Runaway (7 page)

We sat in silence for a moment, my heart racing with that most sultry of movements he had just made… And though I didn’t even want to admit it to myself, I couldn’t deny that I already missed the sensation of his hands on me.

‘What do you want to know?’ He asked.

‘What you said before. The thing that I wouldn’t believe if you told me.’

‘So the whole story,’ he smiled. ‘Okay, as long as you don’t need to be back to your house anytime soon.

‘I grew up just outside of Chicago, like I said before, which is where my parents still live. Nothing much to tell from then. I was a smart kid, probably even cockier than I am now. Moved to San Francisco for college, living in a tiny room and sleeping on friend’s couches. But I wasn’t exactly your typical college student, getting wasted in the evenings and sleeping through classes. If anything I drink more now than I did then. While everybody else was partying, I spent most of my nights with a group of other overachievers at the college library working on business ideas, team projects, stuff like that. People came and went, but a small group of us stuck together and built a few things that took off more effectively than we could have ever imagined. That was maybe… Eight years ago?

‘We sold a few companies, built some more. Before we knew it we were managing more money than we knew what to do with. So we started a holding company, and if things were crazy before then they became almost unbelievable at that point. And… It was around that time that I met Clare.’

‘Oh, so there is a girl?’ I asked, raising my eyebrows at him.

Jack took a deep breath, looking about the room and running his hand through his hair again.

‘We met when I was 21,’ he continued, ‘Straight out of college. She was one of our original team, she handled the accounts. I had never liked dealing with numbers, but she actually got me interested in it. And just like that, she had me hooked on her.

‘Things just went up and up. I couldn’t imagine myself with anybody else but her. Two years later she was pregnant and we were together every minute of the day. We bounced off each other, that’s the only way I can describe it. I had never felt like that before. And then he was born. Noah. We called him that because it rained for days after he was born… Neither of us were religious or anything but it just seemed like a fitting name, and we both liked it. Either way… He was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, something I never thought I would deserve, that I would have the good fortune to call my own.’

Jack paused for a moment, staring towards the bottom of the bed, his chest rising and falling with long, slow breaths.

‘Marriages don’t always work out…’ I said quietly, ‘Sometimes no matter how much you think you know a person things just have a way of going bad…’

‘I know,’ Jack said, ‘And you’re right. But that isn’t what happened.

‘Oh… Sorry, I should’ve let you finish…’

‘That’s okay.’

‘You don’t have to tell if you don’t want to.’

‘No, it’s fine… I guess it’s important to talk about these things sometimes.

‘Things were great for two years, like I said they kept getting better. Clare and I were closer than ever, Noah was growing up faster than either of us could believe. And then there was the night of the conference.’

Jack’s voice suddenly became quieter as his words trailed off, as if he didn’t want to say it… But it wasn’t so much that as he didn’t want to admit the words that he was speaking, as if he was imagining a story rather than the truth.

‘…What happened?’ I asked quietly.

‘We had been staying at this remote hotel out of Illinois with clients, driving back in the rain. Clare and I always used to joke that Noah brought on the rain, because he was always happy about it when it was pouring down and he always cried more when it was sunny…

‘Anyway, we were taking this lone road in the middle of nowhere in the rain, when this truck came hurtling around the corner as we were crossing this bridge. Only had sidelights on. The bridge was barely wide enough for one vehicle, never mind two trying to fit across. I panicked… Spun the wheel to the side trying to veer away from the truck, but it was just a reflex to the lights in front of us – the one only way to go was off the bridge, and that was where we ended up going.’

Jack paused again, looking down at the space between I and him, clasping his hands together over his chest as he clenched his eyes shut briefly and took a breath to calm himself.

I was hooked on his words, silently hoping that he wasn’t going to say what I thought he was.

‘I remember the lights, and then the crash… But that’s all. I woke up three weeks later in Northshore hospital, with two cracked ribs, a dislocated jaw and a collapsed lung. Clare and Noah were…’

I could feel each of my breaths shaking uncontrollably, the wind coursing past the windows outside as Jack looked up at me briefly our eyes meeting as a tear rolled down my cheek.

A coherent thought refused to run through my mind… But the notion of it all overwhelmed me.

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘Afterwards I struggled to do anything, to
live.
There were times in the weeks and months after it all that I could hardly even bring myself to move. I just… Laid there, in bed, doing nothing. Prior to it all I had a reign on my thoughts, a hold on myself… But in the wake of it nothing calmed my mind. A therapist I once saw suggested meditation one time, but I couldn’t even get ten seconds into it. My mind won’t silence itself, it won’t calm down. I’m always filled with distractions.

