Breathless #5 (The Breathless Romance Series - Book #5) (3 page)

Finally, my phone told me that I had arrived at my
destination. It was a little neighborhood, looking almost-nice in the early
afternoon sun; there were a couple of people out on their lawns, mowing or
trimming hedges or weeding. I looked at the address on the envelope, and then
up at the house I had stopped at on the directions app’s insistence. It was a
little house — the siding was crazed, the paint was old and faded, and the yard
was full of weeds. It wasn’t dirty or anything like that, but it was easy to
tell in an instant that the house was very different from where I had grown up.
It was half the size, if that, and looked as if even in its heyday, when it had
just been finished, it would have sold for half the value of my parents’ home.
I bit my lip; I had known that Johnny hadn’t grown up rich, but while the house
didn’t look like he was exactly poor as a child, it was easy to see that his
childhood hadn’t always been comfortable.

I felt bad for how much I had talked about my parents’
wealth and how much contempt I had for it. It was so stupid in the face of the
differences between how we’d grown up. I thought it was easy to see where
Johnny’s attitude that I should just milk my parents for the support they could
give me had come from. It must have seemed like heaven to him, to not have to
worry about how I was going to get my hands on a car, to never have to really
think about where the electricity came from or how it was paid.

But thinking about how guilty I was of my own
privileges wasn’t getting me any further. I got out of the car and walked
towards the front door. I realized I had no idea if Johnny was even home. He
had told his frat brothers that he had to go home, but what if he had gone
somewhere else? I sighed. I was so tired already; I had to just take my chances
and hope that whoever was there in the house would tell me what I needed to
know.

My heart was racing as I lifted my hand and knocked on
the door. I waited, chewing on my bottom lip and thinking that it was either
the best idea I’d ever had or the worst. It was either complete insanity or the
sanest thing in the world to come all this way to see Johnny, to talk to him.
It really all depended on what the outcome was.

No one answered; I couldn’t believe that my long,
stupid drive all the way here was going to be for nothing. I decided to try
again. I knocked, and I stepped back from the door a little bit, in case
someone came to peer out through the windows. I noticed one of the panes was
cracked — sealed up, but not replaced. There were some cheerful nasturtiums in
window boxes underneath, and I smiled at the strange-looking blooms and leaves.

Finally, when I was on the verge of giving up and
figuring out what to do next, with no leads, nothing at all to go on, the door
opened a crack. “Yes?” My mind went blank for a minute. “I’m not interested in giving
any comments to any newspapers,” a woman’s voice said.

“Please, ma’am, I’m not from a newspaper — I’m from a
school.” I flinched; that didn’t tell her anything. “Are you Johnny’s mom?”

“I might be,” she said, opening the door a little
wider. “Are you from that college he goes to? I’m not interested in giving any
quotes about him to the school, either.” I shook my head.

“I’m not — I’m not representing anyone,” I said. “I’m
just trying to find Johnny. I’m worried sick about him.” The woman opened the door
the rest of the way; she was older than my mom, with a few wrinkles around her
eyes and lips that turned down at the corners, but I could see in her face
where Johnny had gotten his bright eyes from, and I thought that if she smiled,
it would almost be that same expression. The one that made me weak in the knees
with happiness.

“Why are you worried about Johnny?” she asked me
sharply.

“I’m…his girlfriend. My name is Becky; we’ve been
seeing each other for the past couple of weeks.” The woman’s frown deepened.

“He didn’t say anything to me about a girlfriend,” she
said, looking at me sharply.

“Please, I don’t mean you or him any harm. I just…I
haven’t been able to eat or sleep, worrying for him. I just want to talk to
him. I just want to know he’s okay. If he doesn’t want to talk to me,
I’ll…drive home, I guess, but I’ve been driving all morning to get here and I
just…” I couldn’t think of any way to finish the sentence.

“How did you meet him?” The woman asked me. I grinned
slightly.

