“Yours.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
For Real
Anthony
I might not have ever left town, but I’d been running for years myself.
My mind ran laps around memories of people I could never talk to or touch again. I was haunted by what ifs, by unfinished conversations and questions that no one aside from God would ever have the answer to.
I called them my demons, a rather affectionate term for a darkness I had no other name for. The therapist Daisy hired after my parents’ death had their opinions, but what did they know?
Post Traumatic my ass.
I wasn’t even there when the explosion happened.
My brother was.
The firemen barely got him out, if you hear Daisy tell it.
Eric was the only survivor, and a part of me had always felt some type of way about that fact. I never could explain it, really. It wasn’t resentment.
He wasn’t lucky to have experienced it.
Moreover, it was the nagging wonder of whether things would have been different if I was there. Would I have known my dad was cooking his meth while mom was sleeping? Would I have been able to alert my mother enough for her to go to Aunt Daisy’s house with us, as she sometimes did when he was too out of his mind to be messing with things?
I was haunted by a two-sided figure that I’d never come to terms with. One half of his face was the father I idolized, the other half was the madness that consumed him when he got caught up in his meth endeavors. The side that cost me my mother.
It had always been a joke to call him a mad scientist, until the explosion.
I had to risk life and limb to shut those demons up, until I met her.
She silenced them.
Every last one. It was only me and her, and a road full of possibilities when we were together, and for once in my life I saw a glimmer of… something.
Hope?
I needed to hear her say it. I needed to feel her with me. I wanted her to hold on for the long ride, not just for right now. I needed her to know in that pretty, blonde head of hers that she was mine and this was real.
I didn’t sleep, but I laid there holding her, watching her, until she stirred just before dawn.
A laugh caught in her throat and she bugged her eyes. “What are you doing staring at me like that?”
I teased my finger along the edge of her face, tipped her chin up and stole a kiss before she could object. Her fingers flew up to my mouth, and she began protesting about brushing her teeth, until I let her slide out from beneath the covers and scamper off to the bathroom.
The shower kicked on, but I refused to budge. The check out time wasn’t for hours and I wasn’t in any hurry to leave her. I didn’t want to leave her at all.
I had to figure out how to get her over her fear of going home with me.
I laid there replaying the ride in my mind again.
We’d been so close to the Raymond exit. If I’d have made it there, I’d probably have taken her hostage.
I laughed at the mental image and the door popped open. Crystal stood there, toweling her hair and giving the room a slow once over.
“What are you laughing about? I thought maybe someone stopped by.”
