Escape

by Jay Crownover

  “I play all the time. I guess I don’t play much at the house anymore. I save it for the paying customers.” His full lips twitched up into a familiar grin, making heat coil low in my belly. All this time and his littlest expression lit me up from the inside out. He was more than potent with age; now he was straight up lethal. “I remember learning how to play Taylor Swift when you were deep in your Swifty phase. Man,” he shook his head ruefully. “I did everything I could think of to make you smile back in those days.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Now all the teenage girls I take out for rides fall in love with me because I can play their favorite songs.”

  That wasn’t why they fell in love with him, and he damn well knew it.

  I chewed relentlessly on my lower lip to keep from blurting out that he hadn’t done any of the things that would guarantee I never stopped smiling. He never kissed me. He never wrapped his arms around me in a hug that wasn’t full of friendship. He never looked at me longingly the way I looked at him. He never let himself love me.

  I returned a strained smile that never quite formed fully and turned my head to look out the window. “It didn’t take much for you to get a smile out of me back then. Anytime I saw you it made me happy. You were the one good thing in my life for a long time. When I saw you, I could leave all the garbage that was going on at home behind and pretend to be a normal kid. I knew you weren’t going to let anything inside the walls of that school hurt me.” I suffocated on the reality of my day to day, trapped in the same house as my mother, and all her desperate choices. But when I was with Lane, I could breathe.

  He made a sound low in his throat and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to a beat only he could hear. “When did that change, Brynn? When did looking at me start to make you cry instead of smile? And don’t tell me it was when I proposed, and you decided to tell me ‘no’. Things were off with us long before you let my dad step in to save you instead of letting me slay your dragons. I’m still not sure how we went from friends to strangers overnight.”

  Clueless. He was clueless. He always had been. I’d gone out of my way to keep my feelings for him to myself because I didn’t want to scare him off. I couldn’t fathom a life without Lane in it, so I played the part of his best friend without complaint, until being around him while he ignored me and chased other girls made it just as hard to catch a breath at school as it was at home.

  “Do you recall asking me to go to homecoming with you junior year?” There was so much in that simple question, and I knew he couldn’t miss the weight of it in my voice.

  I could see his reflection in the glass of the window I was looking out. His handsome face screwed up in confusion as he tried to pull up a long-forgotten memory that was insignificant to him. It was a memory that meant everything to me. I could clearly remember the excitement and thrill when he asked me to go. I couldn’t care less about getting dressed up and going to the dance, but I was elated at the idea that Lane might finally be looking at me as something more than his buddy, his pal, his bestie. I said yes so fast it was embarrassing, but not nearly as embarrassing as the crushing disappointment that followed when Lane explained that he wanted to take Shelby Donner to the dance, but her parents wouldn’t let her go with him. By that time Lane had earned a bit of a reputation as a man-whore, one that was well deserved and sadly accurate. I figured that he only wanted to take me to the dance because he knew I didn’t have a date and then ditch me once we got there so he could hook up with Shelby. If her parents thought he had another date to keep his wandering hands busy they were more than likely going to let her go. He wanted to use me as a smokescreen so he could get laid, and he had no clue that his asking me to cover for him crushed me.

  I went, but I didn’t bother dressing up. I didn’t pretend to have a good time. I walked into the gaudy, tackily decorated gymnasium, accepted Lane’s one-armed hug of gratitude, then turned and walked right back out. I surprised my mom and her most recent boyfriend when I got home early and ended up with a black eye and broken wrist for the perceived violation. They were pissed I showed up early. Mom’s latest mistake thought it would be fun to shave my little sister’s long, beautiful, raven black hair off while I was supposed to be gone. Because if I had been home, there was no way I would have let him get as far as he did. He claimed her beautiful, long, black hair was too much work and made her look too ethnic. He was pissed because he swore that whenever he took Opal off the reservation that people in town looked at him like he had kidnapped her. He didn’t like the whispers and stares, or the fact that she was so obviously not his kid.

