He didn’t text me.
Normally, by now, he would have. I tried not to wonder if the imaginary blonde girl was with him.
I did have Alex’s number, so by the time school was supposed to let out and I still hadn’t heard from him, I sent Alex a text.
“Merle okay?”
I got one back almost immediately.
“He is fine. We had an… incident.”
“Everyone okay?!” I replied.
“No. Merle is, and Jackson and I are. No losses but a few stupid new pledges.”
“Can I do anything?” I asked.
I got a quick negative text, and then nothing.
So.
Gang stuff.
Unless… unless Alex was in on it? Unless I was just one in a string of girls Merle dated and then suddenly got tired of, and Alex was used to picking up the pieces?
Merle had said a few times that Alex made things run smoothly.
Maybe that was more than gang stuff. Maybe that was Merle’s relationships, too.
Now I was just being silly.
(Probably.)
I had no proof of that. Honestly, Alex didn’t seem like the kind of guy to have the patience to deal with that sort of thing.
Alex had enough relationship stuff to deal with with him and Jackson.
He had said several times that he was not interested in anyone else’s.
Maybe he was protesting too much? Maybe he was trying to lull me into a false sense of security?
ENOUGH.
I was going round and round with this bullshit.
It was all in my head. Or, at least, even if it wasn’t all in my head, I had NO proof right now, and I needed to work.
I had a job to do.
The next day was Saturday. No school. No need to decide whether or not I was going to face those assholes.
So.
I had to face Merle.
I sent him a text. “We need to talk. Meet at diner today?”
I let out a breath that I didn’t know that I was holding when he replied almost instantly.
“Yes! Miss you. When? Now?”
A smile tugged my lips, the first one since my disastrous locker room visit on Thursday.
Yeah.
I could do this.
“Sure.” I sent back.
We met at the diner not immediately, but in only half an hour. I didn’t have as far to go, so I had plenty of time to pace in a circle.
Just seeing him was wonderful.
When he walked through the door of the place, my heart melted. He was who I needed, who I loved.
If he didn’t want me any more… I’d… I’d…
I’d cross that bridge when I came to it, I told myself firmly. I wouldn’t go borrowing trouble.
I’d speak in sayings, apparently.
As my giddy thoughts chased each other around, Merle got to the table and leaned over to brush a kiss against my cheek.
I flinched.
He’s not William, I told myself. He’s not William, he’s not Chad, he’s not el Jefe. He’s just Merle.
He frowned.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “I’m sorry, I was busy on Thursday.”
There was a couple sitting in the next booth. His eyes flickered to them before he continued.
“You know. Work stuff.”
I nodded. “I figured it was something like that,” I said.
I managed a weak smile.
“I mean, I hoped. It wasn’t like you found someone else, right?”
Apparently I didn’t do a good job keeping the worry off my face.
He frowned harder and reached out to take my hand.
“Megan, no,” he said. “Nobody else. I’ve just been… work. Work has really been beating me up.”
I looked at him more closely and saw a shadow of a bruise on his cheekbone.
What could I not see? I found myself wanting to strip him down in the restaurant to check him for injuries. Probably not the best idea.
“You’re okay, though, right?” I repeated, trying to keep my voice causal.
“Yes,” he said, with a slight smile. “I’m okay. Tired, but okay. There’s no one else. I missed you. I’m so glad to see you.”
I nodded.
I did a lot of that around Merle. Just nodding, just… being satisfied. He was a good guy.
He would never cheat on me.
I did realize how silly I was being, but it was really hard to stop. I knew that I needed to calm down, so I took a few deep breaths.
All I wanted was to feel loved and safe. Why was that so hard to ask?
No one was willing to help me, to protect me. I had to make my peace with that. I had to learn to protect myself.
"We need to talk, " I told Merle.
He sighed, a great exhalation of breath and frustration.
"Does it have to be right now?" he asked. "I've had a long week."
I almost gasped out loud with anger. Did he really think he had a monopoly on lousy weeks?
I needed support and this is what I got?
"You know what? " I asked. I threw my napkin in a wadded up ball onto the table. "I'm done with this. I don't need this right now. I had important stuff to talk about, and all you wanted to do was blow me off?"
