B R E N
The grub from Richie's was some of the best in Fresno. Luckily, Beau emphatically approved after plowing through almost an entire pizza by himself. I wondered how he managed to stay so skinny. It was only a matter of time before it caught up with him. Eventually, all our bad habits did.
"Dude, I thought you said that your parents weren't loaded?" I asked after washing down a slice of pepperoni with a can of coke. Caroline was cool but not cool enough to let us throw back a beer with dinner.
"Yeah, about that." Beau shifted his eyes to the side. "I lied."
I laughed, shaking my head.
"I didn't want you to judge me, okay? I'm not just some rich kid," he said. "I did have a bunch of jobs in high school, and my parents didn't pay for shit." Beau rolled his eyes, and Caroline chuckled lightly from the other end of the table.
"They just didn't want you to be too spoiled," she said.
"It's damned annoying," Beau concluded before taking a swig of his soda.
We all laughed again—well, Caroline and I did—before chatting about Fresno and pizza and bubble tea. And for a minute, everything was normal, and everything felt right.
I tried to hold onto that feeling the next morning as I loaded up my Mustang with the few bags I had and pulled out of Caroline's driveway. I followed Beau's Range Rover out onto the highway, wondering why I'd ever believed he wasn't loaded.
The open road felt different his time. The wind attacked my face, chilling it in the best of ways. I was running toward something, not away from it.
Arriving back in Oakland, Beau walked me through details for the beach house one more time before heading to his biology lecture. I headed straight for our dorms. Stepping inside felt weird—like I was gone for an eternity. But I supposed time was measured more by what happened in it than by the minutes on a clock.
Nessa didn't say much when she let me into their dorm room to wait for Madie. She gave me a quick hug, a light slap on the arm, and then shook a finger at me. "Don't let me down, Bren."
A kind of strangled noise came up from my throat. "Trying, Nessa."
And with that, she left, closing me into her room.
I stared at the door and willed myself to stop shaking, but it seemed impossible. Most of my energy was in staying put and not running away. It wasn't that I didn't want to see Madie. Shit, I wanted to see her so goddamn. But an emotional hurricane pounded inside my chest, and who didn't run away from a storm like that?
The knob turned, and I stilled. Madie pushed her way into the room. I studied her head first, trying to find anything wrong. But she looked mostly the same. Her hair was up in a messy bun, and she wore some yoga pants and a zip-up. To most, she wouldn't stick out from the sea of other girls on campus, but I'd never been able to overlook her.
"Bren." She stopped in the doorway, her hand hovering over the knob as she stared at me. "What—you're here."
I stood slowly, wiping my palms over the coarse denim of my jeans. "I'm here. Madie, I—"
"No." She gave her head a little shake and then brought a hand up, dropping her forehead into it. Her feet hadn't moved from their frozen spot in the doorway. "No, Bren," Madie said, her voice tight. Then she looked up, and a chill ran through me from her glare. "You can't be here."
"Madie," I began to plead.
She dropped her keys on the floor and left her spot, stomping toward me. Before I knew it, Madie was inches away, her finger in my face. "You left me." She poked the finger in my chest. "You told me to believe in my worth, to leave Quinton, and then when it went south, you left me to deal with the consequences on my own." On the last word, her voice broke, her face crumping in a pain I couldn't begin to understand.
Quickly, she hid in her hands, and her head tucked beneath my chin. Without thinking, I encircled her in my arms, pulling Madie into my chest. She let me, and my heart nearly tore in two as her body heaved with silent sobs.
I'd left her.
"I'm so sorry," I murmured. I held her tighter, not knowing what else to say. She was right. "But I'm here now, and I'm not leaving you."
I felt her lift her head just a little, her hair brushing beneath my chin. She rested one of her palms on my chest, sliding it until it was right above my heart—my wildly beating heart. "I was doing it. I was doing fine without you." She whispered the words through gasping breaths, but sometimes the quietest phrases meant the most.
"I know," I said into her hair. "And I'm so proud of you." Hoping she wouldn't pull away, I skimmed my fingers across the crown of her head. "How do you feel?"
Madie seemed to know that I was referring to her head and not her emotions. "I'm fine," she muttered after sniffling a little.
"How's your...memory?"
At that question, Madie broke away from me. She abruptly turned back toward the door, and for a split second, I was terrified that she was going to walk back out of it. But she just grabbed her keys off the floor and threw them onto the desk. Pulling out the chair next to it, she slumped down, wiping tears off her cheeks.
"Madie, please tell me." Honestly, I didn't deserve for her to tell me anything. But I couldn't help but beg. I needed to know how she was.
She peered up at me, her face softening from whatever she saw on mine. But then I saw her lips quiver, and she looked away. "I haven't had any problems for a few days. I—I finally remembered."
"Remembered what?"
Madie's eyes flickered closed for a prolonged, agonizing moment. But the way they struck me when she reopened them was infinitely more painful.
"Almost every time I woke up, I forgot."
I took a brave step toward her.
"What did you forget? About what happened with Quinton?"
Her lips tightened, but her gaze didn't waver.
"No, Bren." She rolled her eyes in a quick little motion. "I remember that clearly, unfortunately." A deep sigh released between slightly chapped lips. "It was you."
"Me?" I choked out.
"I forgot," she whispered, "that you were gone. I kept waking up and thinking you were going to be there. Because you were the last person I remembered seeing. Because...I don't know." She didn't look away, but her voice died.
