on cold nights but tonight
was warm enough that I just might get lucky.