  My mom wasn’t doing anything to stop him. She never intervened when she had a man who was willing to pay the bills and warm her bed. My sister was screaming, fighting with everything her tiny body had in it, and when she caught sight of me, she looked at me like I was her very own hero whose sole purpose was to save the day. I was sixteen years old. Way too young, and vulnerable, to be anyone's hero, but I took on my mom’s brutish boyfriend and managed to save my sister’s hair.

  Sadly, that particular boyfriend caught Opal on a sick day when she was home alone and buzzed her head anyway. I wanted to kill him, would have tried, but I was still healing from the previous beating. Instead, I sheared my locks down to the scalp, so my sister didn’t feel alone and embarrassed by her unwanted haircut. Lane freaked out when he saw me the day after, but by then I could hardly speak to him without wanting to burst into tears, so I didn’t try and explain. He always asked about the bruises and marks I couldn’t hide, but the story was always the same, and I was tired of the ending not changing, so I was done telling it.

  I got a little choked up when I remembered that a few days after that he’d popped up at school wearing the same Mr. Clean look as me and my sister. Of course, when he did it, it started a trend, and soon everyone was walking around with shaved heads…well, the boys were. The girls looked at me like I was a freak, but even though I wasn’t talking to him and had started to put distance between us, Lane still refused to let anyone make me feel like I was less than something utterly special.

  “Of course, I remember. You told me you would go, but then as soon as we got there, you ditched me. I spent an hour looking for you until Sutton told me he saw you slip out the side door as soon as we walked in.” His blurry reflection frowned, and I could feel tension fill the space that separated us in the cab of the truck. “When I saw you at school on Monday, you wouldn’t look at me when I tracked you down and asked you what was up. Not that you could look me in the eye because your eyes were swollen nearly shut. I remember your wrist was all fucked up and you wouldn’t let me take you to the emergency room to get it looked at. That was the first time you told me to leave you alone.” He sighed, his tapping fingers picking up tempo as their movements became agitated. “It felt like you slapped me across the face when you said that to me. You were the only person who always seemed to want me around, and suddenly you didn’t want me to be anywhere near you. So yeah, I remember all of that, why?”

  I exhaled long and slow. I leaned forward so I could rest my forehead on the cool glass of the window I was looking out of and tried to force my thundering heart into a regular rhythm. “That’s when things changed, Lane. That night was when we went from friends to something else.” We would never be complete strangers, but I did realize then that maybe I didn’t know everything about him after all.

  I heard him shift in his seat and all the history and hurt between us swelled to nearly bursting. I could practically taste the bitter tang of those memories on my tongue.

  “Why? What was it about that night that changed everything, Brynn?” He sounded genuinely perplexed and old pain laced through every word.

  I lifted my head and let it drop back against the window with a small thud. “The only reason you asked me to go with you was so that you could screw Shelby Donner in the cab of your truck.” How could he be so oblivious to how awful that was for me at the time?

  A sharp laugh huffed out of him which pu
lled my head around. Our eyes locked and I couldn’t look away from the tick in his cheek where a muscle was twitching. “Everyone wanted to screw Shelby Donner back then. I still don’t understand why you walked away from me.”

  I let out a low groan and plowed shaking fingers through my long hair. I refused to cut it beyond a hefty trim when it started to grow back. It took forever to get past my shoulders, and every time I caught sight of the shiny, flame-colored length, it reminded me of everything I’d had and lost in my life. It made me appreciate the little victories when I spent so much time losing.

  “I wanted to be the girl you were trying to get naked in your truck. I wanted you to ask me to the dance because you wanted to be close to me. I wanted you to ask me so that you could slow dance with me and cop a feel. You were everything to me. Everything. And all I was to you was some girl you had to take care of when you weren’t too busy fucking your next conquest. I loved you, Lane, and for a while, I could take all those other girls, but then one night I couldn’t.” There it was, the unvarnished truth. My jealousy was bigger than my fear of being without him. My need to protect myself outweighed my wanting him to want me back.

  His handsome face twisted into a furious scowl. His dark brows lowered over his pale eyes, and that lush mouth that was so quick to smile, instead turned down into a frown so fierce it sent a chill dancing up and down my spine. Lane didn’t get angry often, but when he did it was like a storm rolling in over the summer sky. Angry clouds gathered in his sky-colored eyes, and his emotions rumbled with the force of booming thunder through the small space we were enclosed within.

