Chasing the Tide

by A. Meredith Walters

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Other Books by A. Meredith Walters

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Epilogue

  Chasing the Tide

  A. Meredith Walters

  Other Books by A. Meredith Walters

  Reclaiming the Sand

  Lead Me Not

  Find You in the Dark Series

  Find You in the Dark

  Light in the Shadows

  Cloud Walking (A Find You in the Dark novella)

  Warmth in Ice (A Find You in the Dark novella)

  Bad Rep Series

  Bad Rep

  Perfect Regret

  Seductive Chaos

  For Gwyn,

  Love without judgment.

  Prologue

  -Ellie-

  “Intense love does not measure, it just gives.”

  -Mother Teresa

  There’s a saying, you can’t go home again.

  This is particularly true for a girl who never really had a home to begin with.

  Home is for people with families.

  Home is for people with love.

  Home is for people with a life.

  I had never possessed any of those things. My entire existence had been composed of one bad choice after another.

  Until Flynn.

  He was my redemption.

  My salvation.

  He had come into my life when I hadn’t known I needed him. And I had hurt him. Abused him.

  Almost destroyed him.

  And in turn I had almost destroyed myself.

  We were connected in a way that I hadn’t been able to understand until he blew back into my world all those years later and gave me the thing I thought I’d never have.

  Home.

  Roots.

  A place to call my own.

  Every story has a beginning.

  Flynn was mine.

  He was the journey in between.

  He shadowed my steps as I struggled to discover the person I wanted to be.

  But I knew that when it was all over, Flynn would be there. He was my beginning.

  My end.

  My home.

  My happily ever after.

  Chapter One

  -Ellie-

  “Mommy!” I yelled down the stairs. I had just woken up and my stomach was rumbling. I had gotten out bed and gone to the bathroom. The floor was cold, my toes curled under my feet.

  I walked down the stairs, holding onto the bannister. The house was quiet.

  Normally I could hear my mommy singing along to the radio or talking on the phone. But today I didn’t hear anything.

  “Mommy?” I called again. My stomach started feeling weird. Almost like a bellyache. There was this fluttering inside that I didn’t like.

  I walked into the kitchen and it was dark. Mommy usually made me toast before I went to school. Then she’d walk me to the bus stop.

  “Mommy!” I yelled loudly. Maybe she couldn’t hear me. Maybe she was playing a game and I was supposed to go find her!

  I ran down the hallway to her room. I threw open the door calling out, “Boo!” But she wasn’t there. The bed was still made. There were clothes on the floor and on the bed.

  That wasn’t right.

  Mommy always got mad if my room was a mess. She always put her clothes away. I frowned and walked into her room. The special picture of her and my daddy at a carnival that always sat on her dresser was gone.

  Where could it be?

  I wanted my mommy.

  My stomach growled; I was really hungry. I knew I had to go to school soon. I’d never walked to the bus stop by myself. There were mean kids that hung out there, and Mommy always made sure they left me alone.

  I walked back out to the living room and sat down on the couch, turning on the television.

  I’d just watch Mighty Morphin Power Rangers until Mommy got home.

  When Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was over, Mommy still wasn’t home. My stomach was starting to hurt.

  I went to the kitchen and found Pop-Tarts in the cabinet. I ate the whole box until I felt sick. Then I went back to watch more television. Rugrats were on. I loved Rugrats. I wished Mommy were here to watch it with me.

  I could tell her all about it when she came home and then she would take me to school.

  But Mommy never came home.

  It became night and I was scared.

  And hungry.

  I cried and cried and cried for my Mommy.

  She never came back.

  I was all alone.

  **

  I knew a thing or two about abandonment.

  For my entire life I had been the poster child for major issues. Anger issues. Mommy and Daddy issues. Psychotic issues.

  I had been one issue away from a straitjacket.

  My label as a troubled child had dogged my steps for a long time.

  I didn’t know anything about having a real home. Or starting a real life. Or having people around that cared about me.

  Those were fantasies that belonged to a girl with hope.

  Hope and Ellie McCallum had never co-existed.

  Until three years ago.

  Now today I was going to, for the very first time, have everything I’d ever wanted.

  A chance at happiness.

  Even if the direction my tiny car was headed towards was the last place I had ever wanted to be again, I still felt the bubbling, tentative joy deep in my gut.

  Three years was a long time to be gone.

  Maybe too long.

  Maybe not long enough.

  I hadn’t stepped foot in West Virginia since I had made the decision to attend the College of Baltimore. I had needed to cut ties and let myself fly free.

  I had been terrified. Scared that I’d crash and burn.

  Aside from my stint in Juvenile Detention, I had lived in Wellston, West Virginia my entire life. It was my dysfunctional safety net. It’s all that I knew.

