Easier to Run (13 page)

“I didn't go to anyone,” she said, her voice high with tones of annoyance. “I ran into your Mom at the store.”

“So you spilled everything?”

“I was emotional.” She dug the pointed heel of her shoe into the floor and twisted her ankle. “What if I didn't have the abortion?”

“What if? Dad said you didn’t.”  I sat on the coffee table facing her. “
What if
you started being straight instead of acting like you're playing me with everything that slips out of your mouth?”

She scowled at me, so I composed myself and tried again. I wanted to fight, tooth and claw, to let my anger boil to the surface, yell, and challenge everything she said. That was my instinct when I saw her, but that wouldn’t get us anywhere. “Can't we just go in one direction instead of around and around in endless circles? I'm sick of the back and forth.”

“Isn’t that what we do?” She pressed her red lips together and shook her head. “You want a lay, you come to me. Then the open road calls and it’s back to your life and to hell with me. What do you want Ben?”

Not to be in this situation to begin with.
But hearing it all laid out like that. I’d been a fucking asshole, and I never figured she cared. “A straight explanation about the pregnancy would be nice.”

“I didn't have an abortion. I wasn't sure what to do when I ran into your mom. I had skipped the appointment, but I was still freaking out and needed someone to talk to. Your mom's nice.”

And a good actress
, I thought. Mom hated her more than Dad did, but they'd never tell her that to her face, especially if they knew there was a possible baby involved. It wasn't like I'd be the first in my family with an out of wedlock baby, but at least big brother was engaged now. I was a jerk without a plan.

“What do you want?” I asked rubbing my hand over my forehead in an attempt to scrub away some of the tension. I wanted a clean break. It was something I'd wanted over and over with her, but then our paths would cross again and... Old habits really are hard to break. Especially when I’d had too much to drink.

“We’ve had good times. We used to get along and then you started staying out on the road more and taking longer trips. I want you, Ben.”

I shook my head. “Things didn’t change because of my job. We were already rocky. If anything, my not being around meant we had less time to fight over stupid things.”

“You complain but you kept coming back.” She leaned forward against her thighs, drawing my attention to her short black skirt, and the low cut of her top.

How could someone I couldn’t stand to talk to be so tempting to look at?

No strings attached. It’s impossible to develop feelings for someone you can’t tolerate outside of the bedroom. Perfect arrangement until it backfired.

“I think you have commitment issues,” Liz said, suddenly straightening her back and giving me a pointed look.

My jaw dropped. “I. Have. What?”

“Commitment issues. Maybe we should see a counselor. We could work all of this out.”

“I don’t have commitment issues.” Okay, maybe I did, but only where she was involved. I stood and rubbed my hands against my jeans.

“Then why are you always running?”

I spun back to face her and threw up my arms. “I’m not. I was straight with you all along. I wasn’t looking for a relationship. You knew that.”

“But I thought—”

“You thought that by getting pregnant you might change my mind?” I snapped.

She chucked her purse at my head. That probably wasn’t the most intelligent thing to say.

“Sorry,” I kept my hands up in case she decided to throw something else in my direction—especially if it happened to be one of her pointy shoes. “I’m tired and I’m still a little in shock here.”

“How the hell do you think I feel?” She jumped up and grabbed her purse like I was trying to steal it, then stalked away.

“Look, I’m sorry, Liz.” I rubbed my temples. What the hell else was I supposed to say? I knew a million things I should have said, but I couldn’t bring myself to spit any of them out. I didn’t want to believe any of this was truly happening. Denial. Bittersweet denial. My brain’s refusal to accept something that was about to irrefutably change the rest of my life no matter what.

“You called to talk,” she huffed. “You wanted to talk. You didn’t want me to have the abortion, so here I am.”

I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Thank you.” I had to give her that one. “Where do you want to start?”

“We could make up.” She smiled, swinging her hips as she took a step toward me.

I rolled my eyes. Making up between us amounted to sex. Every. Time. “I told you two months ago that I couldn’t do this anymore. I meant it. I was turning into someone that I didn’t like.” And now I was even more determined to keep that from happening.

“Is there someone else?” she asked.

I avoided the question and paced behind the coffee table. “Liz, you and I never worked for more than sex—usually crazy, hate sex. That should tell you something. You hate football, you hate my job, you hate most of the foods I like, you hate everything I watch on television, every movie I’ve ever talked about and every conversation we’ve ever had ends up in an argument.”

“And then in bed,” her voice was a smooth purr full of false promises. She licked her lips and sauntered closer to me. When we’d met, I could have sat around and stared at her for hours. She was gorgeous, curvy, and worked every inch of her body just to see me squirm. I could get off on that alone. Within a few weeks, she replaced alcohol as my numbing drug of choice.

I buried my face in my hands just so I didn’t have to face her for a second. “You don’t see the problem here?”

“You never tried.”

“What do you want me to do? If you want to reinvent someone and mold them into everything you want, I hear there’s a good clay working class down at the college.” I tried to rein it in, but this was where every conversation went. That’s why we made our arrangement and
never
talked about it. I didn’t have feelings for her. I didn’t
want
feelings for her—or anyone else—so I stayed with the woman I knew I’d never fall in love with.

“Well,” she leaned forward. “What you and I
want
isn’t really relevant anymore.”

She spun on her toes and headed to the door, leaving me a blinking mess of questions. Why the hell did I ever think fucking her was a good idea?

“Are you keeping the baby?” I asked.

