Easier to Run (14 page)

“I messaged her, but I’m not stupid enough to tell her where I am. Not that there’s much of a chance she won’t figure it out.”

“She realizes you’re an adult, right?”

She made a faint sound in her throat. “I’m medicated and can’t talk—that makes me incompetent in her book. She reminds me of that every chance she gets.”

“That’s ignorant.”

Cassie nodded and backed away. She looked like she could fall asleep at any second—even standing up.

“Why don’t you take a nap?”

“It’ll wear off in a bit.” She dropped to the couch.

“If you’ll be okay, I’m going to take a shower and shave.” I needed to feel human again. I needed some time to recollect my feelings. “We don’t have cable, but it’s hooked up for Netflix and there are more than enough DVDs around here to last a few years.”

“Man movies,” she groaned.

I leaned over the arm of the couch. “You didn’t used to complain about my taste in movies.”

She blushed and shook her head. “Go take a shower, skanky man.”

“I’ve showered more recently than you.”

“Barely,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “But I didn’t have to climb around on the truck when you dropped off the trailer yesterday.”

Cassie laid her head back and pressed her lips together.

I was already in enough trouble, and yet I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to see the spark of surprise and happiness in her eyes. I was well and truly fucked. Wrapped around her finger—just like Mom always used to say. Pathetically hopeless. Yet, beyond all reason, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’d fight through the darkest pits for her and put up with whatever shit fate wanted to throw in my way.

She stroked my scruffy jaw, then patted my face. “I’ll probably be passed out by the time you’re done.”

Cassie

I stretched out on the couch listening to the whine of the water passing through the pipes. The thudding and pattering of the water against the shower floor. Ben in the shower—I really didn’t need to be thinking about that.

But all of the thinking about water made me thirsty.

Since sleep wouldn’t come, I tiptoed through the apartment and began quietly sifting through the cabinets to find a glass. I didn’t know why I felt the need to be so sneaky and careful. Just the strangeness of being in a new place, I guess. I found a glass and flipped on the faucet to fill it with water when something behind me clicked. I glanced around trying to figure out what it was as the front door swung open. I froze in place until I recognized the man coming in the door.

Ben’s brother, Mark.

He squinted at me. “How long has my brother been hiding you?”

“Few days,” I shrugged, wondering what the hell he was doing barging in.

“I—” Mark cut off when the bathroom door opened.

I had to force my mouth to stay closed when I saw Ben standing there with shaving crème on half of his face, and naked except for the towel tucked around his hips. I knew I’d never recover from it. Especially since he’d failed to mention the enormous tattoo that wrapped around his right side. My gaze fixated on the lightning and I tuned out of their conversation for a moment, then forced myself to snap back before I turned into a drooling, staring fool.

“Can you stick around for a bit?” Ben asked.

Why the hell would he want that? I wondered, chewing on my lip, but Mark nodded and Ben closed the door.

“How have you been, kid?” Mark asked, nodding in my direction.

I told myself that it was a normal everyday question. Proper conversations. It was an obligatory comment meant to start a conversation, not a request for my life story, but I glowered at him.

“Okay, I’ll drop the kid thing.”

“Not the problem,” I said slowly. “It’s a hard question to answer.”

Mark gave me a strained smile and nodded slowly. “Ah. Sorry.”

I shook my head, then took a sip of my water. I figured that since I ended that round of the conversation that either left the next turn up to me, or I could stand there in awkward silence. “I heard you’re a dad. Ben showed m-m-me pictures.”

“Yeah,” he grinned from ear to ear. “She’s completely rotten. Getting more rotten every day thanks to her aunts and uncle. Are you staying around? It’d be great to get the family together and have you with us again.”

Another question everyone seemed insistent on asking, but the bathroom door opened and saved me from having to make any kind of explanation. I didn’t want to commit to family nights that I didn’t know would come. I didn’t want to promise I’d stay when my feet itched to run and my skin burned, yeaning to be hidden away from the real world.

Ben pulled a black toolbox from under the sink and sat it on the counter in front of Mark.

