Текст книги "Captured Love"

Автор книги: Juliana Haygert

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

“She’s … I don’t know another word for her, a slut.” I winced, not really liking to label people. “Caryn always slept around, like Ryan did. She wore clothes that would put the Hooters waitresses to shame. She still does.”

“Wait. Have you seen her?”

“Yup. I’ll get to that.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Anyway, despite her sleeping-around record, Caryn had a thing for Ryan. I had seen her drooling over him a couple of times before, and it didn’t seem like a I-just-want-to-fuck-you thing.”

“What did she do?”

“She gave me a photo album. I didn’t want to take it, but she shoved it in my arms and left.” I stopped drawing for a second. “The photo album had pictures of Ryan, Luke, and Ethan seated around a bonfire. Tents were behind them. They held beer bottles. And several girls, wearing only bikinis, were sprawled over them.”

“Oh shit.”

“The pictures changed location. The edge of a lake, beside a tree, the bed of a truck, in a canoe, but they were always there. The guys and the girls. The last one, though, the last one killed me. It was Caryn, lying on what looked like a mattress inside a tent. And Ryan was beside her.”

“Oh shit,” Kristin said again. “That must have been terrible.”

I nodded to my empty room. I remembered it as if it were yesterday. I had dropped the album as if it had burned me. I couldn’t believe what Ryan had done to me, and I couldn’t believe I had fallen for him. I knew him. I knew he wasn’t a one-girl-only kind of guy. I knew he would never be a one-girl-only kind of guy. But he had flirted openly, earning a few joking punches from my brother. He had chased me; he had insisted and persisted for over a month. That was probably a record for him. Then after we kissed, he spent all his free time with me. I was sure he was falling for me too. Slowly, but he was. Or so I thought.

“I didn’t go to school that day, and I didn’t go home. I walked around town, avoiding places where I knew friends or family could be. I kept my mind blank, because if I thought about it, if I allowed myself to feel it, I would break down. And I didn’t want to break down.”

“I’m so sorry, Jess. I know how much it hurts to have your heart broken,” Kristin said, her tone forlorn. “After that, you left home and came to Cleveland? How did your parents allow that?”

“The story isn’t done.”

“No?”

“Nope.” I inhaled deeply, gathering strength to continue. “I went home after school hours, otherwise my mama would send the cavalry after me. I stayed buried in my bedroom until Mama knocked on my door, asking me to hurry or we would be late for the fair. I had totally forgotten about the fair in the square. She had a pie and cake stand, and I had promised I would help her with it. Instead of wallowing in my own shit, I put on a brave face and focused on the fair.” It was better than letting the panic and rage and despair take over. “Everyone in town loved her pies and cakes, so Mama had a big stand. Aunt Cadence and Lindsey had already set up by the time we got there, and the square was filling up fast. For the first half hour, we were so busy, I barely thought of Ryan and Caryn. Until Ryan appeared in front of the stand.”

“Oh crap.”

Crap indeed. “He wanted to talk, to explain. I tried getting away from him, and ended up bumping into Jason and Luke.” And I had almost punched both of them. Jason might not have been on that last fishing trip, but he knew about it. They all knew about it. “Jason and Luke noticed I was trying to get away from Ryan and wanted to know what was going on. Our little group started gathering attention from the people at the fair. Ryan started to say something like ‘after all we did, after having slept with me, you’re just gonna shut me out,’ when Papa stepped between us.” I almost went on, but I remembered Kristin didn’t know Papa.

“You see, Papa is very conservative, authoritarian, and old school. If it depended on him, I would always wear pants and baggy shirts, I wouldn’t go out until I was twenty-one, and I would marry a virgin, preferably after I was thirty-five. He also tried to control Jason, but was much less successful. To him, Jason was going through a rebellious phase. Papa hated Jason’s fascination for motorcycles, and he hated Ryan and Ethan. He thought they were bad influences.” I dropped the sketchpad in my lap. “Papa flipped out when he heard I had slept with one of those bad influences. He advanced on Ryan, but Jason and Luke stopped him, then he advanced on me. We argued in front of everyone at the fair. The anger I had been feeling toward Ryan, Jason, Luke, Caryn, and now Papa exploded, and I yelled at him, telling him he couldn’t control me. I told him that I could sleep with whomever I wanted. It was none of his business. Then he slapped me. Hard. I fell on the pavement, hitting my shoulder.”