“If you’ll believe it, I nearly ran him over in the
dining hall at school,” I told her. “I was backing up and not paying attention,
and ran into him.” The woman’s frown softened slightly. “And then when classes
started, he was so nice to me. I’m a freshman and had no idea where my class
was, and he walked me all the way there.”

The woman stepped through the door, giving a
suspicious look around at the neighborhood. She looked me over slowly. “I guess
I have to believe you,” she said, biting her bottom lip. “He’s not here.”

“Do you have any idea where he is?” I asked. “I — I
don’t want to hound you, I promise.” Johnny’s mother sighed and looked me over
again.

“He’s gone to the girl’s parents. He said he wanted to
talk to them — he had to.” I nodded.

“Claire’s?” Johnny’s mother nodded. “Could you give me
the address there? I promise I won’t bother you any more than I have. I won’t
tell anyone where I’m going or anything.” The woman hesitated and then took a
deep breath.

“If you really are his girlfriend and you’re really
worried about him, then I can’t just send you back without anything to go on,”
she said. “Let me write it down for you.” She reached into the house and
brought out a pad and a pen that must have been right next to the door, maybe
hanging on the wall. She scrawled something in handwriting that looked a lot
like Johnny’s and handed it to me.

“Thank you so much. I really appreciate this.” I
hesitated for just a moment before reaching out and giving the woman a quick
hug. “I just want you to know,” I said, pulling back. “That I love your son
very much. And I trust him, and believe him — and I believe in him.” I took a
deep breath. “I know it’s been every bit as hard on you as it has on him, maybe
worse. But thank you for trusting me.” The woman smiled slightly.

“I can believe you’re a girl Johnny would go after,
all right,” she said. “I don’t know if he’ll see you, but that’s where he’s at,
or where he was going.” I gave her my number and she promised that if I
couldn’t get to Johnny before he came home, whenever that might be, she would
call me and let me know he’d come back. I went back to my car and put the
address into my phone’s map app.
At least
it’s not far,
I thought as I turned the key in the ignition once more.

Chapter
Four

The address turned out to be a little less than a mile
away from Johnny’s house. As I approached, I was shocked, though when I thought
about it, it seemed stupid, to see that there were news vans everywhere on the
street, most of them clustered around the address that Johnny’s mom had given me.
I looked around; the neighborhood was a little nicer than Johnny’s, but no one
was out on their lawns, enjoying the Saturday afternoon, doing chores, or
anything. I could see a few photographers, a few news reporters with cameramen,
but no one who seemed to actually live on the block. The tension felt in the
air even from within my car was just disgusting; the journalists lingering
around the White house reminded me of a video I’d seen of a pack of wolves
waiting for the signal to attack prey.

Waiting
isn’t going to make it any easier,
I thought to myself. I
took a deep breath and parked on the road a bit away from the house Johnny’s
mom had sent me to. I shut off the car and climbed out, slipping my phone into
my pocket, and made sure to lock the door, though how I imagined anyone would
feel comfortable stealing from a car with a dozen journalists covering every
stray leaf blowing in the wind in the area, I have no idea. The only way my car
could have been safer was if I had parked it in front of a police station.

I started towards the house, taking as indirect a path
up to the door from the sidewalk as possible. It was no good, of course; the
journalists noticed me right away and I heard them murmuring amongst
themselves, questions about who I was, what I was doing there, how I might know
the family. I kept my face as completely neutral as possible, thinking that if
I didn’t give them any hints, they might just assume I was some kind of
salesperson or something — a totally uninteresting bystander. They started
crowding the front of the house, asking questions as it became obvious that
that was where I was going, and I took another deep breath. “Excuse me,” I said
as politely as I could, pushing past one of them. “Excuse me,” I said again. I
really wasn’t in any mood to be polite, but some part of me thought that if I
was going to be captured pushing through a group of journalists on TV or in the
newspaper where someone who knew me might see it, I was going to be as
completely irreproachable as possible.