Before he could say anything else or answer my question, I was storming out of the restaurant.
The tears running down my cheeks made it hard to see where I was going.
I heard him call after me from the sidewalk behind me, but I kept running.
I ended up walking farther than I had in my life except on a hike.
Turns out, it took me over two hours to get to my old house from downtown.
I'd have thought that a walk that long would have cooled my temper some, but the sight of that fucking house cut through my exhaustion and sent me marching in a righteous fury to the front door.
One car was there, one car wasn’t. They might be out together, or one of them might be gone.
I hammered on the door with my fist. It hurt. I didn't care.
The door opened so abruptly that I almost fell across the threshold. I heard Bear, my old labrador, bark as though his lungs would burst with excitement.
My mother was there.
Her face was white and drawn. She’d lost five pounds since the last time I’d seen her. Maybe more. She didn’t have that kind of weight to lose, and her cheekbone was sharp as a knife slash across her face.
I registered that in a split second as she drew me in to a wordless, bone-crunching hug.
I didn’t say anything. I simply held her, my cheek resting on her shoulder, and sobbed. All of the frustration, the abandonment, the loneliness and fear I’d felt came pouring out in a great onrush of grief.
She cried, too.
Like I’d never seen her before.
Not when her father died, or when our neighbor ran over Bear and we were rushing him to the vet, Dad driving, me and her in the backseat, holding him close, his blood all over us.
I don’t know what happened to make me lose her, or to make me lose control.
I was still angry, though.
When the first storm of my tears past, I pulled away and sat down on the staircase in the hall.
She shut the front door and sat beside me.
I pulled away.
The sight of her flinch sent a hollow chord of unhappiness through me, but I didn’t scoot any closer.
“My baby girl,” she murmured.
It was the first thing that one of us had said to each other.
It was the straw.
The last straw.
“What the fuck?” I asked her. Shouting. Bear fled back down the hall. “If I’m your baby girl, why did you send me away?”
“We didn’t send you anywhere, sweetheart,” she said. She looked totally stricken. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know I was out overnight and it was shitty, but I came home and… and… all my stuff was in the yard. How the fuck is tha
t not sending me away? You threw all my clothes in a pile like trash,” I said.
My voice was hard and bitter. I needed to calm down, but I didn’t know how to at that point.
My mother’s hand flew to her face. She was staring at me, shaking her head slightly. I don’t know if I’d ever seen anyone more baffled.
“Honey,” she said, her voice soft and slow, “We got home from work about the same time, and you were gone. Your father and I looked everywhere. I showed up and the front door was open, he was shouting your name. Your bedroom was bare.”
I stared at her.
“That’s not right,” I said. “All my stuff was in the yard, and I saw someone move a curtain in the house. I yelled and knocked at the door, but no one… no one answered.”
She stared at me.
It was as if neither of us could possibly take in what the other was saying. It was too strange. Too completely alien.
I ran away.
I got kicked out.
One of us had to be wrong.
Was I crazy? I suppose it was possible, but… wouldn’t someone have said something? I saw the doubt in my mother’s eyes, the worry, the fear. Did she think I was mixed up in drugs, mixed up so badly I didn’t know what was going on?
I had never taken drugs.
No, wait.
I’d been drugged. El Jefe had drugged me. Multiple times. I still didn’t know what with.
It wasn’t too long after that that I got kicked out - that I ran away - that I moved into the apartment.
Was I still suffering from the after-effects that night? Was I so confused, and out of it, that I’d somehow run away by accident?
Was Merle taking advantage of me?
I saw the worry and anger in my mother’s eyes and knew that that was what she thought.
She thought Merle was the worst kind of man.
I thought he was the best.
One of us had to be wrong.
“I’ve been going to school,” I whispered. “You could have found me there. Why didn’t you look?”
She looked stricken.
“You said in your note that you were eighteen and there was nothing we could do to stop you and if we showed up at your school you’d get a restraining order and have us arrested for stalking you,” she said.
I shook my head on reflex.
“Note?” I asked. “I definitely didn’t leave a note.”
