Easier to Run Read online

  She nodded, but I wasn’t convinced that she was being honest.

  “Cas….” I stared down the empty road. I just wanted her to talk, but I didn’t know what to say. Everything thus far had done little except make her more uncomfortable. What could I ask that wouldn’t set her off? “What’d you do after graduation?”

  “Not much,” she said, her voice high and wavering.

  “College?” She had been about to start her senior year when she went to live with her grandparents.

  She groaned and balled the blanket up in her lap. “No. I b-barely finished high school. C-can we j-just skip all t-the—”

  “Breathe, Cas,” I reached across the cab and squeezed her arm, but she jerked away.

  “D-disappointment.” she finished, glaring across the cab at me.

  “Disappointment?” My breath caught in my chest. “No, Cas. Never. I just want to know what happened—you only had one year left, and—”

  “Wrong,” she said dryly. “Grandparents sent me back.”

  My nerves could have burned through my skin—it was a damn good thing we had an early start and there wasn’t any traffic on the road. “They made you repeat? Sent you back to… tenth grade?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered. Her words became slow and deliberate as she continued to explain. “They said that was where I belonged—with people my age—but was even worse. S-school tried to talk them out of it. It was bad enough when I was a kid, but trying to g-go through it all again. Classes that I’d already taken…. I got fed up.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She perked up and glanced in my direction. “I made it. Just, not according to plan.”

  Pulling the blanket up to her neck, she settled back again, and before I could even think of anything else to say or ask, she was sound asleep. There were a million questions still buzzing through my head. More than even a ten-day road trip could answer.

  I had watched Cassie grow up, watched her finally come out of her shell as she learned to manage her stuttering and found her place in a high school where she was physically everyone’s junior and mentally still above the game. She went with me to my football tryouts, tagged along with me and Rachel at the mall and movies. After her parents died, everything changed. She went to live with her sister, I moved into my own apartment with a friend, but we were still close. She came on the road with me during spring break, a few times over the summer. And even went out on my first overnight run. By the time we got back, the police were waiting for us outside her house. They were there to arrest me after Mitchel set out to make it look like I was the one abusing Cassie.

  I always thought she’d tell me anything, but he had her too scared to tell me what he’d done.

  I should have seen it.

  I should have figured it out.

  I thought all the changes were due to the loss of her parents. I spent more and more time on the road and assumed that her increasing distance from me was just because she was growing up and finding her own place and new friends.

  I wasn’t responsible and yet, I’d convinced myself that I was.

  That shadow of doubt and grief had dogged me for the last six years. I threw myself into work, refusing to slow down long enough to think about anything.

  I hoped that a new start would give her something good, so I kept my distance even though I kept the number I’d tracked down for her grandparents in my phone. I had changed phones four times and programmed the number in every time. Every birthday and holiday I stared at it but never had the guts to call again.

  Cassie and her sister had been my first friends when we moved to Remington. This was the first town that we actually settled down in since I had been in diapers. Dad was always getting relocated for work, and we’d pick up and follow. New places. New people. It kept life interesting, to say the least. Especially when a family of six has to constantly pack up and drive cross country. But after I had to repeat third grade when I couldn’t keep up at a new school, Dad decided to look for something where we could make a permanent home.

  Cassie was my opposite. She kept to herself and yet managed to skip two grades and still do better than me. But even as a kid, I felt responsible for her. Like some unknown force pulled us together, as if it knew she’d need someone when her world fell apart.

  But I failed.

  I didn’t recognize what Mitchel was doing. And I watched helplessly as her grandparents drove her away to her “new life.” I didn’t fight to keep her in my life. I just picked up a bottle and drowned out my own self-pity. I kept moving. Telling myself it was the right thing to do, and never understanding how the right thing could feel so wrong and foreign.

  We hadn’t even been on the road for an hour and all I wanted to do was find a rest stop and convince her to let me back inside that wall she’d built up. I wanted answers to my questions.

  I wanted to put her back together.

  And I worried that by the time we stopped it would already be too late.

  Ben hunched over the dining room table across from his mother, scarfing down the leftovers she’d saved until he got back from his ten-hour haul. Just as he was about to tell her about the apartment he and a friend from work had found, his phone buzzed in his pocket, then blared the ringtone Cassie had set it to.

  “Hey, Cas,” he said.

  “H-hey,” there was a moment of pause as thunder cracked outside. “M-mom and Dad are going to be l-late getting back. It’s k-kinda creepy being here alone when it’s d-dark and stormy.”

  At fifteen, Cassie was already going into the final quarter of her junior year in high school. She’d always been independent and responsible, but never fond of storms, and until her sister moved out a month earlier, it had been rare for her to even have the entire house to herself at all.

  “I’ll be right over,” Ben said without hesitation. It wouldn’t be the first time he stayed with her while her family was away. Living right next door made him a convenient—although unconventional by most standards—babysitter.

  “What’s she going to do without you next door?” his mom asked. Few people really understood the connection between Ben and Cassie. A friendship that was unlikely to work, and yet it never faltered.

  “She’ll be fine.” He chuckled and pulled on a thin overcoat. “It’s not like I’ll be that far away, anyway.”