“Oh my God.”

“The next few moments were a blur. Papa called me a slut. Ryan yelled at him, trying to disentangle himself from Jason and Luke, who were holding him back. Mama cried, and a huge crowd had gathered around us, gawking and whispering. Papa was about to grab me or hit me again when I woke up from my stupor. I crawled back, stood, and ran. I ran like never before.”

I had run the several blocks home. I had packed a duffel bag with the essentials, and what I had saved from my allowance. I ran to the nearest taxi point, and the driver drove to the train station in Columbia. I bought the first ticket out of town. The train left ten minutes later and took me to Charleston, West Virginia. From there, I took another train to Cleveland, Ohio.

“And that’s how you ended up in Cleveland.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yup.”

“By the time I got to my grandma’s house, my mother had already called her in a panic, saying I was missing. She had been expecting me. During the first month, she tried talking to me about forgiving my father, or at least talking to him, about going home to my family. When I threatened to leave and disappear from her life too, she stopped. She accepted me and my conditions: I wouldn’t talk about my family; I wouldn’t talk to my family.”

“Shit, this is … I’m sorry, Jess. Now I know why you haven’t gone back to Lexington in four years. Gosh. How are you holding up?”

I let out a half-chuckle, half-snort. “I’ve been better.”

“I bet. Hm, you mentioned running into Caryn. That probably didn’t help.”

“No, it didn’t. It was this afternoon.” I retold her the events of the entire afternoon, including Noah’s unwelcomed flirting, Caryn’s encounter, and then Ryan escorting me away from her.

“Well, I guess you knew you would run into your past.”

“I honestly thought I could hide from it.” I let out a deep breath. “Apparently, Ryan went through something after I left. I asked my brother about it, but he says I should ask Ryan.”

“Like finding some closure.”

A sarcastic chuckle escaped my lips. “That’s what my friends here say.”

“See? All of us can’t be wrong.” She paused. “You need to talk to him.”

“As if that was easy.”

“Nobody said it would be easy. It won’t. But if you want peace, while you’re there and while you’re here, you need closure. He probably needs it too.”

I snorted. “Right.”

“Why not?”

“I told you everything that happened, Kristin. You know he was playing with me. I was just another notch on his bedpost.”

“Maybe, maybe not. You’ll only know after you talk to him.”

Could it be? No, no. I didn’t want to go down that path again. My heart was shielded from him, and it would remain that way. If I were going to talk to him, it wouldn’t be to find out if I had meant something or not. It would be to get closure, to put some dots on the Is and move on.

But could I do it? Could I go after him and talk to him? My initiative? I seriously doubted it.

“You need to talk to him, Jess, and hopefully then you’ll have less weight on your shoulders.”

I was about to answer her with something like ‘I’ll think about it,’ even though I didn’t really mean it, but then I looked down at the sketchpad in my lap and gasped. Without realizing it, I had drawn the Main Square. More specifically, the exact spot where Ryan and I first kissed. The exact spot where I had last seen him before I left.

Chapter Twelve

 

Jessica

“She never changed,” Sophie said, picking up the pillows from my bed.

Rachel tsked. “Oh, she did. She changed for the worse.”

After hearing about my encounter with Caryn, the girls decided it was time for the tree house slumber party. We arranged everything for Thursday night.

In my PJs, I felt like a kid ready to sneak cookies from the hidden cookie jar in the middle of the night.

“I would love if we changed subjects,” I said.

“Oh, come on!” Rachel made a puppy face. “It’s good to talk about bitches. It makes us feel better, in spirit and as a person.”

We laughed.

I grabbed the quilts from my bed. “Okay, but then let’s talk about another bitch.”

“Not fun,” Sophie said, following Rachel and me downstairs. “She’s a good bitch to rant about.”

“Oh, you don’t know,” Rachel said. “We aren’t sure if it’s true, but we heard Caryn is a call girl around the Columbia and Charlotte area.”

