Wild War

by Laurelin Paige

  Frustrated, she tried to pull away, and I didn’t let her because that was the last thing I wanted. “I’m just asking the question. Wonder out loud with me, will you?”

  She sighed, but she stayed. “I tried to report him once. I showed one of my teachers the belt marks I had on my back.”

  “What happened?”

  “Teacher got fired, and I couldn’t walk for a week.”

  I wanted to argue with her, wanted to tell her it would be different if we both went forward with the proof of our injuries, wanted to tell her that it didn’t have to be like that this time, but I couldn’t promise her that it wouldn’t be.

  It was too big a risk to take.

  “You did the right thing,” I said, absolving her from her guilty conscience. “You had no other choice.”

  I’d already decided that there was no way I could go back, but this sealed that. I would have to be a runaway like Bernard Arnold. I wondered if the police would even be called to look for me. I was already eighteen, and I had a damn good feeling that Stark didn’t want me in his house again.

  It was okay. It was going to be okay. We were already planning to leave. Just had to readjust our plans.

  So then, what now?

  Jolie leaned back abruptly, apparently following the same train of thought. “It doesn’t matter, Cade. It doesn’t matter what people think. We’ll leave. Okay? Same plan as before, but we’ll leave sooner. That’s all. I should have packed some things for me, but that’s fine. We have time. I can run back home now. Or…or I’ll leave it all behind. I don’t care about anything. Let’s just go. Find the keys and go.”

  She was agitated and worked up, and even if she’d been calm, I would have wanted to give her what she wanted. It was definitely an option. We could go. I’d already checked to see if the keys to Janice’s truck were where she’d shown me before. Like Jolie said—same plan as before. Just leave now.

  But while I was unsure whether or not I’d be looked for, I was positive the cops would be sent after Jolie. She was still only seventeen. Knowing him, he’d come after her and charge me for kidnapping.

  Jolie didn’t need me to explain any of that. She already knew, and no matter how emphatic her plea was to run away, I could tell she knew she was lying to herself when she fell to her knees and brought her hands up to cover her face and cry.

  I dropped on my knees in front of her, once again folding her into an embrace. “It’s not that long, baby.” I kissed her hair and rubbed her back. “It’s seven weeks. Still just as long as it was yesterday. Only difference is you’re going to have to be in that house alone, and I’m sorry about that.”

  She started crying harder.

  “Shh, shh, Jolie.” I wasn’t used to seeing her so broken. So much of my own strength was stolen from her, and I didn’t know if I could watch her crumble without crumbling myself. “Please don’t, baby.”

  “I can’t be there without you,” she said, and I realized the reality of our circumstances must be just hitting her. She’d only packed things for me, so on some level she already knew, but knowing wasn’t the same as accepting. “I can’t. I can’t without you. I’ll die.”

  “You aren’t without me. I’m here. I’m yours. Listen to me, Jolie. Look at me.” I pulled her hands down from her face, made her look me in the eye. “You know this is the only way. You know it. Tell me you know it.”

  She blinked at me, her sobbing paused.

  “Think it through. If you don’t go back, he’ll find us, and then he could keep us apart forever.”

  She hiccupped, her chin quivering. “But what about you? You can’t stay here.”

  “No, I can’t.” I didn’t know where I’d go, but that was less of a worry than what I’d survive on. I could sleep in the truck at the side of the road. I couldn’t live without food for two months.

  I didn’t want that to be her worry. I had nothing to give her, but I could give her that.

  Suddenly, her eyes widened. “The cabin! You could stay at the cabin!”

  “Your father’s cabin?” I’d only ever heard about it.

  “Yes! You can go there!” She was excited now. “There’s like a six-month supply of dry goods. You might have to break a window to get in. No, wait! He keeps a key hidden in the garage. On the boat, in a compartment by the front console. Oh, and the safe! There’s probably a little bit of money in there. I think the combination is my birthday.”

