Running Scared (Letters From Morgantown Book 1)

by Tracie Puckett

  “You can’t be serious,” she argued. “Why are you fighting me on this?”

  “Out!”

  “This is because of Sydney, isn’t it?” she asked, and at the mention of my name, I crept out of my room and over to the back of the privacy door.

  I felt awful, spying on them for the second time that week, but she’d brought my name into it, and I wanted to know what I was supposedly responsible for.

  “Why does it matter?” Chris asked.

  “Because I want to know why you’re doing this,” she stamped her foot. “Why would you let her bring that thing in the house?”

  “I chose the tree, Danielle, me,” he said.

  “With her help, I’m sure.”

  “She’s argued against it as much as you have.”

  “Because any person with half a mind would,” she said, throwing her hands in the air. I looked out to see that she’d managed to drag a tree halfway through the front door. The other half was still out on the porch, leaving the cold air to flood into the foyer. “Help me bring this in.”

  “No,” he said. “We already have a tree.”

  “Chris.”

  “No.”

  “I refuse to decorate that thing.”

  “Good,” he said. “Because Sydney’s going to do it.”

  “And what do you propose I do with this?” she asked, kicking the top of her tree—a large Douglas Fir that would’ve looked beautiful in the common room. “How am I supposed to get rid of this?”

  “How’d you get it here in the first place?”

  “That would be me,” Theo said, popping his head through the front door. “Hey, boss.”

  “You helped her do this?” Chris asked.

  “She said you wanted it,” he said, looking from the tree to Chris. “You don’t want it?”

  “No.”

  “Loud and clear,” Theo said, hoisting the tree up from the outside end. Slowly, the top of it slithered out of the B&B and back outside, and Chris slammed the door.

  “You’re pushing it,” he mumbled, turning away from her.

  Danielle’s expression fell blank, and I almost expected her to tear up, but she stood quietly, gathering her thoughts. Knowing that a change of subject was her safest bet, she turned to look around the room.

  “The house looks nice,” she said, her voice much quieter.

  She stepped out of my sightline. Her heels clicked toward the direction of the dining room, and I imagined she was inspecting the paint job. I guessed that Chris must’ve finished it last night, because Danielle carried on, commending him on a job well done. She would’ve never given him that praise if he hadn’t cleaned up all the paint cans and supplies by her return.

  “Are you sure this is the color we picked?”

  “It’s the one you chose,” he said.

  “It looks good,” she said, her heels still clicking. I imagined her pacing the floor, examining each high and low corner, each ledge, looking for some kind of imperfection.

  “It’ll look better in here once we start the Christmas prep,” Chris said.

  “See? That’s what I’ve been saying,” Danielle said. “I’m glad you agree.”

  “I’m running into town today to pick up some lights.”

  “We have lights,” Danielle said. “What’s wrong with what we have?”

  To help Chris avoid another argument, I pushed through the door, into the foyer, and rounded the corner, interrupting a conversation that Danielle wasn’t quite ready to end.

  “Hey, good morning,” Chris said. “We didn’t wake you, did we?”

  “No, I’ve been up for a—”

  “Oh, dear God, what happened to your face?” Danielle asked, and my hand shot up to my cheek.

  The simple touch burned, and I suddenly remembered the way I’d crashed to the hard basement floor.

  “Is there a mark? Is it bad?” I asked, feeling both sides of my face. My right cheek was swollen, and the longer I touched it, the harder it throbbed.”

  “You look awful,” Danielle said. “What did you do?”

  “You look great, Syd,” Chris said, countering Danielle. “But more importantly, how do you feel?”

  “Probably not half as rough as I look,” I said, glancing around for a chance to see my reflection. Unfortunately, the newly painted walls were bare of mirrors or decoration of any kind. I had to go on Danielle’s word alone that I looked awful, and somehow I couldn’t help but believe her.

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” Chris asked, and I perked up, ready to answer the question I was hoping he’d ask.