  Then Flynn Hendrick, the boy I had bullied and terrorized who later grew up to become someone so much more than that had shown me that there was a great big world out there waiting for me. Even if he was, for the most part, terrified to venture out into it.

  He had convinced me that I deserved more than to work at JAC’s Quick Stop and dodge the law for the rest of my life.

  He had given me something to reach for.

  So I had left.

  And he had stayed behind. Putting down roots and making a home that he hoped I’d come back to when the time came.

  He never doubted that at the end, I’d come back. He had believed it with an unwavering certainty. A certainty I hadn’t always shared.

  Leaving Flynn was the hardest thing I had ever done. I wasn’t sure when I had decided to pack my meager belongings and leave the town where I had spent my entire life, whether there would be an us at the end of my long, twisted road.

  Being with Flynn had never been easy. And we were so new when I had let th
at my worries threatened to eat a hole through our fledgling relationship.

  He wouldn’t come with me. No matter how many times I had begged. I knew that asking him to pick up and follow me was about my happiness and not his.

  And that wasn’t fair.

  So Flynn had stayed in Wellston, and I had left. I had stayed away all that time, seeing Flynn only when we’d meet somewhere half way. Our interludes were never long enough and sometimes ended in disaster. Maintaining our connection during that time had been more than difficult.

  Despite my nagging doubts about the solidity of our relationship, I could never drive my car across the Wellston town limits.

  I stayed away.

  As long as I was able to. Until the time came and I no longer had an excuse. Because Flynn was there. And if I loved him as much as I professed to, then there couldn’t be any other option.

  The truth was I hadn’t allowed myself to think about what it would mean for me to pack my bags all over again and go back.

  I had thought briefly about using my shiny new English degree and apply for jobs somewhere—anywhere else.

  But anywhere else wasn’t where Flynn was.

  He was in Wellston, teaching art courses at Black River Community College. He was settled. He was entrenched. He wasn’t going to leave.

  And if that was where he was, then that was where I belonged.

  No matter the emotional cost to myself.

  I was scared to death that by going back to the place that had witnessed the worst of who I was that I’d lose what I had worked so hard to build.

  Me.

  But my heart had become an irrational beast with one absolute and total focus.

  Flynn Hendrick.

  I flicked through the radio stations until the familiar strains of a rock ballad filled the car. The Cure had become something like a musical addiction for me after moving to Maryland.

  Because every time I listened to them, I felt a little closer to the man I left behind.

  Hearing the melodic rhythm of To Wish Impossible Things seemed something like an omen.

  Whether good or bad was the question.

  Because listening to the depressing lyrics they seemed to be a little too appropriate to how I was feeling right now.

  Sheesh, Robert Smith really needed to take a happy pill. How in the hell did Flynn listen to this all the time? It was strange that I had never thought to ask him about his connection with The Cure.

  There are so many things that I still didn’t know about him. And in the years since we had been together, a lot had changed. With me. With how I looked at everything.

  I had busted my ass to graduate. To get the grades and to prove myself. I had even made friends. The type that didn’t hotwire a car or get knocked up by a random. And that was huge progress.

  I tried to smooth out the gigantic chip on my shoulder and perhaps become something almost likable. I even started wearing makeup again; trying to look prettier. I wasn’t doing to for anyone but myself.

  I couldn’t help but wonder, with a burgeoning panic, whether Flynn would fit in this new world I had created. What would he think of the girl who wore soft colored eye shadow and used her phone to actually call people she liked? Would he still care about an Ellie that had tried hard to mend the pieces that were broken inside her?

  Our connection had been between two people marginalized and forgotten. Would it still be there when we became something better?

  What would I do if it wasn’t?

  We had seen each other so little since I had left that I couldn’t even be sure that my fears were all in my head.

  When we had seen each other, it was on neutral territory. He had never made the trip to Maryland until right before I left. And I had made it very clear I wouldn’t be going back to Wellston. Not until I felt I was ready. Instead we would meet somewhere in the middle. With Flynn carefully planning everything.

  Sometimes it worked and we’d have a lovely few days. Sometimes, like the first weekend we had gone to see each other, it had ended with Flynn losing his shit on the hotel receptionist.

  I had finished my classes two weeks ago. I had been able to finish up a semester early, graduating in December rather than in the spring with the rest of my classmates.

  That had been purposeful.

  I wasn’t the type of girl to get caught up in the pomp and circumstance. I didn’t need the fancy show of putting on the cap and gown and receiving my diploma. This was about more then making a show of my accomplishments.

  I didn’t want to share that moment with anyone except Flynn.

  And he was there. Even if he had been freaking out the whole time.

  He had been there.