  “Jol, I can’t…” Could I? It sounded too easy.

  “He won’t go there again until school is out.”

  “How… I don’t even know where it is.” Or if the truck had enough gas to get to Sherman. Or how I’d figure out where Sherman was.

  “The address is easy. It’s Atchison Cove. Ten Atchison Cove. I was ten when he bought it, and I thought it was so cool that it was the same address as my age. Plus, it’s on a big sign out in front. Ten Atchison Cove, Cade. It’s only an hour away. You can stay there, and no one will know, and then come back for me.”

  “Come back for you,” I repeated, readjusting the plan in my head. “After graduation. But I couldn’t come back here.” The truck would be recognizable.

  “The C Town. We’ll meet there. I’ll find a ride.”

  “How?”

  She shook her head like it was a trivial matter. “I don’t know. Someone. There will be lots of people going that direction. Amelia! I can ask her.”

  “Okay. All right. I’ll stay at the cabin until graduation. Then I’ll come back.”

  “You’ll come back.”

  “Yes.”

  It must not have been emphatic enough for her because she grabbed onto the jacket I was wearing, clutched on tight, as though I were the only thing keeping her from drowning. “Promise me, Cade. Promise me you’ll come back for me. You have to promise me.”

  If I hadn’t already been on my knees, her pleas would have pulled me there. “Oh, baby. I’m coming back for you. I’m coming back. I’ll always come back for you.”

  I remembered the stupid pipe cleaner in my pocket, but pulling it out didn’t feel ridiculous. It felt earnest and sincere. “This isn’t what you deserve, Jolie.” I laughed at how insufficient the comment was. “It’s not even close to what you deserve, but what matters is what it means.”

  Taking her left hand, I wrapped the pink piping around her ring finger, once, twice, three, four times, until it was wound tightly. She was crying again, these tears falling silently and slowly down her cheeks.

  “We can’t have a real wedding,” I said. Everyone we knew thought of us as siblings, but who did we even care about having there anyway?

  “I don’t care about that. All I care about is being with you.”

  “Be with me. Be with me always. Whether it’s heaven or hell, whether we sink or swim, be with me, Jolie. Say you’ll be with me.”

  “Yes, yes, yes.” It was a litany. “Yes, yes. Yes, Cade, yes.”

  I stared at the pink decorating her finger. If I looked at her, I’d cry too. Shit, I might have been crying already. “One day, it will be a real ring.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I love you.” She placed her hand on my cheek, and I looked up then. “I love you,” she said again. “You’re everything, and I love you.”

  I kissed her like we had forever.

  I kissed her like it was goodbye.

  One of those was right for today. And then in seven weeks, it would never be that kind of kiss again.

  Twenty-Two

  Jolie

  Dad pulled the car into the garage and turned off the engine, the motorized whir of the garage door closing behind us the only sound.

  I didn’t move.

  Everything hurt. Every part of my body. It wasn’t like the usual physical pain I experienced, pain caused by abuse. That kind of pain radiated everywhere as well—it could make my head throb or my stomach hurt—but there was always a center. There was always a place where the pain originated.

  But my father hadn’t touched me in
weeks, and this pain was different.

  Every part of me ached. My feet, my legs, my chest, my ribs. My face. My teeth.

  My heart.

  I hadn’t known it was possible to hurt like this. I couldn’t have believed the magnitude until I’d experienced it, and for the first time in all my years, I understood what it truly meant to want to die.

  My father sat next to me, seeming as unanxious to get out of the car as I was. We hadn’t spoken on the ride back from the school, which took all of two minutes, and we didn’t speak now, letting long breaths pass in silence.

  “You must be tired,” he said finally, his eyes focused somewhere vague in front of him.

  Exhausted was a better word. I planned on sleeping for a week, if he’d let me, and he might. He’d been careful with me lately. He’d been nice—driving the short distance so that I wouldn’t have to walk in my heels, for instance—which was almost more devastating than when he was cruel, because they always followed each other, and it was easier to be in the cruel than to be waiting for it.

