Fighting to be Free by Kirsty Moseley (36 page)

I laughed humourlessly. It would be so much easier to just do that, pretend I’d hooked up with some random girl for the night and let her give me a pass, but I didn’t want to do that - knowing my luck it’d somehow get back to Ellie and she’d think I cheated or something. I didn’t know which was worse, but at least if I went with the truth then I’d have a chance of keeping her.

“Thanks, Ray. I’d better get going,” I suggested, shoving the envelope into my hoodie pocket. I turned to Dodger and smiled. “It was good to work with you, you did a great job tonight,” I congratulated.

He smiled and held his hand out of the car window. “You too. Kid Cole is just as badass as I’d heard. Looks like the rumours were true. Maybe we could work together again sometime,” he suggested.

I shook his hand and laughed. “Maybe. We’ll see what Brett lines up.” Once I’d said bye to Ray, I climbed into my truck, twisting the key and making it roar to life. I hated the thought of what I had to do now. Now I had to risk everything, put myself out there and tell Ellie exactly what type of person she’d been dating unknowingly. Not only that, but after I’d told her that I’d been lying to her for the last three months since we’d met, I then needed to ask her to help me out of trouble. I sucked right now. I looked upwards, praying for the meteor, but there was not a cloud in the sky. Just my fucking luck.

I drove to her house quickly, parking down the street a little. I took a couple of deep breaths to calm my nerves, trying desperately to think of some other person - maybe Callum? Would he help me so that I didn’t have to do this? I couldn’t risk telling him, I had no idea what he would say about it when I told him, at least with Ellie I knew she had feelings for me, if she didn’t want to help me I was pretty sure she wouldn’t shop me to the police. Callum had no such loyalty really; we were just friends who worked together, nothing more.

I needed to get this done quickly. I could maybe sound her out and see her reactions before I told her the full truth. If she looked like she was going to flip out then I’d pull back a little and not tell her the full extent like I knew I probably should at this point.

I forced myself to get out of the truck and closed the door quietly. The street was deserted but I didn’t want to take a chance in someone seeing me when I was supposed to be in bed sleeping. I walked swiftly to Ellie’s house, stopping off to the side so I could call her. I felt sick doing this, this was the last thing I wanted, I never wanted her anywhere near trouble, yet here I was, bringing trouble right to her front door.

Pulling out my cell phone I closed my eyes and pressed call. It rang for a while and my nerves seemed to double as I chewed on my lip. I had never been more terrified of anything in my life.

“Jamie?” she croaked, her voice filled with sleep.

I winced knowing that I had woken her - of course I’d woken her, it was well after four in the morning! “Err, yeah, hi,” I mumbled, rubbing my forehead trying to relieve some of the tension headache that was building up.

I heard her yawn before she spoke again. “Everything okay?”

I took a deep breath and mentally crossed my fingers that someone was watching over me right now and that I wasn’t about to lose the best thing that had ever happened to me. “Actually…. no, it’s not. I need to talk to you.”

“Okay, what’s up?” she asked, sounding more awake now.

I flicked my eyes over to her house, her room was in the back but I still found myself searching for signs of life, but nothing stirred. “I need to see you. Can you come down?”

“Down? You’re outside?” she asked, her voice filled with shock.

“Yeah.”

The line disconnected and a minute later the downstairs light flicked on before the front door opened. Ellie stepped out, immediately hugging herself against the cold seeing as she was only wearing a tank top and what looked like a pair of my boxer shorts. Her hair was whipping around her face as she looked around, an adorable little confused expression on her face.

I stepped out of the shadows and waved her over, wanting a little distance from the house in case her parents heard us talking or something, their bedroom was at the front of the house, unlike Ellie’s. She shivered but immediately stepped onto path, closing the door silently behind her.

She trotted over to me, crunching on the gravel, wincing as she walked on the stones with bare feet.

I shrugged out of my hoodie quickly, smiling sadly as she stopped in front of me, looking at me worriedly. “What happened?” she asked, smiling gratefully as I slipped the hoodie around her shoulders.

“I’m in some trouble,” I admitted.

