"Probably. I'll take myself, though."
"Knock it off. I can bring you to the hospital," I argue. "You just passed out from the sight of blood then nearly drowned. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that driving isn't the smartest idea."
"But,” she says between wheezes, “you made it clear you didn't want to see me. I don’t want to put you through more.”
Haven wraps her arms around her shoulders, hugging herself tightly as she shivers through the wetness encasing her body. I’m sure she has hypothermia and needs warmth. It’s cold enough out here as it is. I pull my soaked shirt off and sit down beside her, knowing the only way to warm her up is from my body heat. “Don’t go thinking I’m trying to be a dirtbag,” I warn, while wrapping my arms around her small body.
She doesn’t say a word or budge as I tighten my grip around her, holding her in a way I tried not to dream about throughout so many of those long nights. Being this close now, I’m still fighting not to feel anything, with hope of blocking out the residual anger and the lingering feelings I have always had for her.
After a couple of minutes, her shivers subside, and she peers up at me from beneath her dark, wet lashes. The look on her face makes me feel things I’ve refused to let myself feel—a type of grief that comes along with an understanding of her decisions.
"I've been angry at you, Haven. I'm not going to deny that. I'm mad at a sixteen-year-old kid, though, not a twenty-three-year-old who almost has her head on her shoulders." I release a sigh in response to the kind words coming out of my mouth. I promised myself I wouldn’t cave like this—not after seven years of torture and prison beatings due to being labeled a “child molester”. Yet, here I am, falling right back into the place I was in before I got taken away.
Feeling warmth fill her arms and torso, I release my embrace, placing a little space between us. I’m not sure anything I say right now will make much sense to her, but I have these built-up things in my head, and I never thought I’d either get the chance to tell her or have it in me to look her in the eyes again. "Do you know what attracted me to you when we were younger?"
She shrugs her shoulders and pins me with her questioning gaze like she’s wanted this answer for a long time. "I have been wondering."
"Besides your beauty," I say, tugging at a wet strand of her sun-kissed hair.Quit touching her. "You wear your heart on your sleeve. I understood your resentment and appreciated your hostility toward your parents because they were behaving in a way you disagreed with, doing things you knew were wrong. That quality in any teenage girl isn't something you find every day."She doesn't deserve these words.
"I'm afraid I'm not as strong willed as I was once," she tells me. "I gave up on a lot of battles after what happened with you. I told my dad I was the one who lied, and again, he threatened me against opening my mouth. " She pinches the bridge of her nose, shaking her head with shame. "At the time I feared his threats, but I'm no longer afraid of him. I’m ready to stand in the middle of the street and scream out the truth. Maybe that's what I should do."
As much as I'd love to see that, it wouldn't make a difference. When people have an image of someone burned into their minds, there's no undoing it. This town made up its mind about me long ago. "That wouldn't fix anything," I tell her. She rests her head on top of her arched knees and stares up at me as if I have more of an explanation. But, I don’t. Instead, the blood dripping down her leg has caught my attention, and I realize I need to get her to the hospital right now. “We need to get going. That wound is starting to bleed pretty well again.”
She looks down at her leg, and the color that had just begun to refill her cheeks falters back to pale.
I grab my shirt and help her up as I gently lead her up the hill toward the unmarked path. "What will people think if they see us together?" she asks.
"I couldn't care less about that right now," I tell her.
“Okay,” she agrees, though there is definite hesitation in her one word.
Haven silently struggles and limps along the path as her skin color continues changing by the second since she keeps looking down at the blood dripping toward her feet. Trying to think of a way to distract her so she doesn’t glance at the wound again, I spit out the first thing that comes to mind. "How are your parents doing?" That question may have been more of a distraction for me than her, but from the moment I ran into her yesterday, it’s been one of two things I’ve wanted the answers to.
"They're uh—good, I guess," she says, keeping it short.
"They still living in the same house?"
"Of course," she said. "Hasn't that always been the house the mayor of this town lives in?"
Her father probably told her that so he could cover more of his dirty tracks. "No, not always." But that answers my question of whether that man is still the prick mayor. "The mayor's salary isn't high enough to afford a plantation house like that one."
"That's true," she says.
"I take it your dad hasn't returned all the money he stole yet?"
"No,” she says, her words almost inaudible. “I don't think he ever will."
Yeah, we'll see about that."You never know when the truth might catch up to him, I suppose."
"True. Actually, I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet." The conversation comes to an end as we approach her car, which is probably a good thing since the filter I once had on my mouth is no longer intact, and God knows, I have nothing good to say about the mayor.
"Do you want me to drive?" I ask just to be courteous, but I have no intention of letting her drive anywhere right now.
She doesn't answer; instead, she walks over to the passenger side and slips inside. Iguess that answers my question. I duck into the driver’s seat, adjusting the chair so my head can fit beneath the ceiling of this little coupe. "Sorry," she laughs softly.
"It's all good." The second I get behind the wheel, I come to my senses, realizing I haven't driven a vehicle in seven years. Nor should I be driving without my meds, but I don’t know of another good option at the moment. “You didn’t want to call someone to come get you or anything, do you?”
“Please, no. There’s no one I’d want to call for help,” Haven pleads with her wide-eyed focus frozen on the windshield.