  Worse, this had been a particularly long stretch for him, going on three weeks. When the kindness dragged out, I started to get used to it. I found myself forgetting and making excuses and loving him. Actually loving him, despite everything he’d ever done to me. Everything he was still doing to me.

  It was the part that made me feel the most ashamed—that I could care so much for the person who had been the most horrible to me.

  “I am tired,” I said, staring into the same nowhere that he was staring into. He’d let me stay out late, another example of his kindness, later than I’d ever stayed out before.

  Of course, he’d stayed at the after-graduation party as a chaperone, so it was still a favor on his terms, but it was a favor all the same. One he would expect me to be appreciative of.

  “Thank you again for letting me stay out.” The words were mechanical. My thoughts were elsewhere. “What time is it anyway?”

  I remembered the dashboard clock as soon as I asked and moved my eyes to check at the same time he said, “Almost one.”

  I swallowed hard past the ball in my throat. One in the morning. Three hours late for when I had agreed to meet Cade. Was he still sitting in that parking lot, waiting for me?

  I’d thought I was all cried out, but my eyes pricked again, my vision swimming. It was too late to change my mind now. Even if he was still waiting, I’d lost any chance of sneaking away when the party had ended.

  I glanced at the keys hanging from the ignition. I’d never been allowed to learn to drive. Was it something I could figure out on the fly?

  I thought about Carla asleep inside the house. She’d come for the ceremony but left afterward. She’d shown little emotion over the weeks about Cade’s disappearance and the accusations my father had hurled upon him, but tonight she’d been less cold. Her eyes had been sad, and when Dad had told her to perk up or take her mopey ass home after the ceremony, she’d chosen the latter.

  Maybe she could drive me. I had the sudden urge to ask her. If I got her alone, if I begged, if I told her she could see Cade again, could tell him goodbye…

  I closed my eyes, shutting down the inclination. I’d made my decision. I’d put careful thought into it. I’d considered every angle, every option. This was the only choice I could make. The only one I could live with.

  But God, did it hurt like I would die.

  With a sigh, my father opened his car door and got out. I followed his lead, letting his actions guide me since I couldn’t trust my own will. Knowing he detested anything left in the car, I opened the back door and retrieved my cap and gown, wrinkled now after having been worn and discarded. Habit had me worrying that I’d be reprimanded for that, and when he was standing by me when I shut the door, I immediately got defensive.

  “I should have brought the garment bag,” I apologized. “I can steam it in the morning. Or tonight, if you prefer. It will be good as new.”

  He waved his hand dismissively, as though it was silly that I’d thought such a thing. “I just wanted to say how proud of you I am, princess. You’re all grown up and graduated and making adult decisions. I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter.”

  He put his hands on my upper arms as he bent down to kiss my forehead, and I tensed, as I always did when he touched me. My head could put moments into context, but my body didn’t know when one of his nice touches would turn into a not-so-nice touch, and it often reacted before I could calm it down.

  Unfortunately, he noticed. He often did, and it always pissed him off. “I can’t even show you a little affection without you recoiling. I’ve gone out of my way for you, and this is how—”

  I cut him off. “You just surprised me.” I forced myself to relax. Forced myself to lean into him for a hug. “I appreciate all of it, Daddy. Thank you.”

  He took a beat before he returned the embrace, and I made myself go numb. Made myself focus on counting the seconds as they passed. One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand. Four—

  Then it was over, and I could breathe again.

  “Here. Let me take those for you.” He took the cap and gown out of my hands, as if they were a burden to carry. Without them, I didn’t feel any lighter. “Did I tell you how pretty you looked? The photographer said he got a real nice shot of you all dressed up.”

  He turned toward the kitchen door, then stopped when he saw the full garbage can. “Oh, shit, it’s Thursday. You forgot tomorrow’s trash day.”