  “Uh huh,” she murmured with a smirk. “How does she feel about Rachel getting married and moving out?”

  “She hasn’t said much about it,” Ben said as his phone buzzed again. He snorted to himself and accepted the call. “Hi, Mrs. Bryant. Cassie called and I’m going over to sit with her.”

  “Thanks, Ben,” she said. The call was crackly thanks to the storm and a weak signal, so Ben struggled to make out each word. “The storm is holding us up so we might not be back for a few hours yet. Make sure she gets to bed so she can get up for school in the morning.”

  “No problem.”

  Ben slipped on a jacket and darted through the torrential rain to the house next door.

  Cassie was waiting by the door when he ran up the steps to the front porch. He joined her inside, tossed his soaked jacket over the coat rack, and kicked off his wet and muddy shoes.

  “They were sup-posed to be back by now,” she said, locking the deadbolt again.

  Ben nodded toward the living room. “How about we put on a movie, maybe it’ll take your mind off the storm.”

  “Doubtful.” She shook her head. “Dad n-never fixed the screen door in back. Every time the wind blows, it sounds like s-someone’s trying to get in.”

  “No one’s getting in, Cas.” He took her by the shoulder and tugged her into the living room. “I’ll stay until they get back.”

  About two hours into the movie, Cassie’s eyes began to flutter closed, and she rested her head on the arm of the couch.

  “How about you get up to bed,” Ben said. “It’s almost eleven.”

  “Since when did you become such a grown up,” she muttered an
d rubbed her eyes.

  “Go on, Cas. I’ll stay here until your parents get back.”

  She sighed and slid off the couch. “You work tomorrow?”

  “Nope. Four day weekend.”

  “Lucky.” She ruffled his hair as she walked by the chair. “Night.”

  “Night, Cas.” Ben yawned and stretched out on the couch where Cassie had been laying. He’d been up since four and the long day was beginning to catch up to him. Sleep came almost as soon as he closed his eyes, but a couple of hours later, a series of sharp knocks pierced the quiet house.

  Ben sat up, expecting to see Cassie’s parents coming in, but the entryway was empty. He peeked out the window. The storm had passed, but a police cruiser sat on the road at the end of the driveway.

  Cassie

  “Cas,” Ben held out my name, but I didn’t want to open my eyes, afraid that once I did, my illusion of him would fade again. I smelled turkey and pepperoni under my nose and took a long whiff as my stomach growled and left me no choice but to leave my dark sanctuary.

  I took the sandwich he offered and sat it in my lap, blinking away the remains of sleep—even though all I really wanted to do was go back to sleep. I’d barely slept a wink the night before, dreading what he might do when he saw me. Now that our reunion was out of the way, my body and brain had obviously decided that it was time to collapse. “How long was I out?”

  “It’s almost noon,” he said with a tight smile. He was worried, and I didn’t have a clue how to ease it—especially since I’d started it.

  If it was noon, that meant we’d been on the road for almost six hours—I’d slept for six hours—and I hadn’t even had breakfast. My stomach rumbled violently.

  “I thought you might be hungry. Well,” he said eying his own food. “I was ravenous.”

  “N-nothing new there.” He was always eating. Although, he was also always working out, so I figured it balanced out in the end. Things were probably different now that he spent a lot of his time in the truck, but he still looked fit at least—far more than me anyhow. I shook off the sleep and undid my seatbelt so I could stretch out before eating. “Where are we?”

  “Near Springfield, Illinois.”

  “That’s n-not on the way to F-Florida.” I cursed my mouth.

  “No, I told you this run was going to last about ten days. I have a few stops on the way down, then a straight haul back.”

  I grunted. “I had hoped that meant a few days there, a couple days relaxing on the beach, and a few days back.” I knew it didn’t, and I didn’t really care either way. As long as I was in his truck, it didn’t matter where it was or where we were heading.

  “Not going to be much beaching on this trip.”

  He seemed unusually quiet, but it didn’t strike me as particularly odd once I considered the turn of the conversation before I fell asleep.

  “So,” I began, giving myself time to plot out the words before I spoke, in hopes I wouldn’t get too tripped up. “W-what else is new in the life of Ben?”

  “I drive. I see America. Jenny’s expecting her third kid this winter.”

  Jenny was his oldest sister, she’d already been off, married, and one kid in by the time Ben graduated.

  “Misty is seeing someone, and Mark, the old bachelor, is engaged to the mother of his two-year-old.”

  “Two-year-old? D-don’t tell me he has another k-kid, too?”

  “No. She also has a four-year-old, though.” He laughed and shook his head, ripping open a bag of salt and vinegar chips. “Family dinners have become much noisier.”

  At least they were still an option for him. “Noisier than family football nights?”

  “Oh,” he snorted. “You should hear those now. If you stay in town—”

  “I know.” I cut him off, not yet ready to consider that possibility. I snatched the bag of chips out of his hand and dumped a pile next to my sub. Without looking up, I jumped to my big question. “What about you?”

  “Not much news there,” he said, taking the chips back and frowning when he looked at how much I’d left him.

