Never Let You Go

by Chevy Stevens

  “Where are you?” he says.

  “I’m in the spare bedroom. It’s nice.” The room is fresh, with pale turquoise-blue walls, and a white bedspread with crisp dark-colored tree branches and a splash of teal sky at the top. When I woke up this morning, I felt like I was in a summery sea of cool blue, which was soothing until I heard Mom talking in the kitchen, until I remembered we’re on the run again.

  “Why are you speaking so quietly?” he says.

  “I don’t want my mom to hear.” Okay, so it was a little bit of a white lie when I told her that Jared didn’t know where we were going. He didn’t know the exact address. I just didn’t see any reason to hide anything else from him. It’s not like he’s going to tell my dad.

  He leans closer. “School sucked without you today.”

  “I wish I was there too. My mom and I drove around and visited some art galleries.” Mom’s face was tense as she negotiated the Vancouver traffic, her smile fragile, though she kept it plastered on—as if I don’t know she’s upset. She insisted we stop at Starbucks for a treat when normally she complains about how expensive everything is there, so I knew we were going to have another “talk.” I ordered a peppermint tea. My stomach couldn’t handle anything else.

  “What’s going on with your dad?”

  “He got arrested today. My mom’s trying to make it sound like he’ll leave us alone now, but I can tell she doesn’t really believe it.” She drank her coffee in record time while she talked, her fingers shredding the empty package of sugar into a million little pieces of confetti, her reassuring smile still in place, but I’ve seen it too many times for it to be any comfort.

  “So when are you coming home?”

  “I don’t know. I think she’s worried my dad will get away with everything and she might want us to stay living here. Jenny has extra bedrooms and Mom doesn’t own our house anyway.”

  “What about your mom’s business?” His dark eyes look worried, and he’s leaning really close to the screen. I like that his voice sounds upset and he’s not trying to hide it. If he acted like he didn’t care, that would make this whole thing suck even more. If that’s possible.

  “I heard her talking to Jenny in the kitchen before you and I started Skyping. Jenny was telling my mom that she could get her lots of new clients in the city, and rates are higher.”

  “I don’t want you to move.”

  His words fling a little hope into my heart, a delicious exhale of happiness and warmth. “I don’t want to move either, but we’ll be going to university together in September.” We’ve both been accepted to UBC in Vancouver. Different programs, but we’ll be on the same campus.

  “That’s like nine months away.”

  The way he says it makes it seem like an even longer time. Like an impossibly long time.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I say. “I don’t want to live here.”

  “Can you stay with Delaney?”

  “I mentioned it to my mom, but she’s too freaked out.” I tried to slip it in. You know, Delaney’s parents have an extra room.… But I shut up as soon as I saw the look on her face.

  “Does she think he’s going to hurt you?” Jared’s propped on his elbows on his bed, and it’s making his muscles bunch in his arms. I remember how firm his body had felt against mine when we were making out, how much stronger he was than I thought.

  “I wasn’t scared of him in that way. But I think he’d hurt my mom. Did you know he followed us home that night?”

  “Are you serious? I drove all over the place.” He’d taken different roads, up and down the neighborhood, while I’d watched my side mirror for Andrew’s truck headlights.

  “I know.”

  “Maybe I should go watch his place and see what he’s doing.”

  “Oh, my God. No! Don’t do that.”

  “Okay, but you just say the word and I’ll tell him to fuck off.”

  I love how protective he’s being, but he looked scared when my dad sat down with us. I glance at my door. I can hear the rattles of pots and pans, and smell food cooking, something with garlic and onions. “I should go. Dinner’s almost ready.”

  “Skype later? We can watch TV together.”

  I slide sideways on the bed so it’s like I’m lying next to him. “I really miss you.”