  His head cocked to the side, and his voice was barely more than a rough growl when he bit out, “If you loved me, then why did you tell me no when I asked you to marry me, Brynn? If you wanted me, why did you reject me?”

  It was the one thing he admitted to being terrified of. Loving someone and having them leave the way his mother had left them over and over again. He was scared to death of the fact that sometimes love wasn’t enough. I’d loved him, but that didn’t seem to be enough, and that was the impenetrable wall we could never seem to climb. It was there, made of bricks of regret and mortared with remorse.

  It was more than wounded pride and hurt feelings that kept him from trusting me and caring about me the way he had before. I always accepted him and recognized what it was that made Lane so special, but when I told him ‘no’ when he asked me to marry him, all he heard was his mother telling him he wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t his former best friend; I was exactly the same as the one person who was supposed to love him always but only ever found him lacking.

  “I told you ‘no’ because you never kissed me.” One kiss. That was all I needed from him. It would have changed everything. I needed a sign that he could feel for me what I always felt for him. “All you ever saw were the bruises and the black eyes. You had no problem kissing my boo-boos and patching me up, but you never kissed me for real. You saw me as a victim, not as a potential girlfriend or lover. I was a charity case that you could fix. If you had shown one iota of interest and passion toward me—the real me, not the beaten and broken version—I would have said yes even though we were both too young and it would have been a terrible idea.” He’d asked me to marry him while I was in a hospital bed, groggy and terrified that as soon as the doctors released me, they would send me back to my mother and the man who had put me there in the first place. It was the least romantic proposal ever. It was something that was necessary in Lane’s eyes…yet it was tragic in mine.

  My mother’s worst mistake was a man who was worse than the bully who beat me up and shaved my sister’s head. He was dangerous and was tangled up with some really bad people. A month before my eighteenth birthday he’d tried to drug me and sell me to one of his business associates as payment on a loan he was behind on. Lucky for me, one of Opal’s teachers noticed that she had been sneaking leftover food from a trash can in the cafeteria and questioned her about what was going on at home. My little sister broke down and told her that there was no money because it was all going to my mom’s new boyfriend, so she was only eating one peanut butter sandwich a day. The teacher called child protective services who showed up along with the reservation police just as my mother’s garbage boyfriend was trying to hand my unconscious body off to his cohorts.

  The boyfriend and the creepy sex trafficker got arrested, and my mom lost custody of both me and Opal for a short period of time. But native laws tended to be strict and antiquated. It wasn’t long before Opal went home to my mother. I refused to go back. I poured my heart out to Lane when he came to check on me at the hospital even though our friendship was fractured. I told him I was running away and that I was taking Opal with me. There was no way I was ever going to be in the position of being used as human currency again, and I wouldn’t risk my sister.

  Lane immediately dropped to his knee and asked me to marry him. If I was his wife, my mother’s rule and tribal law no longer had any say in my life and in my sister’s future. I wouldn’t have to risk my life by waiting until I was eighteen to get out if I was married.

  I told him ‘no.' I had to, but three days later Boyd Warner approached me with a serious expression on his ruggedly handsome face and a ring in his hand. He explained that Lane told him what was going on under my mother’s roof and he explained that he wanted to help. With tears in his eyes, he laid out that he only had a year or two left to live, the cancer was progressing fast. All Boyd wanted before he passed was to make sure his family was okay, and Lane was not okay with me being in danger every time I walked in my mother’s door. He asked me to marry him in name only and told me if I agreed he would talk to my mother and make sure that she had no reason to risk Opal’s safety anymore. If we were married, he could take an active role in protecting Opal, and the tribal police couldn’t fight him on it because he would be family.

  I said yes. I had to. I did it through tears knowing everything I wanted was going to burn with that single word. I knew deep down if Lane had ever bothered to kiss me, if he had ever given me any indication that he could care about me the way a man was supposed to care about the woman who touched his soul and stole his heart, I would have had a different answer for him from the start.