I deserved every single ounce of guilt that threatened to drown me. Madie's gaze pierced me so deeply, in the farthest reaches of my heart. And the look she was giving me broke that finicky organ apart. Hell, how did this girl get so far in there?
Lifting a shaky hand to grab at the ends of my hair, I watched as Madie's sharp eyes moved to the bandage still wrapped around my fingers. "Let me explain, Madie," I said before she could say anything else.
"Okay." She said it so quietly. But her consent was the best gift. She rubbed her head a little, and I wondered if it hurt. I wondered if we should have this conversation at all.
Carefully, I sat on the edge of her bed. I didn't risk moving closer to her, though I wanted to. Madie seemed so far away, sitting in that desk chair across the room. But I took what I could get.
Digging deep, I exhaled, ready to expel my truths. They'd still be demons, but at least they would have a name for her.
"Madie, my dad abused my mom for years. He never hurt me. Shit, I almost wished he had." I took a deep breath. "Sometimes, I would try to jump in the middle, but it never made a difference. I urged her—like I did with you—to leave him. One summer night when I was sixteen, I came home from soccer practice to see all of our bags by the door."
I tried to say the words without imagining the scene, but it was impossible. My mom's anxious face swam through my consciousness. She'd had dark hair and dark eyes, just like me. I recalled seeing hopefulness in her gaze even as terror had threaded into her expression. I remembered that look as she'd ushered me to change quickly so we could leave.
I shouldn't have changed. We should have left, then and there. We should have left and never looked back. But here I was, continually retracing what was behind me.
The change in Madie's breathing was slight, but I heard it across the room. "That was the woman you were talking about before," she said. It was a statement, a realization.
I nodded.
"Except my dad—" I stopped, coughing a little at the catch in my throat that happened whenever I spoke of him. Clearing it away, I continued, "He came home before we could escape. He saw the bags by the door." I shrugged. "And he killed her. Shot her."
Blood spilling across linoleum, covering my hands—it was that image I remembered the most.
I had to say the words nonchalantly because otherwise, they wouldn't come out. If you pretended something wasn't the worst thing that had ever happened to you, maybe it wouldn't become it. I shook my head, trying to clear it. "Madie, I fucked up with you. In so many ways. If I had known you were going to try to leave Quinton that day—"
"Of course I was going to leave him," she said, cutting in, crying out. "How could you think anything different? Bren, I—I bared everything to you."
I closed my eyes, the heartbeat of that night in this very room coming back to me. It was wild. It was barely controlled. It was hot, taking my breath away.
"Oh right," she said acidly, interrupting my memories. "Because you thought it went too far."
Snapping my head up, I stared. "Only because you were still dating Quinton. God, Madie. You don't want to know how far I'd go with you."
Her expression twisted, and I knew that somehow she'd twisted my words in her head, too.
"You certainly ran far away, Bren."
"I ran," I said, my voice dropping to a rocky, uneven level. "Because I was spiraling. I was—I am—so incredibly mad at Quinton for what he did to you. And then when I saw him that night, I lost control. I lost control because I was too close to you, and you were too close to everything in me." I swallowed. "And I was scared."
It was quiet for a moment. I wanted to say more, spew more of my feelings at her. But I restrained, giving her time to think.
"And now?" she asked finally.
"I'm still scared," I admitted. "But I'm working on controlling myself. Because I should never have left you. I want to be close."
Her gaze was still uncertain. "So you're coming back to campus?"
"No."
Usually, I'd feel bad at the crestfallen look on her face. But at the moment, it meant that she still wanted me around. And I needed that for what I was going to say next.
"No, I'm going to Malibu to stay at Beau's beach house."
"What?"
I loved the adorable confusion on her face and couldn't hold back a small smile. "And I want you to come with me."
"What?" she repeated, her face scrunching up more.
Daring to cross the room toward her, I knelt beside Madie. I took her hands in mine, and her fingers traced the fraying edges of my bandage.
"Beau filled me in on everything. Madie, you're not safe here. There's nothing that would stop him from coming to find you again."
"He's going back home for counseling..." she began, but her words and voice were so unconvincing.
"Madie." I gently tilted her chin, so she was looking in my direction. "Let me take you away. Let me take you where Quinton will never find you. Let me keep you safe."
Her eyes searched my face about twenty times over before she spoke again. "Are you serious?"
I nodded.
She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry about your parents, Bren. That's so awful. I can't even...I can't even imagine."
There was pity in her eyes, and I didn't want it. "Don't be. I just wanted you to know. It's not an excuse, but I needed you to know that I wasn't running from you. I was running from them, from Quinton, from more violence. From myself, I guess."
She briefly paused. "Are you okay?" Her eyes fell to our hands—my hand.
I gave her a little smile. "It'll heal."
"Are you sure?" Her head cocked to the side, and I could tell I hadn't convinced her. "I don't want you in pain, Bren."
"I'm sure."
She bit her lip. "Are you going to leave me again?"
"No, Madie." I shook my head and ran my good hand up her arm until I was cupping her face. It was a gorgeous face. "I'm not. I'm not going to leave you again."
I felt the words, and I hoped she did, too. Because I was in this now, and I wasn't running away.
Unless, of course, I was running away with her.
🖤
Couldn't break this one up.
Thanks, all!
xoxo amelie