“Thanks, if I don’t get the toy chest put together today Abby is going to lose it.”

“You have time to help me move some stuff. Since Cas is staying a while”—he gave me a sideways glance—“I could use some help carrying her stuff up from the car.”

Apparently, he’d decided to answer all the questions for me.

Mark smiled and nodded. “No problem.”

So, we all paraded down to the parking lot and began the daunting task of turning my piles of junk into more manageable loads to carry into the building and up to Ben’s fifth-floor apartment. When I had started my trip, I had shoved my clothes and belongings into grocery bags or garbage bags since there were plenty of them around to stuff in a hurry. But during my few weeks of living in the car, I had dragged stuff out and had it everywhere.

While unloading the trunk, Ben picked up a stuffed manatee I’d gotten up during our trip to Florida and shook it playfully at my face.

“Don’t make fun of Russel,” I said, snatching it away.

“You still have that thing?” Mark said, balancing an overflowing, and slightly ripped garbage bag of random trinkets against the side of the car. “I never understood what kind of a name Russel was for a manatee.”

I looked at the manatee then turned it to face Mark and shrugged. “Looks like a Russel.”

Mark glanced at Ben, then back to the manatee and me. “Guess I can’t argue with that logic.”

Ben chuckled. “I wouldn’t even try, man.”

With a smile, Mark turned and headed for the front of the building. Leaving Ben and me to deal with the remaining loose junk—a curling iron that I hardly ever used, old issues of National Geographic, a tiny box of jewelry that I hadn’t looked at in years. Half of it, I didn’t know why I packed up and hauled around. But these were the things I had left that reminded me of what life was like before it fell apart. They were material, but not meaningless. This was my chance to rebuild. To mourn what I had lost, and finally move on.

I hoped.

My phone vibrated and my throat instantly tightened.

“Ignore it,” Ben said.

I did, but it only started ringing again with a second call. Then, a third. I sighed and dug it out of my pocket.

GMA flashed across the screen. She’d keep calling all day if she had to. I thought about just turning off my phone. I hated the blasted thing anyway.

I looked to Ben, then down at the phone, and slid the button to answer.

“What?”

“Is that any way to talk to an elder? What do you think you’re doing?”

“Living.” I opened the front door and sat down in the driver’s seat.

She scoffed. “With little regard for the people who were there for you and took you in when you needed it.”

“That’s not it,” I said slowly, focusing on keeping my words together. I’d been able to do so well since I came back here. In some ways, I had already made strides in taking my life back. “I do appreciate it, but I’m an ad-dult.”

“Running off to get yourself in trouble again.” Maybe she didn’t know about the movies, but the overdose was impossible to hide.

I bit the inside of my cheek.

“You put yourself in situations that people will take advantage of you, Cassie. You don’t understand—”

“I do understand. I have a stutter n-not an in-in—” I had to close my eyes and take a breath, but I was afraid she’d jump in and start ranting if I gave her more than a millisecond. “I’m not stupid,” I said simply.

“I never said that.”

“Bull. You t-tell me all the t-time how incompetent I am j-just because I have a speech problem. I’m not saying that I haven’t m-made mistakes, but it’s time for me to do it on my own.”

“And we’re just supposed to sit around and wait until we have to get you out of trouble again. Why can’t you just—”

Just stop
, my brain yelled. “I have f-friends who will help. Friends who don’t treat me like I’m stupid.”

“You’re with
him
, aren’t you?”

I looked at Ben. He had one hand resting on the roof of the car, and the other on top of the open door. Then, I looked at the door to the apartment building. Mark would be coming back at any moment. “It doesn’t m-matter where I am.”

“You’re asking for it, that’s what you don’t understand.”

I understood everything I needed to. Ben would be there for me. He wouldn’t question everything. He wouldn’t make me doubt myself—more than I already did.

“Come home so we can help you. You need your medications and your therapist.”

“I’m sure they have pharmacies and doctors here.”

“And if I call the police?”