‘I was in no fit state to manage the company, by any means. So I left. I still own everything and I oversee any major changes, but all in all I left everything to my original team and my closer colleagues, and I ran away… And in the end I wound up here. I bought this place, made a call through to the management team to buy the logging company here-’

‘Wait… You
own
the logging company too? And that’s where you work?’

‘Well, a majority share. But yeah, I work there too. The guys have no idea who I am, including Rory. And no idea that they’re fighting their boss every Monday night, either.’

I smiled a little, but I still couldn’t pull my thoughts away from what he had just told me, from what he had been through…

‘Why do you do it?’ I asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Work here of all places…
Fight…’

‘It keeps my mind busy.
Distracted,
I guess you could say. And the fighting is the only thing that makes me feel awake. Most of the time I feel like… I don’t know, like…’

‘Like you’re living in a movie?’ I said, without even thinking.

‘I guess you could say that, yeah…’

We both went silent for a moment, our eyes meeting as I tried to take in al that Jack had just said, revealing who he really was and what he was doing here. I knew there was something more to him than he had let on, but I would never have begun to imagine that it was anything like what he had told me.

‘There isn’t a person I’ve told about that stuff,’ he said, ‘I can’t explain why I’m telling you, Emma.’

‘Maybe you don’t see me as just some random person,’ I said.

‘Maybe not…’ He smiled faintly, ‘… Could you do me a favour?’

‘Sure, anything.’

‘Okay, good; get yourself over here, I feel like I’m a mile away from you.’

I laughed lightly at his words, shuffling around on the bed to lie down by his side. Even in light of this revelation, I felt safe by Jack’s side. He had been through more than I could even believe, and suddenly my problems seemed to pale in comparison to his.

He looked over at me from where he was sat up against the headboard, his sharp, handsome face looking down at me, a frown mixed with a hint of a smile.

‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘Come on over here…’

Jack lifted his arms away from his bare, scarred body, welcoming me in closer to his toned torso. He wanted me in his arms, and suddenly I realised that that was exactly where I wanted to be.

I shifted closer to him, moving towards his warm, uncovered torso until I felt his arms wrap around my petite, slender body without hesitation. I rested my head on his warm chest, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath my hands as I relaxed myself against him.

‘Jack?’ I said, without looking up at him.

‘Yeah?’

‘… I’m so sorry.’

He didn’t say anything back; but he held me tighter and more securely, my mind calming to the sensation of his chest rising and falling with each of his deep breaths.

And then I was lost to sleep.

Chapter Nine

Falling asleep in Jack’s arms, my mind was cast only on being there with him and nothing else… So I didn’t anticipate being awoken in the same way I usually woke up, with the intruding memory, the one that I hated most…

It was stifling, a crushing weight coming down on me. I felt unable to breathe, unable to pull myself out of it. I tossed and turned, my head thrashing from side to side until I sat up quickly, my body jerking as I gasped for breath. I tore away from Jack’s arms, still wrapped around me in the way we had fallen asleep last night.

I breathed deeply, hearing Jack do the same as he shifted behind me, sitting up next to me.

‘Emma? Are you okay?’

He placed his hands on my shoulders, my body suddenly feeling calmer at his touch as I rested against him, leaning back into his arms. We relaxed back into the bed, lying by each other.

‘I’m fine,’ I lied, blinking up at the ceiling before directing my eyes to him. We had fallen asleep in our clothes, and my hair was likely all over the place – but it didn’t bother me.

‘Okay… So do you want to
really
tell me what’s up or just leave it?’

‘How do you do that?’ I smirked.

‘Do what?’

‘Read people that easily.’

‘I guess I have a knack for it. Often gave me the edge when it came to meetings with the company.’

I sighed deeply.

‘It doesn’t matter… After everything you told me last night I don’t feel like I should speak about myself right now…’

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘Look… I know I told you some things that might have been a little tough… But that doesn’t mean you can’t talk about something if you want to.’

I looked up at Jack, cradled in his arms, embroiled in the notion of voicing my nightmares to him… The one’s both in real life and in my dreams.

I paused for a moment, dwelling on it…

‘I didn’t grow up in New York. I live there now, but when originally, when I was a kid, I grew up in North Dakota. Me, my mom and dad, my brother, Robbie, who works in Europe… And my sister, Maria. We moved when I was 13 because I… Well, I had some opportunities, and my parents wanted me to have them.