Her eyes tightened, even in the dim glow of the streetlight I saw the worry that etched across her face. “What kind of trouble?” she asked.

I raised one hand and stroked the side of her face, memorising the feel of her soft skin under my fingertips, savouring the feel of it in case this was the last time I got to touch her. “There are some things about me that you don’t know,” I whispered, hating how her expression turned a little wary.

Her eyes flicked back to the house as she shifted on her feet nervously. I immediately wondered if she was contemplating making a run for the house, she could probably tell this was going to be bad - I’m guessing I had ‘grim’ written all over my face right now.

“Come inside, it’s cold out here,” she suggested, pulling the hoodie tighter around her body. She turned to walk away, so I grabbed her hand, making her stop. I couldn’t go inside - once she found out the truth about me, she might not want to be near me or something. That and the fact that when she started screaming at me that I was a worthless liar, it might wake her parents up and they’d probably call the cops for her - I knew Ruth would for sure.

“It’s better if we do this outside, Ellie. You’re not going to like what I tell you.” Even I could hear the hopelessness in my voice.

She flinched, her hand tightening on mine. “Did you cheat on me? Is that where this conversation is going?” she asked, her voice wavering as she spoke.

I laughed humourlessly. Clearly she had no idea how crazy I was about her. “No, Ellie. Never,” I assured her.

She closed her eyes, shaking her head, looking more than a little relived. She was probably going to wish that I
had
cheated on her when I told her what this was really about, that I’d been lying to her for the last three months that I’d known her for. “Just tell me, Jamie, you’re scaring me,” she requested.

Oh God. “I just stole a car and now the cops are probably looking for me. I need an alibi that puts me somewhere else when it all went down.” I whispered, looking at my feet, not wanting to see her expression when she realised what a low-life I was.

“You…. You stole a car?” she croaked.

I nodded. “Twenty-five of them actually,” I added nonchalantly.

“Jamie, what the fuck?”

I looked up at her then and saw the expression that I’d never wanted to see on her face.

Disappointment, shock, confusion and horror - all of those emotions were clear as day across her face. “I’m not the person that you think I am.”

“Not the…. I don’t…. It’s….. What?” she stuttered.

“Please don’t freak out, Ellie,” I begged already knowing that it was too late to ask that of her. The panic had already started; I could see it building like a storm on her face.

She ran both her hands over her hair, smoothing it down unconsciously as the wind continued to whip it in all directions. Her mouth was hanging agape, she shook her head looking like she was struggling with her thoughts. “Don’t freak out? Of course I’m going to freak out for goodness sake; you’ve just told me that you stole twenty-five cars and that the police are looking for you. A normal person’s reaction is to freak the hell out!” she cried.

I winced as her voice echoed in the nothingness of the night. I stepped closer to her quickly covering her mouth with my hand. “Shh, please, shh,” I pleaded, looking around for any signs of movement down her expensive looking street.

Her hand covered mine as she looked at me with wide eyes, taking deep breaths through her nose. I begged her with my eyes to calm down and not start shouting at me in the dead of the night on her empty street. When her rant seemed to have died down and some of the tension had left her shoulders, I removed my hand and stepped back to give her some personal space, she probably needed it after my revelations.

“Who are you?” she asked, shaking her head, her eyes filling with tears.

I smiled weakly, knowing that there was probably no chance of her wanting to be with me after this.

“I’m the same guy that you’ve been hanging around with for the last three months. I’m still the same guy that holds you when you sleep and kisses you goodnight. I’m still the same guy that values you above everything else. It’s just….. my past, it came back to haunt me. I didn’t have a choice, Ellie,” I replied trying to explain everything. My knees feet a little weak so I slumped down and sat on the little wall that runs the length of their driveway.

“Your past?” she whispered.

I nodded and closed my eyes. “Yeah. When I was twelve I started working for a guy, doing small jobs for money, illegal jobs. Things got heavier, I started stealing cars to order,” I explained.

She whimpered and sat down on the wall next to me, her shoulders slumped as she played with her hands, seeming to look anywhere but me.

