Running On Empty

by Colette Ballard

  Kat exhaled. “You’re awfully cocky tonight. I just hope we get out of here as easily as we came in.”

  “Hakuna Matata.” I waved my hand at her.

  Flipping through files and record books, I finally came across what I was looking for. I pulled out the large checkbook and thumbed through the pages until I came across the grand prize—the carbon copy of a $350,000 check made out to Ms. Helen Banard.

  I carefully separated it along the perforated edges and turned to present it. “Friends,” I snapped it out straight with both hands, “my get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  30

  CONFRONTATION

  As we pulled into Justice’s driveway, I pointed out the absence of his truck. “See, we beat him back.”

  “Yeah, isn’t that what you said when we went out on our last tour of duty?” Kat reminded me.

  “Don’t be so negative,” I grumbled.

  Satisfied with our successful night’s work, we were about to step onto the cabin’s porch when Billi Jo turned to me and grimaced. “Uh, looks like we didn’t beat him back, after all.” She pointed to a half case of beer sitting on the porch.

  Kat must’ve noticed my pained expression. “Not feeling quite so cocky anymore?”

  “At least he left us the beer.” Billi Jo started adding them to the cooler.

  “It’s not like I could’ve let him in on our plan. He would have tried to go with me or ratted me out to the chief. I mean, I didn’t want Justice to get in trouble, and the chief is risking his career. But I have nothing to lose. And everything went smoothly, so no harm done, right?”

  “Just keep telling yourself that.” Kat popped open a beer and handed it to me.

  Holding her beer up, Billi Jo said, “To River’s get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  We clinked our beer cans together and took a drink in my honor.

  I tried to enjoy the thought of my newly found evidence, but the nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach wouldn’t leave me alone. I was going to be in a lot of trouble with Justice—if he bothered to come back to the cabin at all.

  We were a couple beers down when the sound of Justice’s truck broke up our party. The slamming door and the way he marched toward the porch made me bristle. I’d never seen him so angry, and I decided it wasn’t a good look for him.

  “Some house arrest!” He threw his arms up.

  Kat whispered an apology as she stood and ducked away. “You’re on your own,” Billi Jo muttered in my ear as she grabbed a couple beers and took off to the dock behind Kat.

  Justice didn’t even wait until they were out of earshot before he started. “What were you thinkin’?”

  “Justice, I—”

  “Ya know, I thought I knew you like the back of my hand. But I don’t know you at all anymore. You have become a reckless, selfish brat, and you’ve turned your life upside down. You don’t listen to anybody, you lie and sneak around, you don’t care if you hurt people. Everything is different now—ever since you first laid eyes on Logan Westfield!”

  My buzz headed south at break-neck speed. “Whoa, where did that come from?”

  “I know you don’t like to talk about your past with him, but whether you realize it or not, that’s when all your trouble started.”

  “Back up, Braden, you’re steppin’ over boundaries. We had a deal,” I reminded him.

  He laughed, but it wasn’t the happy kind. “So far, you haven’t kept up your end of any deals, so why should I? My interest tonight was in keeping you safe, and you blatantly ignored everything I said. I don’t get it. Logan asked you to go to some football thing after your horse died, so you dried your tears and off you went. He treated you awful at the field party, yet you rewarded him with a big kiss and then left with him. But I ask you to stay home for your own damn good, and you laugh in my face. I have thought about it from every angle, and I can’t make any sense of it.” He looked away, took a deep breath, then back at me. “I just wish you would answer one question. What did you have to tell yourself to make the way he treated you okay?”

  “What has he got to do with anything?”

  “Everything, River. Everything. Until you deal with the reason your life took a nose-dive, you can’t move on. You can’t move forward until you take a look back.”

  His advice echoed Charlie’s. In my head, I knew they were both right. And I had dealt with most of it; the red flags that led up to that night and the aftermath of the murder. What I hadn’t dealt with was that night or the actual event itself—the attack. And dealing with that wasn’t going to make anybody feel better. Especially Justice.

  “Please let me explain. Tonight, I had to—”

  He shook his head. “I don’t wannna hear your excuse for tonight. You have all these elaborate excuses for these things you do, but the one thing you’ve never been able to come up with a decent excuse for is how you got mixed up with a creep like Westfield. For the life of me, I can’t understand how, as tough and hardheaded as you are, you could ever let anybody run over you like he did. That’s been eating at me for a long time, and I think you owe me an explanation.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve been patient with you. Since the day you showed up at the barn, I’ve given you space because I could see how fragile you were. I was afraid that if I pushed you too hard for answers you’d up and leave again without a word. But I’m done being patient.” He stepped closer to me and tilted his head to be parallel with mine. “So from the beginning. I want an explanation. Now.”

  I had never seen him this upset, so against my better judgment, I started answering his questions. “I…I thought he really loved me,” I said, getting mad all over again—mad that I was talking and mad that I was stupid enough to believe in love in the first place. “Logan made me feel wanted. And maybe it’s stupid, but there was a part of me that really needed to feel that way after Jack told me he wasn’t my dad. I know Jack has never really made me feel wanted in the first place, but I needed something. I needed something solid, somebody to want me, and that somebody was Logan.”