  “It all comes down to a kiss?” He sounded stunned and slightly taken aback.

  I sighed and closed my eyes so I could steal myself against the kaleidoscope of emotions that were flashing across his expressive face. “Like I said, you kissed all my scrapes and scratches, but you ignored my biggest injury, the one that hurt the most.”

  “Your broken wrist?” Some of the grit in his voice had lightened.

  “No, my broken heart.”

  We made the rest of the drive in silence, and I was grateful because anything he had to say, any assurances that what we had was better than what we could have had, would have been too little too late.

  Chapter 5

  Lane

  Past or Present

  Joshua Tree was impressive at sunset. The retreating sun painted the rocks with fiery light and turned the barren ground a thousand different shades of red and gold. The campsite we picked wasn’t overly busy, but several families were wandering around snapping pictures and posing next to the famous bushy limbed trees that littered the area. It was quiet, aside from the excited chatter of the other campers, but the silence that stretched long and seemingly infinite between Brynn and me felt heavier and far bigger than the national park we were calling home for the night.

  I liked to believe that I wasn’t a completely oblivious male. Even as a teenager I paid attention to the people around me. I was good at reading a situation and responding accordingly. I had to be to survive my parents’ prickly, unpredictable relationship. I learned to play whatever part was needed to keep the peace, and I learned to be whatever kind of son my father needed me to be when my mom bailed time and time again.

  But looking back it suddenly hit me that it was Sutton who pointed out that Brynn was grow
ing into her coltish legs and filling out in ways that had the rest of the guys at school taking notice. She was almost as tall as I was back then, luckily, I’d had a late growth spurt and now stood eye to eye with my oldest brother who was well over six feet. Her long, red hair was always eye-catching, but at some point, her dark, exotically shaped eyes became her best feature. It took me longer than I wanted to admit that I suddenly noticed that I wasn’t the only boy in school keeping track of Brynn Fox’s comings and goings. Of course, I knew she was more than beautiful, and my teenage libido recognized how hot she was, but my heart, that sad, confused, mistreated thing could only focus on the fact that Brynn needed a friend just as badly as I did. There was no stopping the refrain that sometimes love wasn’t enough to keep the people you needed the most with you.

  She was correct when she said that I only ever saw her as a victim. I called her my wounded bird for a reason.

  I watched as the bruises got worse the older she got. I seethed with silent rage every time she winced in pain or cowered in fear when someone bigger and stronger than her invaded her space, which was why I started standing between her and anyone I considered a threat. I begged her to talk to someone, to ask for help. I wanted her out of that house of horrors, and I longed for Harmony Fox to get a taste of what she was putting her daughters through.

  Brynn told me over and over again that no matter who she talked to or what they did to intervene, the tribal authorities would always return her and more importantly, her sister, back to their mother. Brynn’s mother was half Crow, and her grandfather was deeply involved in the politics and struggles of the reservation where she grew up. She told me over and over again that she wouldn’t leave her sister since she was the only one standing between Opal and all their mother’s twisted machinations. She felt like it was a no-win situation and I felt useless every time I tried to help her.

  Back then I thought the way she looked at me might have changed as we got older. I felt her pull away when I started dating and sleeping with pretty much every single girl in our class who wasn’t my stunning best friend. Our hugs no longer felt innocent and harmless. There was something else trapped between us, and I couldn’t figure out a way to get around it or get over it. There was no way in hell that I was ever going to treat Brynn like I treated other girls. I needed her too much to risk our relationship. For me sex was fleeting, a way to pass the time and feel good while my home life remained shaky and unsteady underneath me. My dad tried to give us a little bit of everything, but he could never make up for the fact that our mother never missed an opportunity to let us know how each and every Warner ruined her life. The ranch was failing, as many were when the economy crashed, and my older brother was getting ready to leave for college. Brynn was my constant when things were at their worst, so even though I wanted to kiss her and to touch her like I did all the other girls that passed through my adolescence, I refrained. I didn’t want to break her heart and give her a reason to leave me; now I knew I’d driven her away instead. I’d forced her to go.