Easier to Run (7 page)

“I’m not raising a baby on my own. Is that what you want, Mr. Family Man?”

“We could co-parent. We don’t have to be together.”

“Right,” she huffed. “And that happens until we both move on. You’re always on the road as it is. When exactly are you going to co-anything?”

“I can figure it out.” I would figure it out. I’d take another job if I had to.

“Right, because you work for daddy. I’m sure you can get whatever you want. While I carry this baby all alone for the next nine months. You going to pay my bills, too?” It was amazing how she could wake up and go straight for the jugular. Sometimes I believed she had the natural instinct of a cougar.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. We were getting nowhere fast.

She made a sound in her throat, like a feral cat about to attack. “Shouldn’t you be on the road as we speak?”

“Yeah, but I figured I could make time to talk about this.”

“How chivalrous of you. I’d like to go back to bed and get some more sleep before my appointment.”

Appointment
.

The call disconnected and I dropped my hand to my side.
What did I matter?

Cassie

Talk to her? What the hell was I thinking?

I’d just confessed my crush and told him to talk to his ex. Try to work it out. But it was potentially his baby on the line after all. I had to tell him to do it. To give him one more shot. My conscious was heavy enough to lug around.

Fuck
. I shook my head. Life could fall apart so quickly.

I wrapped the blanket around myself and curled up in the passenger’s seat, flattening the notebook paper out on my lap. I had it flipped over so I couldn’t see my own writing on the other side, but I didn’t need to see it. I’d never forget it.

My teenage writing…. I had never been one for loops and frills, so really my writing hadn’t changed much in the last six years. It was probably the only thing that hadn’t changed.

I watched Ben pace while he spoke on the phone. It didn’t look like it was going well, and for the dozenth time, I wondered if I’d done the right thing by encouraging him to call her.

Closing my eyes, I took a breath in preparation and flipped over the piece of paper.

Ben,

I’m scared. If I’m at home as you’re reading this, I’m terrified. I wanted to tell you, and I’m sorry I couldn’t do it face to face, but you’re the only one I trust, the only one who might listen and save me.

Save me, that was a tall order to put on a guy who had been barely twenty-one. But he was everything to me back then. In my mind, he could do anything, fix anything. He was the only one who could save me.

I want to ramble on and on with reasons and excuses, even as I write this letter. I stare at the page and write letter after letter and word after word, but I don’t know how to put them together to say what I need to say. I don’t know how to spit it out. It hurts. So deep inside my chest that I can’t breathe. I can barely will the pen to move across the page. I can’t stay at home. That’s the easy part to tell you. I can’t stay there because Mitchel won’t stop. He won’t stop hurting me. He threatened me. He raped me.

I remembered how long it took me to write that short sentence. One letter at a time. I almost choked up and threw away the page every time the pen had touched the paper.

I’m so afraid, and I don’t know what to do.

I balled up the letter and tossed it into the trash bag in the center of the truck, just before the driver’s door opened.

Ben eyed it for a second, then looked at me as he took his seat. “Come over here,” he tilted his head.

“You need to get on the road.” I was afraid that if I moved, everything would come rushing out too quickly for me to handle it.

“Cassie Ann Bryant.”

I smiled. I hated it when anyone else used my full name, but Ben… Ben was the exception for everything. I rolled the blanket up and dropped it in my seat while Ben slid his seat back so there was plenty of room for me to sit on his lap.

“None of it was your fault, Cassie. You were a teenager, in a situation that you should have never been in. I wish I would have figured it out sooner.”

“Mitchel was good. N-no one ever g-gave him a second look.” The emotions spiraled around my chest like a corset I didn’t have the strength to break free from. “He told me over and over that if I said anything, he’d make sure I never saw you or Rachel again. He knew why I wanted to go with you, and he intended to follow through with it.” I stared down at my hands fidgeting and twisting in my lap. If I hadn’t left, I wondered if my sister would still be alive.

Ben tipped up my chin. “It wasn’t your fault. He put you in an impossible situation—faced with consequences of his making that you should have never had to deal with.”

I swallowed, but my throat felt too tight to speak. My body shuddered as I inhaled and a single tear slipped by my defenses.

Ben caught it with his thumb and wiped it away. “You told me to say what I had to say, and I had a bit more to get off my chest before we hit the road.”

I pressed a smile to my lips, still not trusting my mouth not to stutter uselessly.

“Stick around, Cassie.” He rubbed my back as he spoke. “When we get back, stay in town. I know you don’t think you have much to come back for—”

“There’s you,” I said before I considered the statement.

Ben smiled and hugged me tighter. “My family will be there for you, too. I can tell you without a doubt that none of us blame you for anything that happened.”

I exhaled, left off balance when my body suddenly relaxed as if everything solid in my body melted in a flash. “Thank you,” I whispered.

His strong hands lifted me to my feet, but I ached to stay against him. For him to keep holding me. The short distance that separated our seats was too much.

“Now, we better hit the road,” he said.

I glanced at the clock as he began filling in his log book. It was nearly seven—much later than I’d ever known him to start out. I considered apologizing for making him late, but I figured that’d just launch him into another spiel that we didn’t have time for. Instead, I pulled on my seatbelt and tucked the blanket around myself.

The roads were still quiet as we got started, but we sat in silence for a long while as we rolled along the interstate.

“If I tell you something, you promise not to laugh?” I asked, watching the beautiful greenery along the side of the road.

“I’m not sure that ultimatum ever really works, but yes. If necessary, I’ll restrain myself.”

I snorted at him and shook my head.

“If I’m not allowed to laugh, neither are you,” he said, glancing over briefly.

“I want to be a photographer,” I said.