  He shifts his body so he’s lying on his side too. “I like looking at you like this,” he says. “I wish I could touch you.” He raises his hand and touches the screen.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I say, the distance making me feel brave, safe to say what I’m really feeling. “Like what would have happened if I hadn’t said no.…”

  “I’m glad you said no. It wasn’t the right time. I want you to feel good about it and trust me. So you know this is a real thing.”

  That breathless hiccup is back in my chest again. “Is this a real thing?”

  “It is to me. I hope you come back to Dogwood soon. I’m having a party this weekend and I can’t believe you’re not going to be here.”

  I roll over onto my stomach. “Party? What party?”

  “My parents said I could have some people over, just the usual suspects.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “It would be more fun if you were here.” His phone chirps, and he picks it up, reads the text with a smile, then quickly taps out his reply. I’m surprised. He doesn’t usually check his phone when we are talking—and he never replies to anyone that fast, except me.

  “Who’s that?”

  He finishes sending his reply, then looks back at me. “Just Taylor.”

  Taylor. The pretty blond girl he used to date last year. The one he broke up with because he thought she was too flirty. She’s popular, athletic, always wears trendy clothes, and actually seems nice. I remember when they were dating. They looked like the perfect couple.

  “You still talk to her?”

  “Sometimes.” He shrugs. “She had a fight with her parents and wanted to know if I could go for coffee.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her I was busy.”

  It doesn’t sound like he mentioned my name. Does she know I’m his girlfriend? All my happy feelings start to evaporate. “Is she coming to your party?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” He gives me a funny look. “What’s the problem?”

  “Nothing. I just don’t have time for games.” My eyes sting and my face feels all hot and I know I look upset. “Maybe you should go for coffee with Taylor. She obviously still likes you, and I have a lot going on in my life. I can’t even come to your party.” The whole conversation is spiraling out of control, but I can’t stop my runaway thoughts.

  “Wait, stop. I won’t invite her, okay?”

  “It’s not like that.” But it is like that, and now he probably thinks I’m some deranged jealous girl, and none of this is really important because my real life is so messed up, and now he’s angry, his face pulled into this expression I’ve never seen before. He looks older.

  “This is because of your dad, right?” he says. “You’re stuck in Vancouver and you think I’m going to dump you because I don’t want to deal with it?”

  I’m silent. He’s cut right through to the bone, and I don’t like how it sounds.

  “I don’t care where you live,” he says. “You’re the only girl I want, and I can get through anything with you, okay? But I wish your dad would go away.”

  Everything in me settles down, a quiet sort of calm spreading through my body, like how sometimes during a winter storm the wind just stops. He understands.

  “It’s like he’s taken over everything, you know? He’s gone crazy.”

  “Yeah. Someone needs to show him what crazy really looks like.”

  I frown at him. “What does that mean?”

  “Depends on what you think is crazy?” He’s smiling, but it’s a different kind of smile than I’ve seen on him before. I don’t like it. I hear footsteps coming down the hall. “My mom’s comi
ng, I have to go. I’ll sign on later.” I end the call, then stare at the screen with my heart thudding hard in my chest. What if he goes and talks to my dad? What if they get in a fight?

  My fingers hover over my keyboard. My mom is getting closer. She stops outside my door. “Dinner’s ready, Sophie.”

  “Okay. I’m just finishing up my homework.” Her steps fade back down the hall. Jared’s icon still shows him online. I should call him back and make sure he stays away from my dad. My phone rings and I grab it, glancing at the call display. I don’t recognize the number. Andrew?

  I press the phone against my stomach, muffling the sound for a moment while I think. I don’t know what to do. Turn my phone off? Call my mom? Talk to him?

  Before I can think any more, I answer the call. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Andrew. We need to talk.”

  “I told you to leave me alone.” My blood is rushing so fast through my body and my head that it feels like I’m in a tunnel, everything dark and closed in and loud.

  “Sophie, this is serious. I’m in jail.”

  “Yeah, for hurting Greg.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “You keep saying that none of this is your fault and I still don’t believe—”

  “Shut up for a minute. I’m trying to help you.”