  “He didn’t want you as a person, River; he wanted you as an object. He wanted to own you.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, I do, but back then I didn’t.” I stared at the ground. “Logan had another side that you never saw; when he was good to me, he was really good…”

  Justice mashed his lips together. “Okay, so what about when he wasn’t? Like at the awards ceremony, and then at the field party when you left with him. Let’s hear your excuse for that.”

  My pulse throbbed in my ears. “Drop it, Braden. That was a long time ago.”

  “Maybe you can just pretend all that never happened, but that’s not the way I operate. Do you have any idea how much sleep I’ve lost worrying about you when you were with him, and then how much more I lost after that night? After you ran away, I had no idea where you were. I had to sit by and listen to people speculate about what really happened. I defended you, even though I had no idea what the truth was. You changed so much within the short time you dated him…” He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut as if trying to block out the pain of the memory.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “Do you have any idea how many times I beat myself up trying to figure out what I could have done differently?”

  “You?”

  “Yes. I let you leave with him that night. I knew you’d been drinking, and I knew he was wasted. I should’ve kicked his ass when I had the chance and made you leave with me.”

  I looked past him into the dark—the same dark abyss that squeezed my heart. I couldn’t stand the way I’d hurt him over and over again. “You couldn’t have made me do anything.”

  “That’s what I thought at the time, but I was wrong. I could’ve. I should’ve. Then we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “None of this is your fault, not for one second. How could you possibly blame yourself?”

  “I could have stopped all this,” he said, rubbing h
is temples.

  There was no way I could let him take the blame for my stupidity. “Don’t fool yourself. I left with Logan that night because…I wanted to.” I didn’t want to hurt Justice, but I didn’t want to tell him the truth about why I left with Logan.

  “Come on, River, that doesn’t make any sense. He was drunk, he spilled his beer all over you, and he was practically mauling you in front of everybody. He acted like a complete jerk.”

  “I thought he would let a designated driver take us home. Take me home.”

  He looked down at the ground then back at me, his eyes brimming with exhaustion and pain. “Is that the best you can do?”

  “That’s it, Justice.” I wound my finger around a chunk of hair at the base of my neck.

  “That’s it? You were so worried about him getting home safe that you risked your own life to be with him?”

  “I had to…” I was trying not to crumble. I didn’t want to tell him why. I didn’t want him feeling any more responsible than he already did.

  He looked at me like I was crazy, then his eyes lit back with anger. “You keep saying that. What the hell does that mean—you had to?”

  “Please—”

  “What, you had to be your usual bull-headed self?” He shook his head back and forth. “I was trying to demand respect for you because you sure the hell weren’t. I couldn’t understand why you just stood there and let him get away with it, then let him kiss you right in my face.” He clenched his jaw, remembering the pain I had inflicted. “Then you turned around and left with him, and you’re trying to convince me that makes sense?”

  “I had to…”

  “What? You had to what? Say it!”

  “I had to protect you!”

  “Protect me?” he half-laughed. “From what?”

  “I was afraid of what he was capable of…” I stammered as I wound another chunk of hair tightly around my finger.

  Justice’s eyes fixed on my hair. “You’re lyin’.”

  “What?” My voice was barely a whisper. I wasn’t lying. I just wasn’t telling him the whole truth, that I left the party with Logan in order to protect Justice. I didn’t want him blaming himself for the landslide that followed my decision.

  “You’re a bad liar; always have been.” He nodded toward the finger twisted in my hair. “You twist your hair when you lie. You play with your locket when you’re upset. Right now, you’re lyin’. There’s something you’re not telling me, and I have no idea what it is or why you’d lie to me.”

  “Justice, I’m not lying.”

  “River, you are! And how am I supposed to help you if I can’t trust you?”

  My mind was on fire. “I am not…I’m just leaving out the part you can’t handle!”

  “Oh, the part about you being afraid he was gonna beat me up? That’s it?” He gave me that same disgusted look as he had when I walked away with Logan.

  I hated that look, and I hated myself even more for causing it. “Don’t you look at me like that, Justice. Don’t you dare ever look at me like that again!”

  Ignoring me, he moved only inches from my face. “You think I couldn’t have handled that punk on my own? That’s bullshit, and you know it!” He raised both arms up at the same time and rammed his fingers through his hair, but it was too late to stop my reaction.

  A mixture of adrenaline and fear took over and I jerked my head away, throwing my arm up to protect my face as I stepped back. My foot hit an uneven patch of ground, and I stumbled back into the porch step. Justice moved to keep me from falling, catching me by the wrist. Shaking, I regained my footing as I stared at the hand wrapped around my wrist. The second he saw what I was looking at, he released my arm and backed away.

  “River, I’m sorry.”

  But it was too late; he’d already pushed me too far. And like any predictable attack dog backed into a corner, I went straight for the jugular. “You really wanna know what he was capable of? Is that what you wanna know? Do you wanna know how he drove me to a secluded field and tried to seduce me, but when things didn’t go his way, he all but accused me of cheating on him—with you?”

  Justice shook his head. He never expected to hear that.

