Release

by Aly Martinez

  His tail wagged, and after stealing the last bit of cheese, he trotted after me.

  Unfortunately, so did Ramsey. “Where ya going?”

  “Somewhere.”

  “Hang on. Let me put my bike up and I’ll come too.”

  “No.”

  “No? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I don’t want you to come with me.”

  “Why not?” He kept following me, matching me step for step.

  “Because I’m trying to get away from you.”

  He barked a loud laugh that echoed off the houses on our quiet street. “No, you aren’t.”

  I made a show of speeding up. “I’m pretty sure I am.”

  “Then you’d be wrong.” He abandoned his bike on the curb and fell into place at my side in his usual spot in the grass.

  It wasn’t lost on me that my dad didn’t have a usual anymore, but Ramsey did.

  I just didn’t want Ramsey’s usual, at least not right then.

  “Go away,” I grumbled, stopping at the end of the sidewalk.

  There was an old dirt path that led through the woods to the Wynns’ farm. It was going to be a nightmare to navigate it on my crutches, but the pressure in my chest was building by the second. I needed to get out of there fast. Maybe go sit under the Wynns’ tree and hold my breath until I could convince the cruel universe to cut me some slack. I needed—

  “All right, hop up,” Ramsey said, appearing in front of me. He squatted with his back to me as if he expected me to jump on for a piggyback ride.

  I was about to have a nervous breakdown and he was offering a piggyback ride.

  Fan-freaking-tastic.

  “Go. Away,” I seethed.

  He ignored me, backing up so he was only inches away. “Drop your crutches. We’ll get ’em when we come back.”

  “Come back from where?”

  “I don’t know. I figured the tree, but we can go wherever you want.”

  Unable to hold it in any longer, I broke. On the one person who never deserved it.

  “There is no we,” I snarled. “Why are you so stupid? Do you have mental problems? I’m trying to get away from you!”

  His body went stiff as he stood up straight. I couldn’t see his face, but for the first time since I’d met him, I was positive he wasn’t smiling.

  His hands fisted at his sides as he spun on a toe to face me. “Stop calling me stupid! If I wanted insults, I’d stay at home with my dad.”

  “Well, maybe you should,” I fired back before his words had a chance to sink in. “I bet he at least likes you.”

  If I hadn’t been so damn mad, I would have seen his flinch and taken a second to read the pain as it flashed across his face. But I was a volcano mid-eruption and poor, sweet Ramsey was in the path of destruction.

  His jaw ticked as he stared at me. “You are such an asshole! You know that? I was trying to be nice to you. That’s all I’ve ever done. And you’re always so damn mean.”

  “I don’t want you to be nice to me. I want you to go away and leave me alone!”

  “Why?” he snapped, taking a giant step toward me. “So you can go hide, feeling sorry for yourself because your mom died? Oh poor, pitiful Thea. Wah, wah, wah.” He rubbed his eyes like a crying baby before slapping his hands on his thighs. “Well, you know what? I don’t feel sorry for you. She died. So fucking what.”

  I loathed pity. Avoided it at all cost. But right then, from Ramsey of all people, the absence of it felt like a slap to the face. “Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about. I watched her die. Do you have any idea how hard that was?”

  “Yeah!” he yelled back. “Probably a lot like watching my mom back out of the driveway knowing she was never coming back.”

  My chest heaved as I opened my mouth, ready to scream exactly how much I hated him, but nothing came out.

  Ramsey hadn’t mentioned his parents much. I’d seen his dad once in the driveway coming home from work, but I didn’t spend a lot of time outside. Ramsey was always so happy that I assumed he had a decent parent. Though I might have been too preoccupied with my own emotional turmoil to notice the signs of his. Or maybe whatever this was about had just happened.

  My heart shattered as understanding suddenly dawned on me.

  Tragedy and crap parents weren’t isolated to me.

  “What happened?” I asked. It was quite possibly the first question I’d ever asked him—or at least the only one where I cared about the answer.