  “Yes, actually. I overheard you say you were going into town today.”

  “Yeah.” Chris stood taller. “You wanna come?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?” he asked, wide-eyed.

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” Danielle said, cutting in, “I have too much work to do here today, so I won’t be able to join you.”

  “I think they can manage on their own,” Theo said, stomping through the front door to knock the snow off his shoes. “Unless, of course, you want me to tag along?”

  “You have to deep-clean the kitchen,” Danielle said. “We reopen in two days, and you promised you’d have the appliances cleaned by then. And we still need to restock.”

  “Right, how could I forget?” Theo asked, deadpan.

  “Listen, I know you two are looking forward to your trip into town,” Danielle said turning back to me. “But Sydney, if you’re going to trim the tree, it needs to be done today. Don’t stay out all morning.”

  “Oh, man, well, we’ll probably have to,” Chris said, clearly unapologetic. “We’ll probably even have to have breakfast before we come back, and who knows how long it’ll take us to find the right lights for the tree. There’s so much to do, you know?”

  “Chris,” she said, through clenched teeth. “Get her back at a reasonable hour. She has things to do here. So do you. Guests are arriving Friday, and you need to step up and take some responsibility. Your behavior is getting out of control.”

  Chapter Ten

  “She’s going to punch you someday.”

  “It’s only a matter of time,” Chris agreed, clasping the final button on his coat as we stepped out onto the porch. He’d offered me the same sweater and jacket as yesterday, and I was thankful for the added warmth. Although it wasn’t as cold today, the sunshine didn’t do much to nip the chill that blew through the street with every small gust of wind. “Not bad weather for December.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s nice.”

  “You want to walk? It’s only a few blocks.”

  I nodded, and we set off down the porch steps and through the picket gate.

  Walking away from the B&B, I studied the little things about the neighborhood I hadn’t been able to appreciate while cooped up inside—like how the sidewalks were all made of red-brown brick and there was no hustle and bustle; the quiet street was lined with houses that looked like the bed and breakfast—cute, charming, and each one characteristic in its own special way. Christmas lights twinkled from the rooftops, windowsills, and gutters. Small fences guarded most lawns, and every yard was thick with snow. Gray streams spilled out of every chimney we passed, putting off the familiar aroma of wood smoke that I’d always loved at Christmastime.

  “This is probably one of the last warm days we’ll get,” he said. “Winters are usually cold in Morgantown.”

  “I’m no stranger to cold,” I promised. “You’ve never known winter until you’ve spent one in Ohio.”

  “Ohio?” he asked.

  I closed my eyes. No. Not Ohio. I am Sydney Emmons of Washington, DC.

  “I have friends and family there,” I said, grateful that that wasn’t a lie. “Winter there is . . . as unpredictable as life itself.”

  “As is Morgantown,” he said, smiling. “So at least you’ll have that to look forward to. We usually can’t escape a winter without some kind of major snowstorm. We’v
e gotten lucky so far this year.”

  We kept moving forward, neither of us saying anything for the next couple of minutes, and I sensed there was something bothering him. He was unusually quiet—which, according to Theo, wasn’t all that unusual. I imagined he was thinking of last night, of the way I’d snapped, lost control of the emotions I’d worked so hard to contain. I couldn’t remember half of what I’d said, and it was hard to tell what he was thinking after that long hour I’d spent curled up on his lap.

  The silence stretched on a little longer, and I felt his eyes flicker in my direction.

  “What?” I asked.

  “How are you this morning, really?” he asked. “Last night was . . . God, I was worried about you, Syd.”

  “I’m fine,” I shrugged. “Embarrassed more than anything.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Have you seen my face?”

  “I’ve seen your face,” he said, nudging me with his shoulder. “I like your face.”

