Runaway

by Winterfelt, Helen

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked intently.

  ‘Why don’t you go and see for yourself? It’s only 8.30, he should still be there.’

  I wished I had asked the bartender beforehand what he was talking about, but my curiosity was peaked – I had no idea what I would find when I got down to the logging yard. He gave me directions and I took off, taking long dark roads that I felt like I shouldn’t have been taking, especially at this time of night.

  ***

  But then I finally reached it, a huge, floodlit open area. I passed rows and rows of heavy machinery, the worn ground covered in chipped tree bark, stacks and rows of logs so high that it was wonder they didn’t come crashing down.

  I heard what I was looking for before I found it; shouting and cheering, all from male voices as jeers were shouted and howling laughter boomed through the yard. I crossed my arms beneath my chest, turning the corner around the last row machinery and to see an open space cleared of objects in the centre of the yard, save for a group of thirty or forty men stood in a circle, shouting and throwing their arms up in the air.

  I stopped in my tracks, my heart racing wildly, suddenly feeling more intimidated than I could even imagine.

  What the fuck was happening? What were they doing?

  At the centre of the mess of men cheering I could hear grunts and shouts, hard, flat packing sounds as I suddenly realised what was going on amongst the crowd.

  They were fighting.

  I had no intention of moving closer to it, but I was more intent than ever on seeing what was happening – we often want to see the things that scare us, I guess. We can’t look away.

  I looked over at the machinery next to me, a huge thing with wheels and a carriage on the back for moving logs. Without even thinking about it I pulled my way up onto the top, climbing up to the top of the cab carefully before standing upon it and looking out over the crowd.

  The thought crossed my mind as to what anybody who knew me would think if they had seen what I had just done, if they knew where I was, how out of place I seemed… But the thought of it was quickly extinguished as I looked out over the crowd and set my eyes on the two men fighting.

  The first I didn’t recognise, a burly guy with a huge beard, bulky and terrifying. But the other guy…

  Even with his jawline shaved and being a fair distance from me, that dark hair and toned, body, now roughed up and in a fighting stance, was unmistakable.

  It was Jack.

  My mouth literally fell open at the notion of it as I watched him dodge and weave away from this guy’s punches, delivering harsh, fast blows in response. I winced every time a hit landed, and Jack certainly wasn’t dodging every one of them. Another. Then another.

  And just when I thought the worst, the whole thing came to a sudden end amidst the shouting and the laughter. The big guy came in for a punch, Jack sliding to the side, an unmistakable look of furious anger on his face as he brought his arm, bringing his closed hand forward, connecting his fist to the guy’s face with a hard smack that I heard even from where I stood.

  The guy teetered, wobbling on his legs before finally stumbling over and to the side. He didn’t get back up.

  Roaring cheers erupted from the crowd as Jack stood over the man for a moment, his toned, muscular chest rising and falling with panting breaths as he closed his eyes and calmed himself. But right then, that was the last thing I saw – because I had already clambered down from the cab roof and jumped the last section to the hard floor, making my way over to the crowd.

  I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got there, but I didn’t stop. Until…

  Somebody’s voice shouted, ‘Rudy, you next, Carl’s been eager for a rematch,’ just as Jack emerged from the crowd, carrying his shirt in his hand. In the floodlights, closer up, I could already see his body, the bruises forming and light drip of blood at his forehead, scratches from the hit of the ground.

  He removed a spirit flask from his back pocket, unscrewing and taking a swig before lowering his head back down as he screwed the top back on. That was when he stopped, ten or so yards from me, staring over at me as he continued to breathe heavily.

  We both stood there for a moment, expressionless, gazing at each other in the spare light. Then Jack finally spoke.

  ‘I’ll be honest; you’re the last person I expected to see here.’

  ‘I, uhh… I went to your house to see if you were there… Then the bar… They said you’d be here, but I didn’t… I didn’t expect…’

  ‘Didn’t expect to find a load of grown men fighting like animals?’

  ‘Pretty much, yeah…’

  We both laughed lightly, but it didn’t drag away in the slightest from the reality of all this. It didn’t really seem like the kind of thing I expected Jack to be doing – he was smart, brooding, handsome… So why was he spending his night fighting after work at the yards?

  ‘Why did you come here?’ He asked, looking me up and down with a smirk.

  ‘I just… I don’t know, I just wanted to see you again, I guess.’ I couldn’t even explain it to myself…

  ‘Okay…’ He nodded, ‘Well I’m about to head back home, if you needed a ride?’

  I felt more intimidated than ever, seeing his towering figure, bloodied and shirtless, his piercing eyes staring into me and his muscular body shifting with panting breaths… But for some reason that was exactly why I said-

  ‘Yeah,’ I nodded, smiling over at him, ‘I’d like that.’

  We sat in silence the short ride back to Jack’s house, I occasionally glancing over at his domineering figure in the seat beside me.

  I couldn’t count the number of questions running through my mind… And I didn’t know where to start. But I wanted to know something, anything.

  As Jack turned the engine off and opened his car door he turned to me.