  “What else do you wanna know, huh? That he wouldn’t back off, and when I tried to get out of the car, he caught me? That he forced himself on me, crushing his lips against mine so I had to struggle to move my face away to breathe? That he ripped my shirt like it was a piece of paper, gave me a black eye, and busted my lip when he smashed his hand into the side of my face, knocking me to the ground?”

  With pain-filled eyes, Justice took a step back, but I kept going. I intended to push him to the point of no return—where he would not only be appalled by my story but could not face me and would no longer want anything to do with me. I didn’t deserve Justice.

  “Or do you wanna know about the part where he was on top of me and had me pinned to the ground single-handedly, trying to rip my jeans off, with intentions to rape me!? Is that what you really wanna know?”

  Accomplishing my goal was getting closer. “Or do you wanna know about the part where I took his gun and threatened him and we struggled until it exploded in my hand? And how I lay there semi-conscious for God knows how long in a pool of his blood thinking I was the one dying? In fact, I desperately wanted it to be me. Is that what you want to know?” I stood there tearless, in a weird, numb-induced shock.

  “River, I’m so sorry…” I could see the regret in his eyes; regret that he had pushed me so far. I could feel his need to reach out to me, but considering my last reaction, he didn’t dare make a move.

  “You asked for it, and now you’re gonna hear it all,” I continued. “Yes, I should’ve listened to you and Kat long before that night. There were many red flags I ignored, and if I had to do it all over again, I would do it differently. But it’s too late for that. I have made a huge mess of my life and everybody’s around me, and I am one hundred percent sure that it is all my fault. I know I’ve made some horrible mistakes and some really stupid excuses, but there is one thing I will never apologize for. I left with Logan that night because I had to protect you!”

  Justice shook his head, not wanting to hear what I had to say.

  “Logan had a gun, his friends had guns. I was afraid of what would happen if you two got in a fight and he came up on the losing end. Those rumors a few months ago, about Logan and Red shooting that guy, they’re true. There was no way I was gonna take a chance on him hurting you. And for that reason alone, I don’t regret my decision.”

  My whole body was shaking and tears were threatening to betray me—to expose my emotions, expose me for the fraud that I was. I wasn’t tough at all. I was weak, and that’s exactly how I’d ended up in this mess, taking everyone I cared about down with me.

  His eyes searched mine; it was hitting him like a ton of bricks. He finally managed to whisper, “But why would you put yourself at risk like that…for me?”

  “I left with him that night because…” Through warm tears that finally broke free, I yelled, “Because I love you, you big, stupid jerk!” It wasn’t until that exact moment I realized the power of my own words. I could no longer deny it to myself. I did love Justice. I’d always loved him.

  But I could never give him the kind of love he deserved.

  He held his hand out to me cautiously, but I backed away.

  “Don’t touch me.” I could see the pain I caused him, but I couldn’t stop it. I was scared, not of Justice, but of love and all that came with it. “I don’t want you to touch me, Justice. I don’t want to be touched, and I don’t see how that’s ever going to change. I have nothing to offer you. I’m empty.” I ran into the cabin, letting the screen door slam behind me.

  Without a second thought, I threw my belongings into my bag. I would be doing him and everyone else a favor if I disappeared. Maybe I would go back to Vegas, maybe somewhere even further. I would decide on the road.

  The second I heard Justice’s truck
leave, I slung my duffle bag over my shoulder and slipped out the door before my friends came back up to the cabin. I opened the driver’s side door, pitched my bag in the backseat, and reached for the ignition. No keys. When I started to get back out, I noticed a piece of folded paper sitting on the dash.

  It read:

  Don’t bother looking, I took the keys.

  Sleep on it,

  Justice

  I slammed my head against the back of the headrest, closed my eyes, and struggled to remember how to breathe.

  Despite my friends badgering me to come inside, I spent an uncomfortable night sleeping in the car, so I was relieved to see the first sign of daybreak. Quietly, I opened the car door, gathered my duffle bag, and started walking to Justice’s house. Two could play this game—I would borrow his truck, maybe drive to a bus station and leave it. Edging his squeaky truck door open, I started to step up into the truck when I saw it. Dammit—another note.

  I snatched it off the seat and unfolded it.

  The reason I didn’t come after you last night wasn’t because I don’t care, it was because you are the most stubborn person I’ve ever met and I knew you needed time.

  xxooxxoo, Justice

  Stubborn. I’d show him stubborn. Adjusting my duffle bag on my shoulder, I trudged down his driveway and turned onto the winding country road, not caring if anyone saw me or not.

  About half a mile down the road, I heard the familiar rumble of a truck as Justice pulled alongside me.

  “Where are we goin’?” he asked.

  Keeping my eyes straight ahead, I kept my pace as he followed. “We are not going anywhere. I am leaving.”

  “Where to?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Need a ride?”

  “Not with you.” I swiveled my head to give him a quick scowl. “How did you find me?”

  “My trusty alarm dog here.” He patted Hank on the head and Hank, who was more than happy to be of service, smiled accordingly.

  When I glared at Hank, he let out a little whimper and hung his head.