“Okay, we are fixing to have to go. Remember, I am here to help you if you need it.”
“Thank you, Cassie.”
“Bye,” I whisper in the phone.
“See ya,” he replies then hangs up the phone.
I place the phone back on the hook. I don’t understand why I feel sorry for him right now.
True to my word, I give the guard the piece of paper with our current address on it so he has the option to write me.
As I leave the jail, I feel a sense of relief, like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
I am leaving the jail feeling fully content with my life for the first time in three years. And it feels amazing.
Chapter Forty- Seven
Cassie
Bo is driving J and I up to Birmingham so I can speak with Mr. Mackey, who has my parent’s will.
J asked Bo to drive us in case he needed to console me. I don’t know what the man will say or read, but I’m grateful for J’s quick thinking. With the new revelation I discovered yesterday, I’m sure I’ll need him to hold me.
The guys tried to cheer me up during the hour drive north, and it sort of worked until Bo pulls in the parking lot of Mr. Mackey’s law firm.
The nerves take over planting butterflies in my stomach. Thank goodness J is here with me to hold my hand. I have a feeling I’m going to need him to lean on.
As I feared, Mr. Mackey’s reading of my parents’ will had me bawling my eyes out. They left me a small box, which I haven’t opened yet. My parents are gone and I won’t ever get a chance to repair our broken relationship. Maybe I should have tried harder to get them back on the right path. I gave up on them and now I regret it.
Not only did they leave me a box, but the other news left me stunned. My parents’ stated in their will that if anything were to happen to them, I was to be in my Aunt Beverly’s care until I turn eighteen. I have three weeks left until my eighteenth birthday and I don’t know how I’m going to survive being without J for that long.
My Aunt Beverly is a wonderful lady. I haven’t seen her since a month before we left. She lives in Indy as well so I will be ten hours from my boyfriend, my everything for three whole weeks. I will be leaving J and his family tomorrow. They will drive me to the airport, where I will meet up with a lady from the Department of Human Resources. She will be accompanying me to Indianapolis and taking me to my Aunt’s.
Bo is driving us back home while J is holding me in his arms, whispering soothing words in my ear. My hands wrap around the small box and I clutch it to my chest. I’m afraid to open it for fear of what’s in it will trigger another round of sobs.
“Cassie, baby, seeing you like this is gutting me. I wish there was something I could do to take this pain away for you,” J murmurs softly in my ear. “I will miss you like hell, Cassie, but what’s keeping me going is knowing I will get to see you again.”
Oh, J. I didn’t think about how this will affect him. I look up, my eyes finding his soft brown ones.
“Just you being here, holding me, loving me, is enough. I couldn’t do this without you,” I breathe, my hand moving up to cup his face.
He leans into my touch, closing his eyes as he inhales deeply before slowly releasing the breath.
“I will always be here, Cassie. That will never change.”
I half smile. “Good, because the three days I was apart from you was pure torture. I missed you teasing me, and I will surely miss it while I am away from you. At least this time, I will have a way of communicating to you.”
J kisses my hair, his lips lingering before he replies. “Damn straight. Is that all you missed about me?”
“No, I missed your smile, your kisses, and your hugs. Pretty much everything about you I missed.”
“I bet you missed everything about me too. Didn’t ya, darlin’?” Bo boasts from the front seat.
I shake my head. “Nope, not at all.”
“You wound me, woman,” he mocks, holding his chest like I just stomped on his heart.
“Can we go to our tree when we get to your house?” I ask J, snuggling closer to him.
He drops a kiss to my temple. “Sure, Cass.”
Later that evening, J backs the four-wheeler out of the garage and waits for me to climb on before we set off toward the woods.
When we climb off the four-wheeler, I grab the blanket I snatched on the way out of the house and spread it out in front of our tree so we can sit and gaze at our creation we carved.
I walk over to our tree, reaching out with my hand, tracing the pattern of our initials. I hear J step up behind me, his hands resting on my hips.
“The morning after you went missing and we didn’t have any leads, I came out here and sat for a long time. I asked God to bring you back to me, safe. I stayed out here so long Bo ended up coming to look for me and drag me home.”
“J,” I whisper hoarsely, my throat clogging up. My heart is crumbling for how scared he must have felt.
“Cassie, did he…did he touch you?”
“No, not in the way you think. Let’s sit and I’ll tell you everything.”
J drops his hands from my waist and sits down on the blanket first. When he is comfortable, I take a seat in between his legs and lean back against his chest.