  His chest rose and fell with heavy breaths as he shook his head. “Your mom didn’t choose to leave you. She’d still be here fighting if she could. And not everyone’s that lucky. Maybe you should think about that before you go around treating everyone like dog crap.”

  I kept my voice low and firm. “Ramsey, what happened?”

  He cocked his head to the side and stared at me. “What do you care, Thea?”

  My stomach twisted.

  I hated that he thought I didn’t care.

  I hated that up, until that moment, I had thought I didn’t care.

  But it was Ramsey. How could I not?

  “Because we’re friends,” I whispered.

  He scoffed, but I didn’t take it to heart. I deserved that.

  I inched closer until the foot of my crutch was almost touching his shoe. “I’m sorry, okay? You’re right. I wasn’t thinking. I had a bad night and… Well, you’re always there when I need you. And I think tonight you might need me.”

  “I don’t need you,” he told the ground.

  I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or not. But after everything he’d done for me, even when I hadn’t wanted him to, I owed Ramsey something huge. However, when you’re ten, options for payback are limited. So, dropping one crutch and balancing on my good foot, I gave him the only thing I had. The one thing I’d truly needed over the last few months.

  His tall, lanky frame went solid as I wrapped my arms around his waist and pinned his arms to his sides.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Hugging you,” I mumbled into his chest.

  “Yeah, I got that. But why?”

  “Because you won’t tell me what’s going on, so I’m just doing it and hoping it will help.”

  He squirmed in my grip. “Let me go.”

  “Nope.”

  “Thea, I’m serious.”

  “I am too. You need a hug. I’m giving you a hug. Just accept it.”

  He blew out a ragged breath, but after a second, his body sagged. “You would have punched me in the balls if I hugged you tonight.”

  “Probably.”

  “Any chance you’ll let go if I tell you what happened?”

  What I wanted to say was: Absolutely not. After the initial shock of contact had worn off, I liked hugging Ramsey. He smelled like dirt and sweat, but he was warm and comfortable, his heart playing a soothing melody in my ear.

  Unfortunately, I was really curious about what had caused some Freaky Friday attitude switch between the two of us. I was the cranky friend. Not him.

  “Promise you’ll tell me the truth?”

  He sighed. “I promise.”

  Reluctantly, I released him. The loss was staggering as the cool night air stole his warmth.

  He backed away, but not before leaning down to retrieve my crutch. I hated when he helped me, but it was so classically Ramsey that I couldn’t help but smile.

  His eyes narrowed on my mouth. “Did your dad give you some booze tonight? You’re acting weird.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Nope. That would have required him talking to me.”

  “Your dad sucks too, huh?”

  “He’s the worst.”

  Ramsey kept his voice low, but there was a jagged edge to it I’d never heard before. “He hit you when he drinks?”

  “What? No. He just ignores me.”

  Ramsey hummed in acknowledgement and then squatted to pet Sir Hairy, who had long since given up on our walk and cu
rled into a ball at our feet.

  “It could always be worse,” he said. “He could hate you.”

  “Is that what happened tonight? You get in a fight with your dad too?”

  His eyes lifted to mine and for the first time I recognized the torment brewing within them. “No. Tonight he got into a fight with my mom. She left over a month ago and called to tell him she was sending over the divorce papers.”

  My heart stopped. “A month ago?”

  “Yep. On Nora’s birthday, she told us she was going out to get Happy Meals, took our order and everything, and then never came back.”

  Oh, God. Suddenly his explosion about my mother made a lot more sense.

  “Ramsey, I—”

  He wedged his hands inside the pockets of his jeans. “I knew something was wrong, but you should have seen Nora’s face. It was like the kid had never tasted a chicken nugget in her life.” His smile returned, but this wasn’t the Ramsey Stewart special I’d grown accustomed to. It was a lot sad and entirely heartbreaking. “One month, two weeks, and four days later and Nora’s still waiting for her to come back. I don’t have the heart to tell her it’s never gonna happen. She and my dad were fighting on the phone tonight about who had to keep us. Not who got to keep us. But who had to. From what I could gather, she’s in Texas with a soldier she met online. I don’t know. And I honestly don’t care, either.”