  I’m so stunned by his words that everything else I wanted to say dies in my throat.

  “Who has your mom been hanging out with? Has she pissed someone off?” he says. “Someone is trying to get to her and screw me up. When are you going to listen?”

  I stare at the calm blue walls, my ears ringing. The way he’s talking to me. It’s all familiar now. I’ve heard this voice. I’ve heard him talking to my mom like this.

  “When are you going to stop lying?” I say. “Mom is right. The only person you care about is yourself, and now my whole life is fucked up. Because of you. I wish you’d disappear.”

  “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, Sophie.” The way he’s speaking scares me more than I’ve ever been in my life. It feels like I’m standing in the middle of a road and a big truck is coming straight at me. He’s angry, but there’s something else in his voice that I don’t understand. It’s like he’s making some strange sort of promise, and I’m terrified of what that means.

  I open my mouth, my throat so tight I have to strain to speak. “I have to go.” I end the call, pressing my finger down hard on the keyboard, and then throw my cell onto the bed with so much force, it bounces off and clatters onto the floor.

  “You okay?” my mom’s voice floats down the hall.

  “Yeah, just dropped my phone.”

  “Your dinner is getting cold.”

  “Be there in a second.” I open my sketchpad and rip out every picture that had anything to do with Andrew. Then I sneak outside into Jenny’s backyard, the pictures clutched in my hand, and shove them under the metal grate over her fire pit. I light the corner of one sketch with a match. The flames leap and crawl over the drawings, eating everything in their path, turning the paper black. I watch until the fire has destroyed every last page and it’s all crumbled into ash.

  Gone is the drawing of our fishing day at the river. Gone is the drawing of his new house with its ocean view. Gone is the drawing of his work boots with melting snow. Gone is the sketch of his hands next to mine. They’re all gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  LINDSEY

  “Do you want to stop for coffee?” Jenny asks. We’re walking in the park near the beach, where we’ve been taking Angus every night after dinner.

  “Better not. The caffeine will just put me more on edge.” It’s been four days since we left Dogwood and Parker just called a couple of hours ago to let me know Andrew is out on bail. Unless the police find more evidence that he hurt Greg, they’ll drop the charges. I need to make some decisions soon if Sophie and I are going to move, but I keep faltering when I pick up the phone to call my landlord. This is the most important year in Sophie’s life. She should be graduating with her friends, obsessing over prom dresses, not having her life ripped to pieces.

  Jenny glances over. “What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know when this nightmare will end. Even after Sophie moves out, Andrew can still get to me through her. What do I do? We’re living like fugitives.”

  “I wish I had the answers.” She gives me a sympathetic look. The wind is whipping off the ocean and she stops to tie her hair back, her eyes squinted in concentration. We’re the same height and our shoulders bump together as we start walking down the path again.

  “I feel like a rat in a labyrinth and I keep scurrying around looking for the exit. We’re not even safe in Vancouver with you. He could easily hire a private investigator.”

  “So what would you like to do?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. Do we just move back to our house and stop running?”

  “He won’t leave you alone.”

  I watch Angus chase a seagull into the water and give a whistle, calling him back to my side. He returns with a lopsided grin, his fur wet, then bounces down the trail in front of us. It’s stormy today, the waves hitting hard on the shore with a smack. The rocks are slippery and covered with kelp, and the occasional eagle circles above our heads, riding the wind up and down.

  “I think all the time about how much I wish Andrew had died in the accident that night,” I say. “I hate feeling like that about the father of my child.”

  “You’re human. I try to forgive my ex-husband, but when he messes with our kids’ heads, I wish he was dead too.” Both of Jenny’s kids are in university, old enough to understand their father’s mental games, but he still has a way of sucking them into his web of lies, getting them mad at their mother for some imagined slight, then spitting them back out when he’s finished.

