Atonement

{Three} One Big, Fat Oops

“You take the breath right out of me.”

-Breath, Breakin Benjamin

  Despite the fact that I was here on the specific purpose of not being seen, I spun around wildly. Because that voice…

  And because I was stupid and getting carried away with the fact that he had called out my name, I found myself reciprocating with a breathy, “Cap…”

  I would have run to him, too, if my brother hadn’t taken that opportunity to wake up and grab my arm.

  “What did you do?” he hissed.

  But I could barely hear him. All I could hear was the blood rushing through my ears, my heart in my throat. Cap remembered me, despite having come here before we would have met. How was that even possible?

  “Josie, stop!” Russ warned, yanking me back when I took a step towards the woods. “You promised me. How could you do this?”

  “I-I didn’t, I….” I floundered. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t my fault, that’d I’d just been going to the bathroom. But I couldn’t. I was so wrapped up in the fact that Cap had found me. I couldn’t focus on anything else.

  He was alive! Alive and calling out my name! How could I stand here when I’d already left him once?

  “We need to go,” Russ said, sounding panicked. He tugged at my arm again in a way to get me to follow him. “I can’t believe you screwed this up.”

  “I didn’t!” I finally snapped, yanking my arm free. I was so sick of being manhandled! “I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do. I was just back in the woods peeing when they found me.”

  “And they just happened to know it was you?”

  “I guess when I was trying to wake you up…But I didn’t say anything to them.”

  Russ frowned like he didn’t believe me, but he was beyond arguing now. “We must have screwed up the date somehow. Are you sure you thought only about the date?”

  I bit my lip instead of answering. Truth was, I wasn’t sure. I think there might have been a split second where I got too excited about rescuing Cap that I’d let my mind wander. But only for a second.

  Apparently that was all it took.

  So how far back had we gone? Obviously it was after the date, but before Cap’s death.

  “God, Josie,” Russ growled, pretty much reading me like a book.

  “I didn’t mean to, I swear.”

  He just rolled his eyes. “C’mon. We gotta get to some shelter so we can go back.”

  I wanted to ask where he meant by ‘back.’ Was it home or were we going to try again? Instead of asking, though, I kept my mouth shut and simply kept up with his jog.

  “We’re gonna need to go faster than this,” I told him.

  “You sure you can keep up in that gown?”

  “If I can’t, I’ll let you know.”

  “Fine.”

  Russ immediately picked up the pace and I had to really hike the skirt up to my thighs to keep up with him. We were out of our clearing and back in the trees. Twigs slapped at my face and I could do nothing to slap them away. There was no way I could hold up this heavy skirt with only one hand. Russ was already starting to get ahead of me, but I wasn’t about to make him slow down. It gave me a goal, after all. The faster he ran, the faster I would have to go, too. Slowing him down would only make me slow down, too.