I almost tripped on the stairs and fell. “What?”

Rachel grabbed my arm to steady me. “Yeah, we first heard about that a year ago.”

“See, she’s a good bitch to talk shit about,” Sophie said.

“Seriously, girls, I’m done with her.” I hoped they actually changed subjects, because I wasn’t talking about Caryn anymore.

“You girls ready?” Mama asked from the kitchen. She propped the back door open for us. “I’ll bring some ice cream in a minute.”

Rachel paused beside her and kissed her cheek. “You’re the best, Mrs. Hayes.”

Mama chuckled as we passed her and walked out into the balmy night.

I stared at the tree. I had cleaned it, sort of, the previous weekend, but still wasn’t happy about the prospect of sleeping there. What if the wood was rotten on the inside and didn’t support our weight?

Sophie was the first to climb up the wood planks nailed to the tree trunk. I handed her the lamp, the quilts, and the pillows, then climbed up next. Rachel was about to come up when Mama appeared with a tray and three bowls spilling with so much ice cream and hot fudge.

She took the tray and kissed Mama again. “I mean it. The best.”

“Thanks, Mama,” I whispered, peering down.

“Thanks, Mrs. Hayes,” Sophie said from somewhere inside the tree house.

With a smile, Mama nodded and walked back inside the house.

Rachel extended the tray to me and, reaching down, I grabbed it, then she climbed up.

“Got it,” Sophie squealed as the first lamp began shinning.

She turned to the other as Rachel set the tray on the floor, and I examined the place.

It was tiny, too tiny with the three of us. I could barely stand without hitting my head on the ceiling, and the floor creaked whenever one of us moved. The furniture and the drapes that covered the two windows were gone. Sophie spread the quilts on the floor, and I realized we would fit there if we all slept closed together, probably touching. This wouldn’t be a good night for sleep.

Well, if I left it to the girls, we wouldn’t be sleeping, only talking the entire night.

We sat down on the floor, the tray among us, and dug into the ice cream. It was homemade, of course, and delicious.

“Can I borrow your mother?” Rachel asked. “I need her cooking at all times.”

“Nu-uh.” Sophie shook her spoon. “Can you imagine how many pounds you would put on if you only ate Mrs. Hayes’s food? It would be terrible.”

“True.” Rachel nodded, and then glanced at me. “I don’t know how you’re still so skinny.”

“Rachel!” Sophie hissed.

“What?” Rachel looked shocked. “What did I do?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “What Sophie means is that I wasn’t here for almost four years. Maybe that’s why.”

Rachel gasped. “Oh crap. I keep forgetting and saying the wrong shit.”

“Since we touched that topic,” Sophie started. She licked her spoon, eyeing me, probably gauging my reaction. “You’ve been putting off talking to us about your life in Cleveland, and about how you really are, Jess.”

I spooned my ice cream, suddenly unsure I wanted to eat more. “Honestly, I don’t know how I am. It’s hard to talk about it when even I’m not sure about anything.”

Rachel patted my knee. “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry you had to face Caryn this week. I wish I were there though. I would have jumped on her and clawed that fake hair out of her head.”

Sophie snorted, and I couldn’t help but chuckle, imagining the scene in my mind.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t funny. I was shaking, and if it weren’t for Jason and Ryan, I don’t know what would have happened.”

“About that,” Sophie said, her tone malicious again. “I heard you guys have seen each other a few times. How was it?”

“Awkward and painful.” I sighed.

Rachel put her hand on my arm. “Jess, you’ve been through some pretty messed up stuff and, as far as we know, you never talked about it with anyone.”

Sophie set her empty ice cream bowl aside. “Talk to us.”

“It’s not something I like talking about.”

“We know,” Sophie said. “But maybe that’s exactly what you need, to vent about it.”

I played with my ice cream. “I talked to my grandma and also my best friend up there, Kristin.”

Rachel face fell. “Oh. That’s good though, right? I mean, you vented then.”

“I didn’t exactly vent. I just told them the events.” I put my half-eaten ice cream aside. “There isn’t much to vent though. Ryan broke my heart, and my father called me a slut and hit me in front of half the town. It’s done.”