I finally managed to get through the group, not
answering any of their questions but pushing past them with as much confidence
and politeness as I could hold together; there seemed to be some kind of
agreement that the journalists could hover around the area of the yard or on
the sidewalk, but not on the porch, and it was weird to feel them watching me
as I stepped up to the door. I felt like I was on some weird kind of TV show. Of
course, if I counted the news as TV, there was every chance that I would be on later.
I knocked on the door quickly, wondering just what I was going to say to
whoever came to it. Why had Johnny come here? Did Claire’s parents blame him
just like everyone else seemed to? Was he here to pay some kind of penance?

I knocked again and realized that probably I was
totally going about it the wrong way.
Don’t
you think the journalists knock on the door, Becky?
I asked myself.
No one inside that house is going to want to
talk to the press — or you, if they think you’re the press.
I knocked again;
it wasn’t as if I had very many other options.

I saw someone looking through the curtains, though I
couldn’t make out who it was. A moment later, the door creaked and the seal
broke with a popping sound as someone cracked it open. I saw a feminine face, a
little younger than Johnny’s mom. “I’m looking for Johnny,” I said quickly. “I
swear, I promise I’m not a reporter or anything.” I raised my hands to show
they were empty. “See? No camera, no microphone.” I smiled nervously.

The woman opened the door a little wider, though not
enough that I could see anything but the top of the wall and the ceiling behind
her. “Who are you, if you don’t mind me asking?” I smiled slowly.

“I don’t mind at all,” I said. “I’m Johnny’s
girlfriend, Becky.” Behind me, the sounds of the milling-around journalists
asking about the girl who was approaching the White house stopped. Everyone
went silent.

Before the woman — who had the same nose and lips as
Claire, I noticed — could say anything, the door opened wider, and I saw Johnny
push past the woman who had answered the door. His eyes were wide and he
glanced over at the assembled press for just an instant, reaching out and
grabbing my wrist. The reporters, photographers, and cameramen had recovered
from their shock, however; even as he pulled me into the house quickly, they
were shouting questions about Claire, struggling to be heard over one another
as they jostled to get the picture, the quote. Johnny said nothing, and the
woman who had answered the door quickly closed it behind us both as Johnny
pulled me into his arms, giving me a quick hug.

“What are you doing here?” he asked me then, holding
me out from him at arm’s length and staring at me. I looked up at him in
disbelief.

“What am I doing here? I love you, you stupid idiot. I
couldn’t let you just face this alone.” Johnny almost smiled and stopped
himself at the last moment, his hands tightening slightly on my shoulders.

“This isn’t your burden to bear. This is…you should
have just let me take care of it, deal with it myself.” I shook my head.

“Everyone on campus knows I’m your girlfriend and now
all of those journalists know I’m your girlfriend. I haven’t been able to go
online for days without seeing something terrible either on my feed or on
yours, or some article somewhere about this whole mess.” Johnny leaned in and
kissed me on the forehead.

“Who even told you where I was?” I blushed slightly
and told him about seeing his truck at the train station, about going to the
Phi Kappa house and asking about him, getting the address for his mother’s
house, and then getting the address for Claire’s house from his mother.

“So, all in all it’s been a pretty eventful day and
it’s not even three,” I said, smiling weakly. “I had to see you, Johnny. I had
to know you were okay and not about to do something stupid.”

“I told you; you should just forget you ever even met
me, cut me out of your life forever.” I shook my head.

“They all know we’re together now, so what’s the
point? If I left you now, it would just make everything worse for both of us.”
Johnny sighed and leaned in to kiss me lightly on the lips. He took my hands in
his and gave them a squeeze, his eyes closed.

“I don’t know what to do, Becky,” he said, shaking his
head again. “I just don’t know how to make it all stop — for me, for everyone.”
The woman who had answered the door came in with another man; I saw that Claire
must have gotten her dad’s eyes, and thinking of Claire made me suddenly so sad.
I felt guilty that all this time I had been thinking about Johnny, when these
two people had lost a daughter.