The Runaways

Epilogue

Caleb

If you're still listening, Hailey probably told you her version of how I stalked her for a little while and drove her half crazy.

The thing is; she left out a lot of details. She does that a lot, but don’t tell her I said that. It’s been six months and she still hasn’t stopped giving me grief about disappearing on her. She never says it out loud, but I’m pretty sure she thinks I did it on purpose.

For the record, I didn’t. It's not like I wanted things to happen that way, but sometimes life doesn't work out how you want it to.

Except when it comes to her.

Even as mad as she's been at me lately, we've been making things work for almost half a year, and for the first time in a long time, I'm feeling pretty lucky.

Don't get me wrong, getting here wasn't easy. It still isn't.

We fight sometimes, mostly ‘cause she thinks I don't wanna tell her what happened four years ago. But it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just—I can't. Witness Protection’s got a lot of rules. I haven't even told Georgia anything. But if you can keep a secret, I'll tell you, just don't tell Hailey or she'll kill me.

I died on that night four years ago. No joke.

The cops shot me up good enough to flat line me at UVA's Medical Center for about a minute-and-a-half. I guess that was long enough for the ambulance chasers to go running to the press saying I was a goner. News went crazy over it. They weren't lying, they just didn't follow up on the truth. Not for a while, anyway.

Took a couple weeks in the ICU for my doctors to be sure I wasn't gonna clock out on em’. Once they had the official word that I was gonna pull through, a whole laundry list of lawyers, cops, and Witness Protection people came around to figure out what the hell to do with me. Should they take back the statement in the papers that I'd died? Should they keep it? A whole lot of arguing between strangers, but hardly anybody talked to me. 

For a while back then, I thought a lot about dying. I thought about my family every second and had to wait for visiting hours to be over just so I could to cry alone. I thought a lot about how ending up like my brothers had would’ve been easier than living in a hospital room for months with nobody but suits coming to see me.

But there was this one social worker, Annie, who came by in the evenings when everyone else cleared out. She didn't ask me any questions, instead she talked me like I was a person, not some story or suspect. She was a lot like Hailey in that way, and I liked that.

Come to think of it, Annie and I talked a lot about Hailey, except I didn't tell her that the girl I was mentioning was Hailey 'cause she would've thought I was crazy if I did. Annie was an old timer, but she knew a thing or two about girls. She kept telling me that things would turn out, even if it took a while. I bet against her. Turns out she knew better than I did.

Guess I owe her that dollar.

On the last day she visited me, a couple cops and lawyers from the state police department came in with her. They told me they saw Liam's tape, had launched a whole investigation, and were ready to take Anderson to court.

When it came down to it, the only reason they showed up was to ask if I wanted to testify against him. I didn’t want anything to do with it, so I turned them down until they came up with something I couldn’t turn down—a second chance.

Some greasy looking law guy said he could swing a plea deal for me so I’d serve less time for my kidnapping charges. Lawyers are always liars, so I trusted my gut and asked him and the other guys to leave, but Annie stayed back to try to talk me out of being stupid.