“See, you think there’s nothing to vent about.” Rachel reached for my bowl of ice cream and started eating what I had not. “You need closure.”

That again.

“Yes,” Sophie said. “You should talk to Ryan.”

“Everyone keeps saying that. I’m sure he doesn’t even remember what he did and how that hurt me. Sometimes I even think he only remembers me or still knows my name because of my brother.”

Rachel dropped her spoon. “What?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Sophie asked, her eyes wide.

I looked from one to another. “What? No. Why?”

Sophie squinted. “Jason didn’t tell you what happen to him after you left? What he did?”

“Hm, I don’t know what happened, and Jason doesn’t want to tell me,” I said. Rachel exchanged a worried look with Sophie. “You guys are making me nervous. What is it?”

“Why doesn’t Jason tell you?” Rachel asked.

“He says that I should ask Ryan and have him tell me.” I grunted. “As if I would knock on his door and ask him. Besides, I don’t even know where his house is now. Apparently, he’s not living with his parents anymore.”

“He rents an apartment over the abandoned Blockbuster downtown,” Rachel said.

That was a half block from Alan’s company.

“Since when?” Again, they exchanged an odd look, and I clenched my fist around the spoon. “Come on, tell me.”

Sophie sighed. “I would love to tell you like it was juicy gossip, but this is serious. Ryan should be the one to tell you.”

A chill rushed down my spine. Was it that bad that even my girls didn’t want to tell me?

***

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I muttered from the shotgun of Rachel’s car.

Sophie leaned forward between the seats and smiled at me. “I’m glad you’re doing this.”

I fidgeted with my nails, a nervous habit I had since my pre-teens.

Rachel reached over and rested her hand on mine. “It’s going to be okay. Ryan won’t be there.”

“That’s what you keep saying, but I guess I’ll only believe it when I see it. Or don’t see it.”

The slumber party went well last night. We actually went to sleep at five in the morning. Then the sun was up and bothering us, and we moved to my bedroom and slept until noon. Thank goodness, I made my own hours at work. Otherwise, I would already be fired. I went in at one and left at five.

At eight, the girls showed up, inviting me to watch a race. Inviting was actually a nice word for it. They practically hauled me into Rachel’s car. For a moment, I thought they would knocked me out, or tie me and drag me to the damn race.

However, I remembered the girls, Jason, and even Ryan telling me he didn’t ride bikes anymore.

The question was, why? He loved those damn things.

At any rate, I was tired of being holed up at home. I missed my girls and going out and having fun. If for some reason Ryan showed up at the race, I would ask someone to take me home. Simple as that.

Rachel took us down a back road I didn’t even remember existed and parked a good distance from the other cars. “In case the police show up,” she explained.

I shook my head. Gosh, it had been a long time since I had to worry about that. But instead of concern, anticipation filled my veins. I hadn’t realized I missed this feeling, this energy of coming to a race, being in the crowd, betting, cheering, and yelling at the racers.

We walked to the crowd, weaving through colorful, modified cars and bikes, several of them with the trunks open, exposing big speakers and blasting loud music, and lots of people. I recognized several faces and immediately shrank into myself.

Sophie linked her arm with mine. “Don’t do that,” she whispered.

“They probably remember what happened. They will look at me with disgust or pity. I don’t want that.”

Rachel took my other arm. “Forget about them. We’re here to have a good time.”

Closer to the middle, we found Jason, Luke, and Ethan. And no Ryan. Girls milled around them, wanting their attention. I smiled. I had forgotten about that too.

“Jess,” Jason said as we approached him. He pushed past the girls and met us in a few steps. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

I jerked my head toward my girls. “These are the guilty ones.”

He nodded. “I’m glad you’re out.”

I smiled at him. Maybe I could forgive him. “Me too.”

My eyes met Luke’s and he retreated a few steps. Could I forgive him too? My brother and he hadn’t known Ryan and I were together before that “fishing trip,” but they knew I had a huge crush on Ryan, and they had seen Ryan flirting with me.

Maybe I was being too harsh on them.