  My.

  Heart.

  Stopped.

  I glanced at my watch. One month, two weeks, and four days was the exact amount of time since my mother had died. Which meant…

  “That day? In the tree?”

  His eyes lifted to mine. “I told you I wasn’t spying on you.”

  I rocked back as guilt plowed into me with the speed of a runaway train. Ramsey’s mom might not have been dead, but we had both been at the tree that day mourning a life we would never get back. I’d spent every day since feeling utterly lost and alone, when in reality he had always been there, silently suffering right beside me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why would I tell you? You’ve hated me since the day we met. Calling me names. Dodging me every chance you get.” His lips tipped into a genuine smile so familiar that it eased the ache inside me. “You don’t even like me, Thea. So why on Earth would I tell you about my mom?”

  His words might as well have been a rusty dagger for the way they slayed me.

  I was a horrible person.

  My father was probably still sitting on the floor by the door, crying after what I’d said to him. And now, Ramsey, the only person who gave a damn about me, was standing in front of me, thinking I didn’t care about him.

  I was worse than horrible. I was horrible and cruel and selfish.

  “Ramsey…” I trailed off without the first clue what to say. I’m sorry wasn’t enough. “I do like you.”

  He shrugged. “I know you do. I figure you would have poisoned me by now if you didn’t.”

  I choked out a laugh. “I’m really, really sorry.”

  “Nah. Forget about it. I said some stuff about your mom too. And I’m sorry your dad sucks. I don’t really like to talk about it, either. So if we could just, ya know, forget this happened, that’d be great.”

  I couldn’t forget though. Not after finding out how much Ramsey and I shared. But that wasn’t what he needed to hear at the moment. “Consider it forgotten.”

  That time when he grinned, my heart skipped a beat.

  “Listen,” he said, “I know we can’t outrun all of this stuff and hide forever, but if you want, I’ll always be around to help you try.” He turned, once again offering me a ride on his back. “But maybe, in the future, you can give me a warning about the hug thing.”

  I didn’t quite understand it yet, and I wouldn’t for years to come, but in hindsight, that was the exact moment I fell in love with Ramsey Stewart.

  I stood there staring at his back for several seconds. I didn’t deserve him. I would never deserve him, but I’d never wanted something so much in my entire life.

  “Come on. Flutter up, Sparrow. We ain’t got all night.”

  I didn’t hesitate another second before I dropped my crutches and hopped onto his back.

  And because Ramsey wasn’t done shining his bright light onto my dark existence, I even smiled when he took the leash from my hand and gave it a gentle tug, asking, “You’re really going to make me call this dog Sir Hairy, aren’t you?”

  To explain how I fell in love with Thea Hull, I’d need to go back to the beginning. Fair warning, this is not a story of hearts, flowers, and romance. That would all come later. But in the beginning, my love for Thea was born out of death, broken hearts, and desperation.

  Coincidentally, that was also how it ended.

  When I was eleven years old, my life was in shambles. My family had recently been evicted from our house. The one we’d lived in since I was born. It didn’t matter that the place was a piece of crap, essentially falling down around us. It was home. Or it had been until I got off the bus from school to find all of our belongings on the street corner.

  We didn’t have much. My mom had pawned anything of worth months earlier trying to keep us afloat for a while longer. But I’d never forget as long as I lived the embarrassment heating my face as Nora and I were forced to dig through the piles to gather our clothes in garbage bags. My old “friends” stood around laughing and pointing, and after that, I wasn’t all that sad about moving anymore.

  Maybe a fresh start was exactly what we needed.