  Even when he was being nice, he still was rigid. The chore had been my responsibility since Cade had left, and it didn’t matter that I was tired or that I was in heels or that he was trying to win me over—if it was my job, I needed to do it.

  I didn’t have the energy to complain. “I better get it out then.” With my elbow, I pushed the button to open the door again, then rolled the big can between the two cars, out of the garage, and down the driveway. When I got to the road, I dallied before turning back toward the house.

  If I stayed here with the trash, would the garbage truck take me too?

  I was still contemplating when a rock bounced on the road by my feet. I stared down at it, and another rock skidded by.

  Abruptly, I turned around, my eyes scouring the dark landscape, looking for the source of the thrown rocks, a prayer whispering on my lips. Please, don’t be here, please, don’t be here.

  But my heart was wishing for just the opposite, and I nearly collapsed with relief when his whispered shout reached me. “Jolie. Jol.”

  He was at the shed, crouched down in the shadows, but there was no question it was him.

  Quickly glancing at the house to be sure my father was still inside, I rushed down the drive as fast as I could in the stupid dress shoes, kicking them off once I reached the grass. I was already almost to him when my brain stepped in to remind me this was over. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t help myself. He was here, and I had no choice but to run to him.

  “Oh my God, I didn’t know if you’d come out.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I said at the same time.

  But I was in his arms, letting him hold me tight while I cried into his neck. It had been seven weeks since he’d asked me to be his bride. Seven weeks since I’d last held him in my arms. I’d imagined a million different lifetimes for him. Wrote and rewrote what happened to him next, and this was not in any of those endings.

  I wasn’t supposed to see him again. I’d thought I’d never hear his voice, never feel his touch.

  I was practically breaking apart with relief.

  I clutched him tighter, breathed him in. Had his scent changed in the last two months? It was still so...him...but different too. Older, somehow. More intoxicating.

  Less mine.

  No, no. This wasn’t relief. This was torment. This was worse than never seeing him at all because his being here didn’t change anything. It couldn’t change anything at all.

  And if my father saw him...

 
I tore myself away and repeated my words, as much for me as for him. “You can’t be here, Cade. You can’t. Why are you here?”

  “I came for you. I came for you. I’m so—” He was emotional and had to swallow before going on. “When you didn’t show up, I was so worried he’d found out. I thought he’d locked you up. I was ready to break into the house if I had to. Could you not get away? Could you not find a ride?”

  I shook my head and tried to take a step back, but he grabbed my hands and held them between us. “What’s wrong, Jolie? Whatever it is, it’s okay. I’m here.”

  I shook my head again. “You have to go.”

  “We can go now. The truck’s parked down the road.”

  “No, I can’t. I can’t.” I pulled my hands away from him and brought them to my face as if that could stop the waterfalls of tears down my cheeks.

  I felt his eyes land on my hand, the empty place where his pipe cleaner ring had sat the last time he’d left. “Jol?”

  It was half a word, one syllable, and yet I could hear he was on the edge. This was my fault in every way imaginable, but I needed him to take some of the blame. I couldn’t be the one who broke him. I couldn’t, and yet I knew I was going to break him so hard, whether I witnessed it or not, but seeing him break…

  I wasn’t sure I would survive.

  “Why did you come?” I asked again. “Why?” Imagining his pain had been bad enough. Seeing it was like looking in a mirror with a mirror behind me. The reflection repeated over and over. The pain went on and on and on and on.

  “What are you asking? What…? I came for you, Jolie. We’re leaving together. We have a plan.”

  Shaking my head was easier than speaking.

  But it wasn’t enough. He needed the words too. “That’s not the plan anymore.”

  “Of course, it’s the plan. Why are you doing this?” He stood up straighter, changing tactics. “We don’t have time for this. We need to go.”

  “You need to go. I’m not. I’m not going.”

  “Don’t do this, Jol. Why are you saying these things?”