“How the…” I said, barely find the words.
She got up and joined me by the window. “Maximus went to bail him out earlier. He’s still a twat, of course, but at least Dex isn’t jail anymore. It’s not like the charges were going to stick anyway.”
I took my eyes off of the sight of Dex’s car, my heart awkwardly tumbling over itself at the thought of him outside, and looked at her incredulously.
“How did you know? Did you plan for this to happen?”
She grinned. “Remember that whole sometimes hearing your thoughts thing we were just trying out? I already knew you were thinking of making a run for it. Dex doesn’t know, I just told him to come here right after Maximus got out. I have a feeling though, let’s call it a hunch, that he’s got a hard,” she paused, catching my eyes flashing, “er, soft spot for you too.”
I didn’t know what to think about that. Looking out at Dex’s car, and the answer she had given me, all I did know is that my life was – yet again - about to change in an incredibly messy way.
CHAPTER TWO
“Well?” prodded Ada as I stood at the window. “Go say hello.”
“Where’s mom and dad?” I asked, not taking my eyes off of the running vehicle, feeling like my chest was being torn in two different directions.
“I think dad’s still downstairs watching Law & Order. I don’t think he’d be too thrilled to see you going out the door right now.”
I nodded. “The window it is.”
I put my hands underneath the edge and pushed it open. A cold blast of late February wind coated me in seconds and I felt Ada jamming a retro Kyuss hoodie into my hands.
“Thanks,” I mumbled and quickly slipped it on along with my Chucks. I was half-way out the window, ready to put my feet on the sloping roof below when Ada called out, “Hey do you think I can take over your room when you’re gone?”
I shot her a look.
She shrugged. “What if I meet a guy and have to sneak out too? It’s only fair you know.”
I sighed and couldn’t help but smile. “Sure.”
“Awesome. Well, don’t be too long…you never know if they’ll want to check on you,” she warned, heading toward my door.
I nodded and stepped onto the roof. I was lucky that it was such an easy escape route. When I was younger I used to sneak out all the time. In the past few weeks the route had been used twice; once when a demon had led me up there, the other when Dex came in through my window to rescue me. You know, the usual stuff.
Now he was back. And I wasn’t sure if I was going to let him rescue me again. I wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to do about anything. I had two options and neither looked very promising.
I made it to the tree at the end of the roof and shimmied clumsily down it, my body still a bit sore from the trauma of the last few weeks. The minute I felt the ground beneath my feet, a trembling started around my heart and radiated outward. I was nervous. I was damn nervous. I couldn’t find the strength to walk away from the tree and onto the street.
It’s just Dex, I told myself. He’s not worth having a panic attack over.
And yet my lungs were constricting.
I knew it was just Dex but that was the problem. I didn’t know which Dex I had or which Dex I wanted, if any of them. That’s where the nerves came from. My uncertainty. Everything had changed. And changed again. One second I wanted to run into his arms and thank him for saving my life. Then in the next second I remembered what had happened between us. I remembered the pain, the darkness, the hell I went through. I knew it wasn’t fair to blame him for demon possession but sometimes I found myself cursing him for it. If he hadn’t left me like he did, had sex with me and just used me like some old dishcloth, I wouldn’t have broken in half. I wouldn’t have seeped open and left that space for something else to come in.
And the miscarriage. What, for one very brief time, had been a baby. That killed me in ways I never thought it would. I never thought much about kids and lord knows twenty-three is too young for me to be having them but…it really ripped at something deep inside, something I never thought I had. It was a weird sense of loss and something I couldn’t even explain.
You’d think I’d be used to that, the unexplainable. But when it came to my feelings, when I couldn’t figure out what they even were, that’s when I was really scared. That’s when my nerves would clamp up my throat, squeeze my lungs and make me feel that standing underneath a bare tree was the safest, smartest option for me. I wasn’t in the house, I wasn’t in his car. I was just me. In-between.
Eventually though, I found my footing. Some perverse need to choose. I walked out from under the broken canopy and made my way onto the street. There was the car up ahead, parked on the side of the road, facing the other direction, like he had driven past the house first, then turned around at the end. Funny to think that had happened while Ada and I were attempting to be telepathic inside my bedroom.
I stepped quietly, afraid my feet would echo down the street and be carried off by the breeze and into the house. I knew my parents would flip the f**k out if they knew what I was doing. I kept going.
I wasn’t far from the car when the driver’s door flung open. My insides whirled feverishly, my breath halting. In that moment I realized he still had that power over me, to make my body react when my mind wanted to turn away, and I hated him for it.
Dex stepped out, almost in a hurry. I hadn’t realized I had stopped where I was and was just standing on the road, staring at him in a hiccup of time. I only had a few seconds to take him in, his black cargo jacket, his messy, wind-tossed hair and beautifully scruffy face, the flash of emotion in his dark eyes, buried under the furrow of his brow.
Then he was running toward me and for a moment I thought maybe something was wrong and that I should run too. Then I thought maybe something was right and I should run anyway.
He ran to me and engulfed me in his arms, holding me tight to him, raising me a few inches above the ground. I was caught so off-guard, I could only let him hold me. My breath was gone, squeezed out from the intensity of his hug. I didn’t think I could hug him back even if I wanted to.
He held me like that, my feet dangling, his strong arms keeping me as close to him as possible. His face buried in my neck and his familiar smell draped over me like a comforting blanket while his breath tickled my skin until my hairs stood on end. I decided to ignore my brain for a second and just enjoyed the sense of being completely embraced.