Chasing Allie (Breaking Away Series #2) (11 page)

I shrug. “Sort of?” I don’t know how to describe what I’ve done with Chase.

She doesn’t pry. “But the first person you’ve been intimate with.”

“Yes,” I reply. “That’s a good way of putting it.”

Her eyes scan the room as if she’s thinking. As if she’s planning. She licks her lips and catches my eye again. “This may have nothing to do with you,” she declares. “He’s in business with the biker gang whether you like it or not, Allie. Something happened and he had to go home and deal with it. That’s my best guess.” She pauses. “Until you see him again, you’re not going to know.”

I nod and work on my coffee. “That’s about all I can do.”

Joshie appears suddenly at our feet, his head barely coming up to my knee. He tips his face up and holds his sippy cup out to Marissa. “Want more, want more,” he says, his little voice high and sweet.

“Okay, buddy,” Marissa says. She looks at me. “I remember when you were this little.”

I look down at his bright red curls and tousle them. “I remember being this little. Mostly.” I swallow. There’s a click in my throat. The tears are being held back, but barely. “I remember when life was this simple. When all you really worried about was whether you were going to get more milk or not.”

She points to the bathroom. “Coffee. Then shower. Those are my orders.”

I salute her as I stand, picking up my cup of coffee and shaking my head.

It’s funny how much better you feel after a few cups of coffee, an apple and some cheese, a shower and a good conversation with your sister. Thirty minutes later I’m a whole new Allie. 

Not really, but I pretend.

“Let’s go out and see the sights,” Marissa declares. Her voice has a firm tone to it. There’s no room for argument. And that’s okay. I need something to take my mind off Chase’s disappearance.  

I don’t have a phone, so he can’t call me. He has Marissa’s phone number in his phone. But I’m holding back. I don’t want to text him. I don’t want to reach out. I figure if he wants to talk to me, he knows how to find me.

There’s a problem, though. No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop thinking about last night. The look in his eyes when he undressed me. The half-smile on his face as his fingers memorized the slopes and planes of my body. How he tasted. How he smelled. The crush of his body against mine. It all flickers through my brain like a thousand movie stills in sequence. Over and over the memories of last night flip through my mind in an endless loop. The thought of him makes my heart hammer against my ribs.

And then I remember the pain of not knowing where I stand with him. Is this just something guys do? They tell you you’re beautiful, and kiss you like they mean it, and tell you they love you, and then when you’re intimate with them but draw a line, do they just go away?

Should I have slept with him last night? We did everything
but
. Technically I’m still a virgin. Technically I’m alone right now. Technically I’m crying right now.

“Oh Allie,” Marissa says. She rubs my back as we walk out the door. Morty’s back at the apartment, playing with Joshie. He’s waiting for his sister to come pick the little boy up.

“Listen,” Marissa says. “I’ve got plenty of money for a fun day.” She checks her wallet and backpedals. “Um...a
partially
fun day.” 

I can’t help but laugh.

“Let’s go walk around Rodeo Drive and not buy a thing, because we couldn’t even afford to buy a rubber band there.”

I snicker through a sniffle.

“And then,” she adds, “We’ll go to Griffith Park.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“You’ve never heard of Griffith Park?” Excitement infuses her words. “It’s this huge free park in Los Angeles, way up on top of the hills. We’ll be able to see for miles. And there’s this science museum, and...”

“Okay, okay. It sounds great.” Finding enthusiasm inside myself is like picking a winning lottery ticket right now. 

“We have to take a bus to get there. A couple of buses,” she explains. “But first, let’s get a cup of coffee. We’ll splurge and get a mocha latte. And we’ll walk around Rodeo Drive like we have the money to be there.”

A smile plays at the corners of my lips. I can’t help it. I’m not wearing any makeup today. I know that if I do, I’ll end up with it all over my face from crying. I wipe the tears with the heels of my hands, and link my arms through hers. “Sounds like a plan,” I say. We begin the walk.

Her phone buzzes within five minutes.

“Seriously?” she says. “No way. There’s no way I’m going into work today!”

She hasn’t even looked at her phone. “What do you mean?” I ask, perplexed.

“It’s probably work. Someone called off and they need me to come in. I told them I needed today off, no matter what.” She looks at her phone. “Oh, wait! It’s not work. It’s someone calling from—well, that’s weird.”

“What?” I ask.

“It’s from our home town. The area code. A number from home.”

“Chase?” My heart fills like a helium balloon. It’s ready to explode or lift high into the sky. 