“That’s great.” He paused for a long moment. “Is that what you thought I’d laugh at?”

“Kind of,” I said quietly. I didn’t want to present yet another laughable disappointment. Photographer was far from marine biologist, but I had a lot of making up to do if I ever wanted to get an intensive academic career back on track. But after everything, I wasn’t even sure I wanted that. Science was never my strong suit anyway.

“You know how many people laughed when I said I wanted to do
this
for a living?” Ben said while he dodged a string of traffic coming off of an onramp. “Do what makes you happy. Screw what anyone else thinks.”

I took a long breath and sank into my seat. “My c-counselor in high school got me into it.” And I had really enjoyed it. Not only was it a way to express how I saw the world without words, it gave me a few moments of Zen where my mind quieted and the world seemed peaceful for a few moments. “It started as a way to keep me focused, and I figured it’d be something that wasn’t really people intensive. I was k-kind of wrong about that.”

“You’ll do fine. You’re already doing better than yesterday.”

“It’s always easier with you.” But how long would that last?

***

By afternoon, the drama with Ben's girlfriend seemed like a distant memory, although I doubted that he felt the same. In some ways, things had reverted to a familiar ease between us—so similar to the days we used to spend together. It was almost enough for me to buy into the façade that I might have a normal life again.

I didn't want it to end.

I wanted to stay on the road forever and never think about going back home. Never think about the crazy and necessary worries of finding a job and a place to stay before my money ran out.

That damn money.

The only reason I was able to be here.

But I didn't want it.

Ben was off doing whatever the heck he had to do while his truck was being unloaded, leaving me to wander around the lot and the nearby convenience stores—they all seemed more catered toward truck drivers than general travelers.

It didn't much matter though. It was a beautiful day wherever I was, and I decided not to waste it. I put together my camera and got it set up in the open grassy area near the lot. Calling it a park would be an overstatement, even though there were some odd benches and picnic tables scattered about for those truckers who wanted to stretch out and enjoy a snack.

Or, judging from one guy curled up under a tree—take a nap.

The summer temperatures had dropped. It was still mildly hot but comfortable, and the breezy air around me was light and peppered with the smell of fresh cut grass. Life felt different for a few moments. Not forced, tight and constricting. For the first time in years, I actually considered enjoying it. Maybe the future wouldn't be so bad.

I sat down under a tree, stretching my legs out in front of me along the tall, skinny shadow of the trunk, and readied my camera. I lost track of time, snapping picture after picture of random squirrels tangling with trespassing birds, leaves floating to earth on the gentle breeze, and even a beautiful blue jay who came to rest on a nearby branch.

“I was beginning to wonder where you'd run off to,” Ben said, leaning against the tree next to me.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, concentrating on my final shot of the sun disappearing behind the trees that lined a hill in the distance. “Back to the road?”

“For a while.” He smiled and offered a hand to pull me up. “Then, you can show me some of your pictures later.”

“They're n-not that impressive,” I said.

“I doubt that.” His arm rested on my shoulders, as we walked back to the lot where his truck was waiting.

My shoulder bumped into his side before he opened up the door, and even the slight touch of his hand to my back as I climbed up to take my seat sent contradictory messages through my body.

Thrills and comfort.

Excitement and relaxation.

He joined me in the cab, and while I broke my camera down and stuffed it into the case and back in my bag, he finished all of his “pre-flight checks” as I started calling them as a teenager. I didn’t care to understand all of the details—the log book, switches, buttons. It all seemed far too complicated for driving along the interstate, but then again, I was used to four wheels and an automatic transmission rather than eighteen wheels and God knows how many gears.

As I sat and watched him, he always reminded me more of a pilot than a truck driver. Not that I'd ever in my life been in the cockpit of a plane. Maybe I'd add that to a bucket list if I got up the nerve to make one.

My list of things to do before I died would be sufficiently boring, and probably not worth listing. Be normal. Find a normal place in a normal life where people don't notice. Where I don't have to worry about people sitting behind my back and whispering about what happened or about my inability to speak like an intelligent adult.

I wanted personal problems that no one else knew about.

Before I knew it, we were back on the open road. “A few hours and I'll be at my limit, maybe we can find somewhere to eat. I'm sure back lots and roads aren't your idea of fun road trip.”

“I'm not complaining,” I said. I wouldn't dream of it. “Don't worry about me, I just came along for the ride.”

He chuckled but kept his attention on the streets and traffic as we headed away from the warehouse. “I never really understood your fascination with it,” he said. “I mean driving and doing the job is one thing, tagging along—”

I snorted. “Really? You d-don't have a clue as to why I wanted to spend long hours in a truck with you?”

His lips pressed tightly together and he shook his head.

Riding with Ben was my freedom. Kind of like a mobile fort where I could relax and not worry about the rest of the world. “You already admitted to knowing about my crush. I can't imagine you wouldn't figure out the rest.”

“So that's the only reason, huh?”

“That and you were the only person to treat me like,”—I sighed, I didn't quite know how to put it—“like an equal. It was the only time I could just be. You were my escape. I didn't have to worry about slipping up, or letting anyone down, or—” Tears burned at my eyes.

“Cas,” he whispered.

“I wanted to be like Rachel.” Like me, my sister was tall and blonde, but while I was simply a stick for most of my life, she had a lean and toned dancer’s body. As a kid, she was a competitive dancer, and then moved on to cheerleading, volleyball, and tennis. She made it seem easy to stand up in front of a group of people and do just about anything. In so many ways,
she
seemed like Ben’s perfect counterpart. And for a while, they were one of the most talked about couples in school—much to my dismay. “I wanted just once for things to be easy.”