  It was one of the few times in my life that someone had chosen to stand by me. Julie Waterman, my social worker when I was a kid, sent flowers and a card, which I knew was heartfelt. But I had come into her life as a client. I was part of her job. I was an obligation she had, at first, been required to take on.

  Flynn was there because he wanted to be. Because he cared. And that was the best reason of all.

  I changed the radio station, The Cure starting to grate on my nerves a bit. I figured I’d grow weary of the constant barrage of Robert Smith vocals soon enough.

  I thought back to those final weeks of school and how hard it had been for me to leave.

  After Flynn had gone back to West Virginia following my graduation, I had tied up my loose ends.

  When the day came for me to load up my car with my possessions, I realized I possessed little more than I had when I had arrived.

  A laptop, some better clothes, and a few framed photographs of Flynn I had sneakily taken over the course of our relationship.

  And my sculptures.

  They too had grown in number. I had left with only the sand castle. But Flynn had added to my collection steadily. He would send them in the mail with almost psychic precision. As if knowing exactly when I needed them.

  He was sort of great like that.

  Three days ago I had stood in the middle of my barren living room, boxing up the last of my belongings. The tiny apartment that I had lived in for the year had never felt like a home. Neither had the dorm before it. So it wasn’t the great accommodation that I would miss.

  “You’re moving back to West Virginia, huh.” I looked over at a cute girl with brown hair and offset eyes. She was making a face that looked a lot like disgust.

  Nadine Hardesty was a friend. An honest to goodness, text-at-least-twice-a-week, grab-coffee-after-class, drags-me-to-bars-I don’t-want-to-go-to-friend. She was a strange combination of perky and dark sense of humor. She would listen to Taylor Swift and then later watch The Evil Dead. She was an odd chick.

  She had lived down the hall from me that first, uncomfortable year at school. When the old Ellie and the potential new one were fighting for supremacy. She had been pushy and direct and I liked her against my better judgment.

  She was also an English major and it was over hours of dissecting Chaucer and Falkner that I finally figured I wasn’t going to get rid of her anytime soon.

  She had been in complete disbelief when I said I was moving back to West Virginia. “Are you going to work in a coal mine?” she had asked, aghast when I had explained my plan. She had also graduated early, saying she was totally done with the college scene. Her parents, who were more than happy to finance their daughter’s quest to “find herself,” were chipping in to help her pay for a place in New York City.

  “Nah. They shut it down years ago,” I had answered her without a trace of humor.

  “What sort of job can you possible get there?” she had asked, pointing at her computer screen that showed a map of a town I knew all too well. She was right of course. Unless I had desires to pour coffee or wait tables, there weren’t many options. I was going to try really hard to avoid being crowned the new local beer wench.

  I had shrugged. “I’ll find something.” Even I hadn’t really believed me.

/>   “I think we need to re-evaluate your mental coherence,” Nadine had muttered.

  “Yeah, I’m moving back to West Virginia,” I had said with a little more vehemence than I had intended. But she was only exacerbating my own misgivings.

  On that final day as she helped me load my final boxes into my trunk, and put in one last ditched effort to get me to change my mind.

  “I really wish you’d reconsider coming to New York with me. We could get a trendy place that is way too expensive with barely any room. We’ll sleep on crappy air mattresses and have to walk up too many flights of stairs. We can live off ramen noodles and drink great coffee for five bucks a cup while wondering if we’ll get shanked on the subway late at night. It’ll be great,” she laughed, already knowing my answer.

  A part of me wanted to say fuck it and go. It was just wild and crazy enough to be appealing. I had worked hard to get my degree. It felt like such a waste to throw it away on a hick town in the middle of nowhere.

  The thought of living in New York sounded like an incredible dream. One that I could almost envision being my own.

  But then I’d be lying to myself.

  Because in the end there was only dream worth having.

  And it lived two hundred and sixty-nine miles away.

  He had made sure I knew exactly how many miles separated us.

  “It sounds awesome, Nadine. Seriously.” I slammed the trunk closed and leaned against the side of the newish Toyota I had been forced to get after my old clunker had called it quits. I sort of missed the comfortable familiarity of the banging engine and smoke billowing out of the exhaust pipe, and the adrenaline rush that only came from driving up a hill and not being entirely sure the brakes wouldn’t give out.

  “Then come! I just don’t see why you’re so dead set on going back there. I thought you hated that place. I know Flynn’s great and all, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up on what you want,” Nadine complained.

  She was high on her fem lib rationale, not understanding why it was so important for me to go back to Flynn. He hadn’t made the best impression when he had come out for my graduation. He had been his typical rude and bluntly honest self. He had asked her whether she was aware that one of her eyes was bigger than the other and then proceeded to stare at her the entire time.