‘I don’t remember a whole lot from back then, but one thing I always think back to were the winter’s. They were cold, and I mean
really
cold. And where we lived there wasn’t a whole lot to do aside from walk around and explore.

‘One day Robbie was sick, so Maria and I went out by ourselves. There was a dock behind our house and it gave onto a lake, smaller than the one here but… It could still take you under. I’ve thought about that day a lot and I feel like I remember it a hundred different ways… But there are some details that I remember distinctly. My dad was stood by the back porch, shovelling snow. He told us to keep away from the edge of the dock, but we didn’t really know how dangerous it was…

‘We were just playing, and then… Whatever we were doing before, I can’t remember. Just the rush of cold water as we both went under. We were holding hands, and we fell into the water together. It was freezing, maybe even colder than that. It felt like my body was shutting down the moment I went under. I don’t know how long I was under, and I knew Maria was by my side… She was struggling like crazy, I kept feeling her hands lunging out for me…

‘And then suddenly I was out of the water, on the dock, the cold air hitting me hard. My dad had grabbed me, I was the first thing that he got a hold of… But he never got Maria.’

Jack stared at me in disbelief, looking my face up and down as he held me.

‘They found her eventually… The months and years after that were terrible. Now they seem like a single memory, all rolled into one. Things that happened a long way back often feel like they were rushed.

‘Ever since then… I feel like I’m living as myself, and as somebody else. Like I’m living for her, too. I guess that’s why I work so hard, so I can make up for everything Maria never got to do…’

***

‘It was nice seeing you again,’ I said, standing on the front porch of Jack’s house as he stood in the doorway.

‘It was nice seeing you too,’ he said, ‘You sure you don’t need walking back?’

‘No, it’s okay…’

We stared at each other for a moment, like we had done countless time over the past few days… But this time was different.

Jack looked back and forth between my eyes, a captivated look on his face, before taking a step out of his door, his chiselled body barefoot, dressed in nothing but a pair of jeans. He wrapped his arms around me, sliding a hand up to my cheek before looking at me once more with utter intensity. My heart raced, not a hint of reluctance in my mind as he brought his lips to mine, the warm, soft press of him against me sending jolts of pleasure through my nerves.

And I just let myself go completely in his arms, the cold morning air around me and the rest of the world disappearing completely. I couldn’t even begin to feel how safe, how warm I felt in his strong, reassuring arms, his lips pressed against mine and his stubble lightly scratching my skin in the most pleasing of ways.

Jack slowly dragged his lips away from mine, I remaining with my eyes shut, finding myself lusting after another kiss, to be back there with him until I opened my eyes again.

‘I’ve gotta get going,’ he smiled, pulling his arms away from now, his voice seeming deeper and more domineering than ever.

‘Oh… Okay,’ I nodded, stepping away from the porch. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Bye,’ he smiled once more, keeping his eyes on mine as he shut the door and disappeared out of view.

***

I shut the front door behind me, leaning against it, feeling like sinking down against it like some clichéd character on a rom-com. I heard hysterical laughter from upstairs abruptly coming to a halt – no way did Casey have Rory back here again… That girl, seriously.

A few moments later she came downstairs wrapped up in a bedsheet.

‘Again?’ She asked.

‘Don’t again me,’ I laughed, ‘What about you?’

‘Yeah, but-’

Whatever Casey’s excuse was, she didn’t have time to explain it. A knock came at the door, causing me to look from the door back to her. Both of us were as confused as the other.

I passed over to the door, opened it – and it was none other than Jack.

‘Hey,’ he smiled, ‘hi…’

‘Hi,’ I said sceptically, ‘Did you forget something?’

‘No, I just, uhh…’ He said, running a hand through his dark hair before running his palm across his jawline. ‘Well, sort of… I was just wondering if you wanted to come out on the lake with me, if you wanted to go rowing?’

‘Oh…’ I said, looking him up and down, ‘Yeah, sure. When?’

‘Like…’ Jack looked at his watch, and then back at me, ‘Fifteen minutes?’

I opened my eyes wide, looking him up and down again, trying to figure if he was kidding… But he wasn’t.

I looked over my shoulder at Casey who was out of sight of the door. She winked at me and nodded frantically, either to get me out of the house so she could go back upstairs with Rory or because she actually wanted me to. Or both.

Either way, my answer was going to be the same.