“Go ahead.” I disconnected the call.

Ben was arched over me, ready to jump to my rescue when I needed him.

“I’m fine,” I said before he could ask. Then, I turned off my phone. I was done for the day. I knew I wouldn’t be hard for them to find me, but I hoped they wouldn’t really bother. And what the hell were the police going to do? Arrest me for running away at twenty-one? “She said they’re calling the police.”

“Why?”

“Because they hate not controlling everything I do.” I shrugged, trying to convince myself I was over it. That I didn’t have to get wrapped up in the stupid constant struggles.

“Taking a break while I do all the work?” Mark yelled as he crossed the parking lot back to my car.

I pushed myself out of the car. “M-minor interruption,” I said.

“It’ll be fine,” Ben said, taking my hand.

“I know,” I whispered. I was trying desperately to accept that promise. “I’m just tired of waiting for it.”

He clutched me to his chest and held me there for a long moment. “It’s right in front of you.”

I wanted that to be true. My chest ached for it to be true. But the only thing I saw in front of me was a complicated mess and it kept getting worse. As much as I loved what I had with Ben, I kept thinking about that kiss. Him holding me. Staying in his apartment. His pregnant ex. My grandparents. It was all a sea of chaos. The perfect mixture for a brewing disaster, not a calm and happy future.

That wasn’t in my immediate reach.

But I nodded anyway and picked up Russel.

“I missed something epic, didn’t I?” Mark asked.

Ben groaned and shook his head. “Just stupidity. We’ll deal with it when and
if
it becomes a problem. Until then, we have plenty to do.”

“This should be the last load,” Mark said.

We packed the remainder of my stuff up to the fifth floor and added it to the pile outside Ben’s bedroom door.

“Thanks, man,” Ben said. “Don’t forget the drill.”

“Got it.” He grabbed the black case and pointed to Ben. “Bring your new roommate over for dinner before you go back on the road.”

“Deal,” Ben said.

Then, Mark wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “And
you
, keep my brother out of trouble.”

As Mark left and closed the apartment door, Ben pulled me around and hugged me to his chest. “How about some food, roomie?”

“I’d settle for a nap,” I yawned and leaned into his chest. “But food sounds good, too.”

“I’ll order something then. There’s nothing in the fridge. How about you curl up and take a nap until it gets here?”

Ben

I put in an order for pizza and settled in the armchair next to the couch where Cassie was sprawled out. Instead of going to sleep, she sat up and glared at me. “You failed to mention that you got a tattoo.”

“Didn’t think it was newsworthy.”

“Well, when I ask what’s new in your life, these are the things I want to know.”

“Sorry.” I chuckled. “It wasn’t on my mind at the time. Now you know.”

She stood and dragged her feet as she crossed the couple of feet between our seats. Then, she dropped into my lap. “Lightning,” she whispered. “That’s why you didn’t bring it up.”

Our school team was called the Storm, and I’d picked up the nickname “Lightning” on the football field. But it was also a lightning storm that took her parents.

Cassie curled up in my lap and laid against my shoulder. “You ever feel like you’re going to burst out of your own skin?” She whispered.

“Sometimes,” I squeezed her. “But, I promise you won’t.”

“I know. When I get anxious, it feels like the lightning is in my chest. Crackling under my skin and burning me from the inside out.”

“Close your eyes, Cas,” I whispered, kissing her forehead. “Just breathe.” I pushed her hair away from her face. “I’ll hold you as long as you need me too.”

Cassie went quiet, her breathing settling into a regular pattern, just as a knock sounded at the door. She lifted her head and took a deep breath before climbing up and moving back to the couch.

I paid the delivery man and carried the boxes of pizza and wings back to the coffee table. “Hopefully your tastes haven’t changed much in the last few years.”

“Pepperoni and banana peppers?” She sniffed at the box. “God, I haven’t had a good pizza in forever.”

“Were you allowed to have anything?” I pulled back at my own scathing remark. Questions about her grandparents probably were best left buried for a while longer. “Or should I keep that question to myself?”