Over the next thirty minutes, I tell J every detail from the moment I woke up in a different place with a someone I thought I knew. As I tell J the story, I wonder what is running through his mind, what he is thinking.
His jaw hardens and his body tenses up as soon as I tell him the lie Zack fed me. Thank God, my brain was functioning properly that night-morning-whenever it was or I’d have believed Zack’s crap.
J’s expression looks murderous by the time I’m through telling him.
“J,” I call his name when he hasn’t breathed a word in the last five minutes. He has been dead silent, staring off into space, not moving, and it is scaring me.
“J, look at me,” I plead, lightly shaking him.
My shoulders sag in relief when he finally turns his head to look at me. Sorrow fills his eyes, overpowering the rage I had felt building inside him.
“Talk to me.” I need to know what is going on inside his head.
He shakes his head like is erasing his thoughts. “Sorry, Cass, it’s just taking me a minute to process all of this.” He pauses, gathering his thoughts. “Someone kidnapped my girl with the intention of holding her against her will. What if we didn’t get to New York in time? I think he knew by the third call what was happening.”
I spin around and get on my knees so I can look him in his eyes. “But you did, J, and I’m safe. That’s all that matters.”
He crushes me to him, burying his face in my shoulder.
“Thank goodness ‘cause I can’t live without you, Cassie Ann Matlock. I knew I shouldn’t have dropped you off that night. I regret not running away with you.”
I just keep my arms around him, letting my fingers toy with his hair. What can I say? There was no other option, J had to take me home that night. If J killed my parents out of revenge then he would do the same to J’s family if we had run off together.
“I wish you didn’t have to go tomorrow, Cassie.”
“Me too, babe. I’m going to miss you.”
This really came as a shock to me because Dad always said I’d be in a foster home until I was eighteen if something had happened to them. I guess he was just trying to scare me.
“I’m going to see if I can at least visit you on the weekends, Cassie. I’m going to do everything I can to not go until your birthday to see you.”
“I’d love that, J.”
I stay cuddled in J’s arms until it starts to get dark. My last night with J is quickly coming to an end. Tomorrow, I will be on a plane heading back to the place I thought would always be my home. I idly wonder if any of my old friends will recognize me or miss me. Yeah, I highly doubt that. Most likely, they were only my friends because I was popular, and because I was dating, Zack.
Who cares anyway? I won’t be there long and then I will be back where I belong, in Brilliant, with my man.
I visit with J and the rest of his family the rest of the night. I decided I wanted to stay awake as long as I could so I can spend my last hours with J. I have to be at the airport by eight a.m. My flight is scheduled to leave at nine-fifteen sharp.
“Will you stay awake with me?” I ask J.
“Of course I will, babe. I don’t want to miss a single second because Lord knows I will miss way too many when you get on that plane.”
I’m not looking forward to the next three weeks at all. I don’t want to be anywhere near Indy. Brilliant is my home now, nowhere else.
Gazing into J’s piercing brown eyes, I ask him, “Will you make love to me tonight? Give me something to hang on to over the next three weeks?”
His eyes darken with desire. “You didn’t even have to ask, Cass,” he growls, pushing me gently down on my back.
J fulfills my request once…twice…three times before I am finally spent and can’t hold my eyes open any longer, no matter how hard I try.
I close my eyes, snuggling closer to, J, draping my arm across his middle. Sighing in content, I kiss him one last time before laying my head back on his chest and closing my eyes.
I am almost asleep when I hear J whisper, “I’m gonna miss the hell out of you, Cass. I love you to the moon and back, babe.”
“Hmm…love you more.”
J kisses my hair. “Never, Cass. I plan on proving it to you for the rest of our lives.”
Still half asleep, I mumble, “We’ll see about that.”
The End…for now
Author Bio:
Shelby lives in Sweet Home Alabama with her amazing husband and their energetic son. When she is not plotting out stories, penning chapters, or working her full-time job, you can find Shelby spending time with her family and friends, reading, and watching reruns of One Tree Hill. Shelby is obsessed with Harry Potter and Alabama Football. Roll Tide.
Shelby writes Young Adult and New Adult romance. Her characters go through tough times, get in fights, and get their hearts broken, but in the end they will live happily ever after.
Books by Shelby:
Pieces Series:
Picking up the Pieces
Healing the Pieces
Saved Series:
Safe with you
Upcoming Releases:
Torn into Pieces (Pieces #3) – Fall 2015
Saving You (Saved #1.5) – Early 2016
Breaking Free of the Pieces (Pieces #4) – Spring 2016
Run Away with You – Summer 2016
Safe with You Page 28