  It couldn’t hurt. It wasn’t like my parents could fight more than they already did. Sometimes they’d hurl insults with words. Other times it was with fists. Starting at about the age of nine, wrestling my dad off my mom had become a monthly activity. It hadn’t always been that way though.

  Once upon a time, before he’d gotten his third DUI and lost his driver’s license, my dad had been a truck driver. It was nice when he was on the road. My mom would cook Nora and me grilled cheese sandwiches—her specialty—and then let us watch TV way past our bedtime. We didn’t have to be quiet for fear of pissing him off or tiptoe into the kitchen so he didn’t hear us getting a snack. Without him around to bitch and complain, my mom would get the phone, smoke cigarettes, and talk to one of her girlfriends for hours. I still remember looking over at her each time she’d laugh, her head thrown back, her mouth open, and her short, brown hair brushing her shoulders. I relished in the sound because it wasn’t one I got to hear often.

  When Dad was gone, my mom was a totally different woman.

  Don’t get me wrong. Whether he was home or not, she was always smiling. It was how I learned what an incredible disguise a grin could be. People didn’t pry about why you had bruises if you were happy. Nor did they inquire if there was enough food to feed your children or if your husband had spent all of his money on beer, video poker, and truck-stop hookers. (Yeah, my old man was a real class act.) People didn’t actually ask questions at all if you were sporting a smile. It became my family’s greatest defense.

  Around town, we were known as an all-American, hard-working family.

  Behind closed doors, Nora cried herself to sleep every night, hugging a ragged teddy bear to her chest.

  Behind closed doors, my mother wrapped her battered ribs with bandages.

  Behind closed doors, I lay in bed, dreaming of all the places I wanted to go when I finally escaped that hell.

  I had high hopes for the small town of Clovert. It was only sixty miles away, but that was more than enough distance for me to start over. The new house was a dump on the inside, with peeling linoleum, filthy carpet, and holes in the walls, which my father promised to patch in exchange for a discounted rent. The outside didn’t look so bad though.

  That was exactly how I lived my life, showing the world a pretty exterior to hide the disaster on the inside.

  And trust me, on the inside. I was a disaster of epic proportions. I’d failed fifth grade. Math was n
ot my thing. Neither were science, history, English, tests, quizzes, or homework. My mom told me she’d pick up an extra shift at the restaurant to pay for me to go to summer school so I didn’t have to repeat the year. My dad said he wasn’t going to waste a single cent on a dumb fuck who probably wouldn’t make it any further than eighth grade anyway.

  I hated that man something fierce, but when he made up his mind, there was nothing that could be done to change it. And for some reason, my dad had made his mind up that I was a loser who would amount to nothing when I had still been in diapers.

  Luckily, I had my mom. No matter how hard things got, she was always there with a warm smile and a kind word.

  Until she wasn’t.

  She left on a sunny Sunday afternoon with a big purse busting at the seams thrown over her shoulder. I knew she was never coming back the minute I saw her answer a cell phone my father didn’t know she had.

  I’d imagined running away every night since I was old enough to dream. But in my dreams, I’d taken her and Nora with me. We were a family. The three of us against him. Forever.

  In the end, my angelic mother, who I’d placed on the highest of pedestals, proved she was no better than he was.

  She blew me a kiss as she backed out of the driveway.

  She wasn’t crying.

  She wasn’t frantic.

  She smiled.

  And then she was gone.

  So there I was, eleven years old, abandoned by my mother, stuck with an abusive father, repeating fifth grade, completely overwhelmed with life, crying in a tree, belt in hand, trying to convince myself that Nora would be okay without me.

  Cue Thea Hull.

  The first time I saw her, she was sprinting across a hayfield. Her long, brown hair, the color of the sparrows we used to feed in my old backyard, flowed behind her as she raced to the base of the tree I was hiding in. I’d love to wax poetic about how she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, because one day, she would become exactly that. But right then, she was just a girl who had interrupted me while I was on the verge of self-destructing.