“I stopped. I was out of it. I’d given it all up before we met; I was going straight, but….” I trailed off, not knowing how to convey that I didn’t want to be this person anymore, that I wanted better for myself than this life I was sinking into.

She swiped at her face quickly with the back of her hand. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the tears that I knew I had put there. I hated myself for making her cry and I would never forgive myself for it.

“What happened? You said you didn’t have a choice,” she asked.

I shook my head fiercely. “I didn’t have a choice. My stupid mother, she…. she borrowed some money from some bad people and couldn’t pay it back. I had to help her out,” I explained. “But I couldn’t afford it either, it was so much money, I didn’t have it. I had to go back to my old boss and ask him for a job or two so that I could help my mom. The people that she borrowed from, they’re not exactly a normal lending back. If I hadn’t done this then they would have killed her eventually for sure.”

She gulped; her was breathing quickening the more I spoke. Silently I wondered if she was going to hyperventilate or go into shock or something.

“So you had to do this to get money for your mom?” she asked quietly.

I nodded. “I’ve just finished paying off her debt now but Brett, my boss, he wouldn’t let me just do a couple of jobs, I had to agree to work for him for a certain amount of time. I agreed to do it for three months, I have just under two left.”

“Three months of stealing cars?”

“Among other things,” I agreed, not wanting to lie to her anymore.

“Like what other things? What else have you been doing, Jamie?” she asked, frowning.

I took it as a good sign that she was still sitting next to me, asking questions. Wouldn’t she have run by now if she was going to? “Lots of things that I don’t want to tell you about, Ellie. It’s best if you don’t know in case anything bad happens because of it.”

She snorted at my answer. “Anything bad, like being wanted for gross theft auto?” she snapped.

“Grand theft auto,” I corrected, laughing at her innocence. She glared at me and I felt my laugh die out immediately, now was not really the time to be laughing at her. “Sorry,” I muttered, shaking my head at myself and how stupid I was sometimes.

She groaned and put her head in her hands. “I knew you had a bad past but that you didn’t want to talk about it. I knew that something bad had happened to you but I never suspected that you were in a damn car stealing gang,” she hissed.

“Ellie, I’m so sorry. I-” I started, but she cut me off.

“What do you want me to do?” she interjected.

I felt my mouth drop open in shock as my pulse quickened. Was she being serious right now? She was just accepting my past, just like that?

“Brett said we needed to get alibis. One of my crew got in an accident tonight while we were on a boost and the police will be asking questions about the car soon. Everything should be fine, Brett will take care of him and get him out, but just in case one of us gets linked to him, we need a backup plan that’s not connected to anything illegal. You’re the only one I have,” I replied, hating to put this pressure on her.

She nodded, picking up a stone and rolling it around in her hands as I spoke. “So you want me to say I was with you tonight, right?” she clarified.

I nodded, gulping because this unbelievable girl was willing to help me like that.

“My parents were with me tonight. They went to bed just after ten. I could say that I snuck you in after they went to bed so that you could wake up with me on my birthday. Is that good enough?” she asked looking at me worriedly.

“Ellie, why would you do that? You’re going to get in trouble with your parents in the morning when they see me. Why would you do that for me?” I asked, just needing to know the answer.

She stood up, dropping the stone at her bare feet, turning to face me. Her eyes locked onto mine and I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle because of the intensity of it.

“Because I love you, Jamie,” she replied simply.

Air rushed out of my lungs in one big burst, until then I hadn’t even realised that I was holding my breath. She loved me. Ellie Pearce was in love with me. I had never heard sweeter words in my life.

I forced myself to stand up even though my legs felt a little wobbly and weak. She didn’t move as I stepped closer to her, so close that I could feel her breath as it blew across my chin. Her eyes didn’t leave mine for a second.

One of my hands cupped the side of her face as I just marvelled over her perfection. I needed to say it back and quickly before she thought that I didn’t feel the same. This wasn’t how I pictured this moment happening at all. I was planning on telling her that I loved her on her eighteenth birthday - I guess technically it was already her birthday now though. But I was going to make it romantic and special - complete with picnic, cheesy music, and flowers.