  “No f-fiancé waiting for you?” Now that the coast seemed clear, I felt a little more at ease to joke about it.

  “Nope,” he crunched a chip. “Any boyfriends I should know about—I can borrow Dad’s twelve-gauge and put some fear into them.”

  I snorted and almost inhaled a chip. “Easy big guy. No worries there.”

  I wanted to look into his green eyes and see the same easy-going guy I’d grown up with. For his presence to put me at ease. But as much as I wanted to look past it, and as easy as he made our reunion seem, too much had come between us since our last trip together. “I didn’t think you’d let me come with you so easily.”

  He licked the salt off his fingers and rubbed them on a napkin. “There’s not much I wouldn’t do at your request, Cassie.” Keeping his head lowered as he gathered up the trash and stuffed it into a bag, he whispered, “I wanted to be there for you all along. If I knew that your grandparents—”

  “There’s n-nothing you could have done about it,” my tongue tripped over every word, but it was getting easier, slightly smoother.

  “I hoped a new start would be good for you, so I didn’t press it,” Ben said.

  I nodded, but I didn’t really have words. I had sat in my room and bawled after my grandparents sent him away. Nothing eased the pain and nightmares. And to make everything more miserable, my stuttering took a nosedive for the worse. I didn’t talk to anyone, and when I got brave enough to try, they just looked at me like I was a pathetic moron wasting their time.

  “Just spit it out already,” my grandpa would say. “We don’t have all day.”

  No one understood my signing either.

  “Why don’t you just grow up and learn to communicate like an adult?”

  “If you don’t at least learn to say your name right, you’ll never make it anywhere.”

  “College? You can’t even talk. Who do you think is going to hire you with or without a degree?”

  I finished the sandwich—hoping it’d bury my feelings in the pit of my stomach—pulled my knees up to my chest, and pressed my heels into the seat. Even the ease was awkward. The air in the cab felt thick, filled with energy and unspoken words. I once thought that time would make things easier, but every year without my parents, without Rachel, without Ben, I died even more inside.

  Hope became a thing I feared even more than the uncertain future.

  “Want to go for a walk before we hit the road?” Ben asked. “We have some time.”

  Walk. People. I looked out across the truck stop and dug my chin into my knee.

  “You’ll be with me, Cas. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  I wished I wasn’t so easy to read, but when he held out his hand, I took it without question and slid around the gear shift to follow him out the driver’s side door.

  My feet hit the pavement, and Ben’s arm came around me as the door slammed shut.

  “People aren’t going to think I’m your hooker or something, are they?” I asked, only half sarcastically.

  He grunted and hugged me closer. “No, I don’t think you’re in too much danger of being mistaken for a lot lizard.”

  I’d forgotten how nice it could feel to be touched and hugged. How warm he felt as my body relaxed against his. I let him walk me through the truck stop. The freezing air inside the building assaulted my skin until I shivered and pressed even harder against him.

  It made for a good excuse, anyway.

  I broke away only to look at some of the figurines in the gift area while he busied himself looking through movies on the rack behind me. When I picked up a small glass dolphin, I felt him return to my side.

  “I always pictured you as a marine biologist,” he said.

  Once upon a time, so had I. But apparently my life had more room for “once upon a times” than it did “happily ever afters”. I sighed and returned the figurine to the shelf.

>   Ben nudged my arm. “I still remember the look on your face when Dad took us snorkeling with the manatees—you didn’t even look that excited for Disney World.”

  The memories brought a smile to my face, but they also swarmed around the hole in my heart, reminding me of its existence. I spun and grabbed Ben’s shirt, burying my face against his chest, but the tears I imagined didn’t come.

  “Oh, sweetie, I—” He squeezed me tightly.

  “I’m okay,” I whispered. It was half true. I felt better at that moment than I had in a long time. As far as I was concerned, that was as close to okay as possible.

  Ben kissed my forehead and held me until I released his shirt and stepped back.

  “We have just a few more hours on the road tonight,” he said.

  “I don’t mind,” I said quietly. “I need to hit the bathroom first though.”

  He walked me in the general direction, then headed off toward the opposite door. Once inside, I pulled out my phone and checked my messages—more like I deleted everything in my inbox without even reading it. I knew there was nothing worth reading.

  Or getting upset over.

  But before I could put it away, it buzzed with a new message.

  A few strokes for a good kitten—

  DELETE. I squeezed my eyes closed against the impending tears. At least today’s surprise didn’t include a repulsive dick pic. That was progress in my little world.

  I really needed to change my number again, but then I had to go through the process of getting everything set up so I could be notified by the lawyer in case anything happened with Mitchel. Even thinking his name left a bad taste in my mouth, and every dealing with the lawyer brought it all back to the surface.

  After I’d done my business, I stood over the sink for a few minutes before venturing back outside. I felt bad for making Ben wait on me, but I needed a moment to recollect my calm.

  Ben

  Leaning against the wall, I watched the bustle of people passing through the truck stop. It was a typical afternoon, but it also meant the roads would be just as bad—or worse. My phone rang, and I figured I may as well answer before I hit the road again, but as soon as I saw the number, I rejected the call and shoved it back in my pocket.