  “I used to have fantasies about buying a gun,” Jenny says. “I came close once.”

  “Really?” I’m startled, can’t imagine my petite friend walking into a gun store, smacking her hand down on the counter, and asking for a weapon. Though, come to think of it, maybe I could see her at a shooting range, her steely eyes focused onto a target as she bangs off shots.

  “I know. I’m supposed to be so Zen, but trust me, that man had me thinking some murderous thoughts many nights. It felt like the only way out sometimes.”

  “Sophie was telling me about the butterfly effect, how one small decision changes everything. She asked me if I have any regrets.”

  “Do you?” She glances sideways at me.

  I wonder if I could confide in Jenny about how I drugged Andrew so I could escape with Sophie. I know she would understand and if anything would probably give me a high-five, but I’ve been holding on to my secret, and my guilt, for too long.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “We can’t go back in time.”

  “That’s true. We can only move forward. Maybe you should run away to the States. Andrew has a police record. They wouldn’t let him into the country.”

  “What about Sophie? I can’t leave her here.”

  “Do you think Andrew would hurt her?”

  I think for a moment. “When she was younger, I worried about him disappearing with her, or driving when he was drunk, but I didn’t think he would ever deliberately hurt her. Now I don’t know. If he sees he can’t control her, I don’t know what he might do, you know?”

  “I know. It’s terrifying. It’s like there’s a ticking bomb sitting right next to our children, but there’s nothing we can do about it.” She looks frustrated, her face red from wind and anger. She picks up a rock and throws it into the water as hard as she can. Then another.

  I watch for a moment. I understand what she’s doing, trying to find some small way to alleviate the stress, the trapped feeling. I pick up a rock too and throw it into the water. Angus bounds in after it. Jenny and I both stand still now, our hands tucked into our pockets.

  “When I go back to Dogwoo
d tomorrow for the girls’ paychecks, I could ask Andrew to meet me and have Parker waiting outside. Then I’ll provoke him. If he attacks me, they’ll have to arrest him.” I’d forgotten about payday until Rachelle called a couple of hours ago asking for hers.

  Jenny turns. “Are you insane? He could kill you.”

  “Not if Parker gets him first.”

  “That’s too big of a gamble, Lindsey—she’ll never go for it.”

  “You’re right. It was a stupid idea. I’m just desperate.”

  We keep walking, both lost in thought, our feet slipping and sliding on the uneven beach trail. Angus’s collar jingles as he runs ahead, then comes back to check on us.

  Jenny stops again, this time so suddenly I think she’s going to fall. I reach out to grab her arm, but she’s perfectly still, looking me straight in the eyes.

  “Don’t go back. I have a bad feeling.”

  “The girls need their checks and everything is saved on my home computer. I’ll ask Marcus to meet me at my house, okay?”

  “Okay, but I still don’t like it.”

  I step closer and grab her for a hug. She squeezes hard, her cheek cold against mine. I can smell her lavender lotion. She makes it herself, adds sage and avocado. I tell her that she shouldn’t put food on her face. She always laughs.

  “Please don’t get yourself killed,” she says as we pull apart. “I don’t want to raise another daughter. Mine are trouble enough.” Her mouth turns up in a smile, but her eyes are scared.

  “I won’t.” I try to sound confident, but my head is filled with the memory of Andrew’s hands tight around my throat, his face twisted into a grimace that almost looked like a smile.

  * * *

  Sophie is in her bedroom, Skyping with Delaney, who’s helping her with an assignment. She hasn’t mentioned Jared, but her cell has been chirping with texts constantly and she raced back to her room to Skype after dinner last night.

  “Come in,” she calls out when I knock softly on her door. She’s sitting on the window seat, staring out. I sit near her feet and follow her gaze. In the distance there’s a glimpse of ocean lit by moonlight. The sky is clear this evening and full of stars. I remember how Andrew used to point all their shapes out to Sophie and my breath hitches in my throat.