I had made up my mind to talk to Luke, but before I could get too close, he walked away and disappeared in the crowd.

“Hey, Jess,” Ethan said.

Like the other guys, Ethan had bulked up. His gray eyes were still as breathtaking as I remembered, but his black hair was cut a bit shorter.

“Hi, Ethan. How are you?”

“Doing good. I’m glad you’re back.”

“It’s only for a short while.”

He nodded. “Even so.”

Why wasn’t I mad at him like I was mad at Jason and Luke? He had been with Ryan too. But he wasn’t blood of my blood, that was why. And that was so wrong. I couldn’t let him go with a free pass, and then hold the others responsible.

I sighed.

John, a tall black guy who usually commanded the races, stepped into the bed of a truck. “Good evening, friends,” he shouted. The chatter stopped and the volume of the music lowered. “The first racers, please, take your places.”

Luke and two other guys I didn’t recognize stopped their ninja bikes behind the white line on the road. By the look of it, the line had been painted minutes ago by a tipsy someone.

They pulled their helmets down and turned the handles, making their engines roar. Adrenaline rushed through me and I smiled. Damn, I had really missed this.

“Ladies,” John called. “Do your thing.”

Two girls wearing tiny jean shorts, tight tops, and hooker heels stepped in front of the bikes holding a black and white checkered flags. I could imagine Caryn doing this. It would be her thing. Anger seeped into me, but I focused on the adrenaline. I wouldn’t let that bitch ruin this for me.

With come-and-get-me smiles, the girls raised the flags.

“On your marks,” John said. The girls counted from five to one, then lowered the flags. “Go!”

The bikers zipped passed the girls, making their hair fly with the rushing air, and went straight down the road.

“The course is still the same?” I asked.

“Yes,” Sophie said. “They go for half a mile on this road, make a loop on the next three roads, and come back.”

In the distance, the bikers disappeared into the darkness. Around me, the chatter resumed, but this time it was about the race. Money flowed easily as people made bets on who would win.

Jason bet a hundred dollars on Luke, and Ethan bet two hundred. Where the hell did they get so much money?

Two minutes later, someone yelled, “Here they come!”

Everyone turned to the road, and we saw the headlights approaching.

“Which one is Luke?” I asked.

“The one on the right,” Ethan said.

How could he tell? No matter, my attention was on Luke.

Come on, Luke. Come on. You can do it.

I froze.

Apparently, I wasn’t mad at Luke anymore. Maybe I never was. Maybe I had always been mad at Ryan and ended up laying it on everyone around me.

Luke lost the leader to the rider in the center.

“Come on, Luke!” my brother shouted.

With expertise, Luke dropped back and pulled his bike to the other side of the lead biker. Then, he pushed through the left. My palms sweated and my heart raced as he caught up with the other biker inch by inch. He could do it. He just needed to push a little bit more.

“You can do it, Luke!” Sophie yelled.

The racers got closer, and the crowd opened a corridor past the white line.

In the last three seconds, Luke passed the other driver and crossed the line first.

We all cheered.

Jason, Ethan, Sophie, and Rachel ran to Luke along with half the crowd. My feet wanted to move, to go congratulate him, but my mind wouldn’t actually give the command.

You’re better than this, Jessica.

I forced a step, and then another, then another, and the weight in my legs diminished with each step. I approached the closed circle around him, and then Luke was lifted by the crowd and carried away.

Apparently, the universe didn’t want me to speak with Luke, but I could speak to someone else.

I turned to Jason. “You came with your bike?”

“Yeah. Why?” he asked.

“Because I need a car.”

“Where are you going?” Rachel asked.

“To do something I should have done since the day I got here.”

The girls smiled, knowing exactly what I meant. I bet Jason and Ethan also knew.

“I brought my car and the bike trailer,” Ethan said. He fished the keys from his biker jacket. “You can take it.”

“But if the police show up?”

He grinned. “We run faster with the bikes.”

I took the keys from him. “Thanks.”

I turned to leave and Jason’s hand closed around my arm. “Be careful with what you say.”

“Don’t worry. I promise I won’t torture him … much.” I winked, and he laughed.