“How about you come over to my place for dinner? We can fight and make up properly.” She smiled seductively and cocked her hip.

It always went back to that. “No.”

She pursed her lips. “So you won’t even try to make nice for the baby?”

I felt like she was just dangling a carrot in front of my face. “Liz, there is no ‘make nice’ between us. When we talk, we fight. This—what we’re doing right here—is the very epitome of what happens every time we talk. Wouldn’t you prefer to find someone who makes you happy all the time?”

“You could make me happy if you’d stop holding on to whatever it is that makes you keep your distance from everyone.”

Whatever that was. Cassie. The girl I shouldn’t be thinking about. The girl in my bedroom.
Damn it
. When did anything about her become anything more than wanting to protect her?

Part of me knew I should stop being so stubborn. This was partially my own damn fault. But I couldn’t. My instinct rebelled against the very thought.
Selfish idiot
.

Just make nice until the baby’s born
. That would be a tall order between people who could barely have a conversation without fighting. Is it selfish to put a kid through that in the first place? Is it selfish to think there’s no way we could hide our real feelings? Selfish to know that no matter how much I tried to make nice, I’d be miserable and no amount of good intent could keep me from taking everyone down with me eventually?

I wanted to work things out, but I couldn’t stomach the thought of being together.

Should have thought of that before
.

“Why didn’t you just have the abortion?” I asked.

“Now you sound like you want me to.”

“Just curious. You seemed dead set on it and against talking. Now you want to get back together and work things out?”

“You’re my weakness, Ben.” Her expression softened, and she closed her eyes. “I want you in my life and not constantly driving out of it.”

That was the last thing I wanted to hear.

“Do you see other women when you’re out on the road?”

“What?” My temper cracked through again.

“That wasn’t a no. Must be something better out there for a man like you.”

That was for sure, but currently Liz wasn’t hard to beat in that department. “I can’t believe you would ask me that. If you trust me so little that you have to ask me that question, we never had anything.”

“Don’t say that.”

I raised my eyebrows. After that accusation, she wanted to tell me what not to say.

“I just want to understand, Ben. You’d spend your entire life on the road. On the run.”

“I’m not on the run, Liz. It’s not running when I’m where I want to be.” I didn’t get what was so difficult to understand. “I like driving and I make good money doing it.”

She snorted. “You want to be a perpetual bachelor? Or is your idea of ‘settling down’ leaving your wife at home to take care of the kids while you’re out playing nomad without responsibilities.” She cocked her head and grinned. Part of her loved taking everything I wanted and rubbing it in my face.

“I make good money so that one day I can provide for a family.”

“That ‘one day’ might be here.”

“Might?” The word slipped out on a breath of air.

“I’ll let you know.” She shrugged casually.

“That’s the problem, Liz. You’re the control freak. You can’t stand that I’m out on the road because you don’t control it.”

She charged at me and swung her purse first, then her open hand.

“Holy fuck, Liz.” I tried to block her repeated swings, but I stepped back and tripped over the coffee table. The impact radiated up my spine, but even with me sprawled out on the floor, Liz didn’t stop. I rolled to the side and she kicked me in the hip with her damn pointy heels. Then, nailed me in the gut with her purse before suddenly stopping.

I scrambled to my feet while I had a chance and saw my open bedroom door with Cassie standing in it.

“Thought there wasn’t anyone else,” Liz spat in my face, then sung again. I was distracted by Cassie and didn’t see her hand coming until it was too late.

With my face and lip burning, I backed out of Liz’s reach. “She’s an old friend. I told her she could stay here.”

“In
your
bed?”

“Well, I’m not going to put her in Brantley’s room.” I rubbed a blot of blood off of my busted lip. If Liz had been I guy I would have given her a fat lip to match. All I could do was man up and take it. “You should go, Liz.”

“Right, I’m sure you have other things to do,” she waved at Cassie.

“
This
is why we don’t work,” I yelled. I held back all the names I wanted to call her. The vile rush of fury that begged to be let out. She stoked that fire far too often. It was the very reason I hated who I was when I was around her. She kept me at my extremes, and sometimes that could be ecstasy—more than often lately, it was torture.

Liz slammed the door behind her, and the tension drained from my body with one rush and I dropped back against the wall.

“Sorry,” Cassie said. “I felt the floor shake. I didn’t m-mean to make things worse.”

“You didn’t.” I scratched the back of my head, then rubbed at my lip again. “It got worse all on its own.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” Aside from the ache in my side and my burning lip. Why did I always let her get to me? “I’m lucky her purse is always filled with old receipts and lip gloss. It’s not quite lethal.”

“Any resolution?” She asked quietly.

I shook my head. “We just go around and around.”

“And down,” she smirked.

“Thanks,” I tilted my head, watching her every step as she crossed the living room and wrapped her arms around my waist. I pushed up her chin with my thumb. Her eyes were glassy and narrowed. “Are
you
okay?”

“I took my anxiety meds,” she said with a shrug. Then, she leaned in and rested her chin against my chest.

“You didn’t mention those.” God, as fast as Liz could push me over the edge, Cassie could drag me back. I put my hands on her waist and held her close. I wasn’t the man she deserved right now. Not even close. 

“Not specifically.” Her voice was light and airy, and I wondered if the anxiety pill was what she’d taken after the run-in with the douches at the truck stop. “My grandma left me a message that if I didn’t tell her where I was, she’d call the cops.”

And then, I was back on edge for a totally different reason. If I ever saw her grandparents in person, I couldn’t even imagine the things I’d say or do. “Did you?”