The Runaways

Chapter 34

For a while, I let my fingers linger on the edge of her waist, stiff and clumsy like they'd never thawed from the cold room. She took my hands in hers and let me graze the skin just beneath her shirt. I stopped her before I couldn't stop myself.

"I want you to know somethin', Hailey."

She hovered over me, eyes darting back and forth like bullets.

"When you grow up and forget about all this, when you're all old and wrinkly and can't remember that you ever knew a Caleb Evans, or that he got you mixed up in the ugly side of the world, I want you to remember somethin’."

"And what's that?"

"That for a few days outta all the bullshit years of his life, you made him want to keep livin', even if it was just for a little while."

She hid her face in her hands, like they would keep her tears a secret. I held on to her tight enough to feel how delicate she was rattling under the weight of her sadness.

"What kind of girl cries over a compliment? You got a good one too. I'd say you're at the top of my list of good people.”

"I guess that makes me a superhero, then."

"I guess it does."

She lay back down on the old barn floor and waited for me to follow her. The soft light from the propane lamp flickered across her skin like she’d bathed in the afterglow. I froze up just looking at her. I knew she was waiting for me to do something, anything but sit there and stare at her. I just didn't know what else to do.

Me and Marcus never talked about this kinda thing. Him and everybody else in my family just did it, joked around about it, or kept quiet. I didn't know a damn thing about what to do or how to be with a girl, but God I wanted to get it right—at least as close to right as possible.

I settled down next to her and the second I slipped my hands around her waist my fingers went numb. But I held my ground, brushed up against the little patch of bare skin just above her shorts, and prayed. When she pulled me down into another of her kisses I figured I'd done something right for once in my life.

We took things slow for a little while, kissing like we could get drunk off the feeling, ‘til Hailey led my hand higher up her shirt and let me figure out what a woman felt like.

So that's what my brothers were talking about.

I couldn’t get over how soft she was, or how every time I touched her I learned a little more about the Hailey nobody ever saw. Nobody but me. Her eyes would crinkle at the corners when I got things right, and she’d laugh through my apologies when I got the basics wrong.

I'd pull away from her every now and again just to take her in, her grace, her quiet confidence, and she’d look at me like I meant something to her. Like I mattered, and just knowing that was good enough. Somebody somewhere in this world gave a damn, and somehow I’d gotten lucky enough to have her.

Hailey sat up out of the blue and looked at me, lips and cheeks flushed redder than red.

"You’re okay with all this right? With me?"

She straightened the wrinkles in her shirt and smoothed out her hair, but I liked her messy even if she didn’t.

"What?”

"I don’t know, I just—I’m just not gonna be perfect at this or anything,” she said.

"That’s okay. Me neither.”

“Really? You seem like you know what you’re doing.”

That was the best thing I’d heard all day, but I played it cool.