  ‘D’you want to come in for a drink or something?’ He said casually.

  ‘Sure, why not?’ I smiled, getting out of the car and following him carefully over towards the house. I followed him inside, the two of us standing in the dark for a moment before he struck the lights on and beckoned me into the kitchen.

  It was only in the light of the warm, quiet house that I finally saw the state of Jack’s injuries, the cut on his forehead, the grazes on his arms, the bruises covering him. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

  ‘Is water okay? I’d put on some coffee but it’s a little late…’

  ‘Water’s fine,’ I said quietly.

  Jack stood by the sink, running the faucet as he poured the glasses. I saw him begin to shake before he had a chance to fall, and ran over to him, somehow managing to hold his strong, heavy figure up. His strength was clear, even without any exhibition of it.

  ‘Okay,’ I laughed, ‘I think we’ve gotta get you upstairs or something.’

  ‘I think so too…’ He said, a smile in his voice.

  We took for the stairs, Jack’s arm wrapped over my shoulder as I half-carried him up, although I was barely doing any work – how could I? He was bigger and stronger than me in every way.

  We finally reached his room, stumbling in messily through the door and across his bedroom. I slid him from me, helping him onto the bed before I taking a few breaths and looking around. It was almost the same as the room I had awoken in down the hall save for a desk littered with papers and a laptop.

  Jack stretched himself out and I took a seat by him on the bed, checking him in the light on the bedside table.

  ‘You need something for that cut,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom. And some vodka behind the sink. Bring them both.’

  I smirked at him and did as he asked, retrieving them with ease and returning to his side. I uncapped the vodka, handing it to him and letting him take a swig before taking it back from him. I opened the first aid kit on the bed by my side, taking out a piece of bandage and holding it over the vodka, dabbing some onto the cloth and bringing it to his forehe
ad.

  ‘This is gonna sting,’ I said.

  ‘Fine,’ Jack replied simply.

  I hesitated a moment, looking him up and down as he stared off to the side before bringing it to his head and dabbing the liquid against his cut.

  Jack didn’t even flinch – it was like nothing had happened at all. For some reason I think I would have felt better if he had made a move in response to it.

  I stopped pulling away the cloth and looking at his bruised, damaged body for a moment, he turning to look back at me.

  ‘Who are you, really?’ I asked.

  ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘My last name is Landry, if that helps you paint a bigger picture.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes… People like you don’t exist in real life. You’re like… Like a character in a movie, or something.’

  ‘I don’t really watch a lot of movies…’

  ‘That’s probably for the best…’ I whispered to myself, ‘But you must understand me. You’re quiet, smart, you have a house filled with books and papers… And yet here you are drinking and fighting in the dark, covered in blood… Not to mention the cocky attitude…’

  ‘I guess that’s one way of putting it…’ He laughed.

  ‘So you know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Come on, Emma, don’t ask me this stuff…’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You wouldn’t even believe me if I told you.’

  ‘Try me,’ I said, ‘Look, I know that we’ve only known each other for like… What, 24 hours?’

  ‘Around that, yeah.’

  ‘But it feels like so much longer than that… And I know you think the same, or something like it.’

  Jack looked up at me, his dark eyes running over my body before returning to meet my own. He sighed, running a hand through his hair and nodding.

  ‘Okay, fine…’ He said, ‘… Come over here, though, you look really uncomfortable sat there.’

  I was a second away from jumping up from the bed and rounding to the other side to climb up by his side, but Jack got to me first. He leaned over and brought his hands up beneath my arms, lifting me up and over him effortlessly with his ridiculous, raw strength and sitting me down on the other side of the bed by his side. He sat up against the headboard and I against the backboard, facing each other.

  We sat in silence for a moment, my heart racing with that most sultry of movements he had just made… And though I didn’t even want to admit it to myself, I couldn’t deny that I already missed the sensation of his hands on me.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ He asked.

  ‘What you said before. The thing that I wouldn’t believe if you told me.’

  ‘So the whole story,’ he smiled. ‘Okay, as long as you don’t need to be back to your house anytime soon.

  ‘I grew up just outside of Chicago, like I said before, which is where my parents still live. Nothing much to tell from then. I was a smart kid, probably even cockier than I am now. Moved to San Francisco for college, living in a tiny room and sleeping on friend’s couches. But I wasn’t exactly your typical college student, getting wasted in the evenings and sleeping through classes. If anything I drink more now than I did then. While everybody else was partying, I spent most of my nights with a group of other overachievers at the college library working on business ideas, team projects, stuff like that. People came and went, but a small group of us stuck together and built a few things that took off more effectively than we could have ever imagined. That was maybe… Eight years ago?

  ‘We sold a few companies, built some more. Before we knew it we were managing more money than we knew what to do with. So we started a holding company, and if things were crazy before then they became almost unbelievable at that point. And… It was around that time that I met Clare.’

  ‘Oh, so there is a girl?’ I asked, raising my eyebrows at him.

  Jack took a deep breath, looking about the room and running his hand through his hair again.