  Dipping his head, Chris watched me for a reaction, but I tried to fight the urge to respond. I wanted to hold a blank expression, not to let his admission affect me, but heat flushed up my neck, and I blushed. I couldn’t control the way my body responded to him. He was cute. And bold. I liked that about him, but more than that, I hated how much I liked it.

  “I’m a mess,” I said, remembering my reflection. After Danielle’s comment about my face, I’d rushed off to the bathroom to steal a look at myself, only to find that my right eye was blackened with a long scrape along my cheekbone. “I look fresh off a fight that I clearly didn’t win.”

  “So what? You’re a little banged up,” he said. “That’ll clear. Besides, it’s not your face I’m worried about. How’s your heart?”

  “My heart?” I said, feeling a jolt in my chest.

  There it was—my chance. I could talk to him now. Even though I couldn’t say a lot of the things I was dying to say, I could at least say some of it. I needed some kind of outlet, and I’d promised myself last night that I wouldn’t keep holding it in. For the sake of my emotions, I couldn’t afford to do this alone for another second, and I trusted that Chris would listen, even if he had nothing to say.

  “I don’t know. I still don’t know how to deal with everything yet,” I admitted. I wasn’t ready to talk during the initial shock of Dad’s death, and then the rest happened so quickly. Now that I was ready to say something, I didn’t know what I should say. How much was too much?

  “You want to hear the truth?” Chris asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Everyone will say it gets easier with time.”

  “Believe me, I know.”

  “It doesn’t, though. It’s not that easy. Time helps, but it doesn’t just get better—not without some work.”

  “But it can get better?”

  “Yes,” he promised. “Right now, I know it’s hard for you to see that. You’re scared because holding it in feels safer, and you know that admitting your pain won’t change the fact that you feel it.”

  “You’re right,” I admitted. “I feel completely hopeless.”

  “But someday the pain will stop controlling your thoughts,” he said. “You’ll wake up and go through life, doing what you’re supposed to do, and at one point, you’ll realize you’ve gone hours without thinking about it. And if you’re lucky, those hours will turn into a day. And slowly, days become weeks. Weeks turn into months, months into years. You’ll still think about it from time to time, sure. But the pain starts to lessen with distance.”

  “How do you get there?” I asked. “How do you get to that point?”

  “By feeling,” he said. “You get there by understanding that healing takes time and perspective; we’re always in such a hurry to get rid of that hopeless feeling that we often forget that it’s a process, and one you can’t run from. You have to feel it. You have to cry. Mourn what you’ve lost. It hurts, and hurting sucks. But hurting is the first step to healing.”

  “I already hurt,” I said. “What’s the next step?”

  “I think it’s different for all of us,” he said. “No two losses are ever the same.”

  “You lost your grandma, right?”

  “I did.”

  “And now you go days, weeks, months at a time without thinking of her?”

  “No. I think about her all the time,” he said. “But for a long time, the thoughts were paired with unbearable pain. It was constant. It controlled me.”

  “When did it stop?”

  “When I made the decision to deal with it,” he said. “I stopped running from it. I let myself feel what I was trying so hard to run from. I talked about it. I let it out, like you started to last night. Slowly, it became easier.”

  “Who did you talk to?”

  “The same person you’re shutting out,” he said. “Your uncle.”

  “I’m not trying to shut him out,” I said, remembering how quickly I’d refused Theo’s invitation to go into town yesterday. I was sure Chris was remembering it, too. Regardless, it wasn’t as easy to talk to Theo as it was to talk to Chris. While Theo knew everything that had happened back home, I still didn’t feel as if any of it mattered to him. Chris, though . . . he understood me. “I don’t know Theo well at all.”

  “That’s what he said. Your mom was his kid sister?” he asked, but I didn’t say anything to confirm or deny it, because I refused to lie any more than I had to.