“It was on your bed,” she said. She stood up, more heavily than I’d ever seen her. Did my mother get old while I wasn’t looking?
I followed her up the stairs.
“I didn’t… I didn’t change anything,” she said. “I just clean it.”
I stopped on the threshold.
Someone had definitely ransacked my room. There wasn’t a lot left. Even the sheets were off the bed. There was a note in the middle of the bare mattress.
The thought of my mother cleaning this bare, sad room for weeks and weeks made me almost burst into tears.
I reached out and squeezed her shoulder.
Something was definitely weird as hell here, something was wrong, but I don’t think it was anything that she did.
I mean… all of the signs pointed to me leaving on my own free will.
“Why didn’t you text me?” I asked.
“I did,” she said, simply. “You never replied.”
I shook my head again, slowly. Not denying the truth of her words, just denying… I don’t know what. The fact that something like this could have happened, could ever have happened.
“I have a new number,” I said. “My old number… it worked for a day or two, then it stopped. I figured you stopped paying for my line.”
She shook her head.
“I wanted to keep you on,” she said, slowly. “Your father said that you’d made your choice. He was… I’d never seen him that angry.”
I didn’t say anything.
I couldn’t.
The possibility that was forming was so horrible that I really couldn’t talk.
“Are you staying with… with Merle?” my mother asked, suddenly.
“No,” I said. “He got me a studio near downtown. I work in a laundrymat he - his buddy owns in exchange.”
She nodded, slightly.
“That’s good,” she said. “Have you had sex with him? Did you use protection?”
“Mom!” I gasped.
I wanted to look anywhere but at her.
I read the note.
I’m out of here. Fuck you both. If you try and find me, I’ll have you arrested for stalking.
I talked to the principal and he CANNOT give you any information about me or my grades or my attendance. I’m eighteen now, there’s nothing you can do.
If you show up at my school, I’ll walk away and never return. You’ll never hear from me again.
IF you respect my wishes for once in your fucking lives, I might talk to you.
I love him, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Megan
It was a cruel note. If it had been longer, if there had been more hurt, more explanation, it might have been kinder.
As it was… it was short.
Curt.
To the point.
There was nothing of love, or even of anger.
How must it have felt, to read a note like that? To think your daughter, your only child, never wanted to see your faces again?
That she didn’t even care enough to explain?
I couldn’t look at my mother.
“That’s some note,” I said.
She didn’t reply right away. I heard a small, ragged gasp, as she drew breath.
“It’s not… it’s not yours?” she asked.
I shook my head.
I held it out to her, to look at again.
Silly. I imagine she’d read it a dozen times, a hundred.
Maybe more.
“If I was going to run away,” I said. “I’d be p- I’d be really mad, right?”
She nodded. I saw that out of the corner of my eye.
“So, I wouldn’t take the time to sit down and type out the note and wait for the printer to work and go downstairs and get the note and come all the way back up here and put it on the bed,” I said. “The printer never works the first time, it would have taken forever.”
A ghost of a smile on her face.
“If I were going to run away, I’d take whatever pad was nearby and I’d write out a note. On paper. By hand,” I said. “It wouldn’t be like this, either. It would either be, like, one sentence, or it would be five angry pages.”
I reached a tentative hand out to her.
“I wouldn’t have done this,” I said. Firmly. Finally.
She looked at me.
If anything, she looked even more hopeless than before.
I hated seeing her like this.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “Were you… were you kidnapped?”
The word looked like it felt odd in her mouth, like she couldn’t quite believe what she was asking.
I guess my mother couldn’t really believe that this was our life now. That that was a reasonable and valid question to ask me.
I shook my head.
“No, Mama,” I said. “I told you. I showed up, all my stuff was in the yard, Merle and his friends helped me pick it up, I went away.”
“I watched you, you know,” she said. Her voice was soft. Delicate. Fragile.
I looked at her, a question all over my face.
“I thought you’d be angry, but I had to know you were okay,” she said. “I had to know. So I parked half a mile away, and I walked over, and I stood in the edge of the trees and I watched until I saw you.”
I looked at her.
Greatest Height (New Adult Biker Gang Romance) (Night Horses MC Book 6) Page 2