  ‘We met when I was 21,’ he continued, ‘Straight out of college. She was one of our original team, she handled the accounts. I had never liked dealing with numbers, but she actually got me interested in it. And just like that, she had me hooked on her.

  ‘Things just went up and up. I couldn’t imagine myself with anybody else but her. Two years later she was pregnant and we were together every minute of the day. We bounced off each other, that’s the only way I can describe it. I had never felt like that before. And then he was born. Noah. We called him that because it rained for days after he was born… Neither of us were religious or anything but it just seemed like a fitting name, and we both liked it. Either way… He was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, something I never thought I would deserve, that I would have the good fortune to call my own.’

  Jack paused for a moment, staring towards the bottom of the bed, his chest rising and falling with long, slow breaths.

  ‘Marriages don’t always work out…’ I said quietly, ‘Sometimes no matter how much you think you know a person things just have a way of going bad…’

  ‘I know,’ Jack said, ‘And you’re right. But that isn’t what happened.

  ‘Oh… Sorry, I should’ve let you finish…’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell if you don’t want to.’

  ‘No, it’s fine… I guess it’s important to talk about these things sometimes.

  ‘Things were great for two years, like I said they kept getting better. Clare and I were closer than ever, Noah was growing up faster than either of us could believe. And then there was the night of the conference.’

  Jack’s voice suddenly became quieter as his words trailed off, as if he didn’t want to say it… But it wasn’t so much that as he didn’t want to admit the words that he was speaking, as if he was imagining a story rather than the truth.

  ‘…What happened?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘We had been staying at this remote hotel out of Illinois with clients, driving back in the rain. Clare and I always used to joke that Noah brought on the rain, because he was always happy about it when it was pouring down and he always cried more when it was sunny…

  ‘Anyway, we were taking this lone road in the middle of nowhere in the rain, when this truck came hurtling around the corner as we were crossing this bridge. Only had sidelights on. The bridge was barely wide enough for one vehicle, never mind two trying to fit across. I panicked… Spun the wheel to the side trying to veer away from the truck, but it was just a reflex to the lights in front of us – the one only way to go was off the bridge, and that was where we ended up going.’

  Jack paused again, looking down at the space between I and him, clasping his hands together over his chest as he clenched his eyes shut briefly and took a breath to calm himself.

  I was hooked on his words, silently hoping that he wasn’t going to say what I thought he was.

  ‘I remember the lights, and then the crash… But that’s all. I woke up three weeks later in Northshore hospital, with two cracked ribs, a dislocated jaw and a collapsed lung. Clare and Noah were…’

  I could feel each of my breaths shaking uncontrollably, the wind coursing past the windows outside as Jack looked up at me briefly our eyes meeting as a tear rolled down my cheek.

  A coherent thought refused to run through my mind… But the notion of it all overwhelmed me.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘Afterwards I struggled to do anything, to live. There were times in the weeks and months after it all that I could hardly even bring myself to move. I just… Laid there, in bed, doing nothing. Prior to it all I had a reign on my thoughts, a hold on myself… But in the wake of it nothing calmed my mind. A therapist I once saw suggested meditation one time, but I couldn’t even get ten seconds into it. My mind won’t silence itself, it won’t calm down. I’m always filled with distractions.

  ‘I was in no fit state to manage the company, by any means. S
o I left. I still own everything and I oversee any major changes, but all in all I left everything to my original team and my closer colleagues, and I ran away… And in the end I wound up here. I bought this place, made a call through to the management team to buy the logging company here-’

  ‘Wait… You own the logging company too? And that’s where you work?’

  ‘Well, a majority share. But yeah, I work there too. The guys have no idea who I am, including Rory. And no idea that they’re fighting their boss every Monday night, either.’

  I smiled a little, but I still couldn’t pull my thoughts away from what he had just told me, from what he had been through…

  ‘Why do you do it?’ I asked.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Work here of all places… Fight…’

  ‘It keeps my mind busy. Distracted, I guess you could say. And the fighting is the only thing that makes me feel awake. Most of the time I feel like… I don’t know, like…’

  ‘Like you’re living in a movie?’ I said, without even thinking.

  ‘I guess you could say that, yeah…’

  We both went silent for a moment, our eyes meeting as I tried to take in al that Jack had just said, revealing who he really was and what he was doing here. I knew there was something more to him than he had let on, but I would never have begun to imagine that it was anything like what he had told me.

  ‘There isn’t a person I’ve told about that stuff,’ he said, ‘I can’t explain why I’m telling you, Emma.’

  ‘Maybe you don’t see me as just some random person,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe not…’ He smiled faintly, ‘… Could you do me a favour?’

  ‘Sure, anything.’

  ‘Okay, good; get yourself over here, I feel like I’m a mile away from you.’

  I laughed lightly at his words, shuffling around on the bed to lie down by his side. Even in light of this revelation, I felt safe by Jack’s side. He had been through more than I could even believe, and suddenly my problems seemed to pale in comparison to his.

  He looked over at me from where he was sat up against the headboard, his sharp, handsome face looking down at me, a frown mixed with a hint of a smile.