  “She died when I was baby,” I said. “Cancer.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t remember her,” I said, sad that I couldn’t draw up a memory of the woman my father had loved, married, and started a family with. She’d been such a huge part of his life, of my life, and I didn’t have a single recollection of a moment spent with her. I couldn’t visualize her face from memory, only from the pictures that I’d seen growing up. She was a fairytale to me—a storybook character of beauty and strength, a warrior. Dad talked about her all the time. He told me stories. He shared the best parts of her. But to me, it was all so distant. Make believe. Out of my reach. I didn’t know her.

  “I never knew her family,” I said.

  “Which explains why you weren’t close with Theo,” he said, drawing a conclusion. “Well, you know you can change that now. You’re here. He’s here. You’re family. You’ve been given an opportunity to connect with him, and I think you should try. He loves you; he cares about you, Sydney.”

  I shook my head.

  Theo didn’t love me, but I couldn’t go as far to say that he didn’t at least care about my safety. Keeping me safe was his job, after all.

  “Can you tell me about him?” I asked.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Anything.”

  “Well, he’s king of the kitchen, as you well know,” he said. “He’s always picking up odd jobs—breakfast at the B&B, occasional catering for birthdays and weddings. He runs a food truck for lunch and dinner every day. He parks out on the square. You can always count on a long line, especially in the winter. He’s a hit with the locals, as well as the tourists.”

  “Understandably,” I said. “His food’s amazing.”

  “And then, of course, he walks around thinking he has this huge secret, but he’s not fooling anyone.”

  “What secret is that?” I asked, wondering if Chris knew the same big secret that I knew. Theo had never mentioned whether or not the people of Morgantown knew about his history with the US Marshals service, but he had said that Chris didn’t know about the B&B being a safe house, or that I was a witness. So what did he know?

  “There’s only so much sneaking around you can do,” he said. “And I’ve never met two worse liars.”

  “Oh, God,” I said, realizing that he knew a lot more than he should. “You mean—”

  “He and my grandmother dated for years,” he said, shaking his head. “And he has no idea that I know, of course. It was only a matter of time before it happened. He’s been around my wh
ole life. Gran was widowed before I was born, and I was only five when he took the job at the B&B.”

  “You’re what, then? Twenty?” I asked.

  “Will be,” he said. “Soon. How did you—”

  “He said he’s worked the kitchen for the last fifteen years,” I said. “I don’t claim to be a mathematician, but—”

  “Simple addition. Right.”

  “So how did you find out?”

  “From what I can gather, he and Gran dated secretly for at least six years, maybe longer. But, like I said, it wasn’t hard to figure out. You can’t cover up love. I saw right through all the lies and the sneaking around.”

  “And they never told you?”

  “They never told anyone,” he said, laughing. “Those two were madly in love, and they thought they could keep it to themselves, but the whole town knew.”

  “Why the secrecy?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess they liked having something that was theirs and no one else’s.”

  “God, that’s cute,” I said. I could picture Theo with a helpless grin, swooning over the woman he loved. He would’ve been a charmer, no doubt.

  “Oh, so close!”

  “Huh?”

  “A smile,” he said, looking to my lips. “You were so close—right on the edge. You almost had it!”

  “Almost had it?”

  “Syd, do you realize you haven’t smiled once since you got here?”

  “Do you realize I haven’t had a reason to?”

  I silenced our conversation with that one question, plagued with guilt when a painful look crossed his face. I’d shut him down, and for what? He was trying; he’d been trying all along—working hard for those smiles, giving me something to grasp onto. How could I have been so quick to take that from him, especially after all he’d done to help me come around?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Chris, I didn’t mean—”

  “You’re apologizing?” he asked. “God, Syd, no way. You’re right. After everything you’ve lost, I can’t believe I would say that to you. I should’ve never . . . ” He shook his head. “I’m a jerk.”

  “You’re not a jerk,” I said, looking down. I didn’t want him to think that his efforts had gone unnoticed, especially since he’d given me so much by way of comfort. “I’m trying, Chris, I swear I am. I want to smile again, but . . . I can’t.”