She answers and says, “Hello?”

Chase?
I mouth. A man’s voice mutters through the phone.

She shakes her head. “Not Chase,” she whispers.

The balloon in my chest pops.

“Is it Jeff?” I ask, my voice filled with disgust.

She covers the mouth part of the phone and says, “No, I know his number. Hang on.”

The murmur of the voice on the other end is too low for me to understand the words, but I understand Marissa’s face. Her jaw drops as the voice continues. “Oh, my God,” she says. All the blood drains out of her face, and she stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk. People walking behind us go around.

I stop, too. “What is it?” I grab her arm tightly.

She waves, and then holds up one finger, asking me to pause.

“Yes, yes, um...okay, officer.”

Officer?
Is this the police department calling her? I widen my eyes and give her a frantic look.

“Yes, actually she’s right here with me.”

Me?
Why is she talking about me?

“Just a moment,” Marissa says. Her hands are shaking and she offers her phone to me. “It’s the police department back home. They want to talk to you.”

“Is this about Chase?” I whisper. The same heart that was slamming against my bones in sadness and in passion for Chase is now jumping double time in terror.  

“No,” she says. She looks at me with bleak eyes. I haven’t seen eyes like that since Mom died. “No, Allie,” she says. “It’s about Jeff.”  

“Jeff?” I gasp. 

She shoves the phone in my hand. “Talk to them,” she says in a hushed tone. One of her hands flies to her forehead while the other rests on her hip. She closes her eyes and bites her lower lip as I pull the phone up to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Hello, is this Allison Boden?”

“Yes? Yes, it is.”

“This is Detective Knowles from the Carson Police Department.”

“Detective Knowles... are you Sammy Knowles’s dad?” My mind is a blender of details and worries right now, and that’s the first thing that comes to mind.

He makes a funny sound. “Um, yes, actually.”

“I went to school with Sammy. He graduated with me last May.” Again my mind jumps.

“I’m not calling to talk about that, Allie.” He lets his firm tone take over the conversation. “We’re pleased, though, to locate you.”

A chill fills my spine like someone’s poured ice from the base of my neck all the way down to my tailbone. “Locate me? Did Jeff file a missing persons report on me, sir?”

“No.”

The way the detective says that one word—no—makes my entire body go numb.

“Allie? Miss Boden, are you there?” The detective’s voice echoes like it’s a million miles away.  

“Sir, what’s happened?” I ask. This is about Chase. Maybe it involves Jeff, but somethings wrong with Chase. I knew it. Something’s gone south back home, and Chase had to go back. But why? Is he hurt? Did Galt do something to him? Was there another fight between Jeff and the Atlas motorcycle gang? I have a million questions, but I can’t ask any of them. This is a detective with the police, after all. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and get someone in trouble. 

“Allie, I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but...” The world stops. Everything I know fades away. The trees in front of me, with thick palm fronds climbing into the sky. My sister, standing there and watching my face intently. The women who walk past in five-inch high heels, dressed in fashionable clothes, carrying iced coffees. The mom pushing a double stroller with an infant in the front and a toddler in the back screaming for a lollipop. The bright LA sunshine streaming over us.

All of it fades. Everything I know about life disappears with those words:
I’m very sorry to have to tell you.
 

And then.

And then he says, “Your stepfather is dead.”

A combination of relief and horror floods my veins. “Jeff is dead?” I want to say to him,
Chase isn’t dead, right?
But of course I can’t.

“Yes,” the detective confirms. “Jeff Wakefield was found dead in his bar late last night.”

“Oh, my God,” I shout. A couple walking past us, the woman holding three or four shopping bags with logos I recognize—expensive logos—stop cold and look at us. Their faces are twisted into expressions of annoyance, as if we’re bothering them.

“How? What? Where?” I ask. The idea begins to sink in. “Jeff’s dead?” I ask.

“Yes.”

Something about the way Detective Knowles is talking to me makes my throat go dry.

“Uh,” I stammer. “Can you tell me more? What—oh, my God!”

“I can tell you this, Allie. We need you to come back. We need you to come back and identify the body, but we also have questions for you.”

“Questions for me? What kind of questions?”

“Allie, we need you to come back. We need you to come home. You’re his next of kin.”

“Well, so is Marissa!” The words are out before I can even process them. She looks at me, her eyes wide with shock. There are no tears, though. Marissa and I don’t have a lot of tears for Jeff.

“Someone needs to identify the body. There are funeral arrangements that need to be made, and questions that need to be answered. How soon can you get home?” he asks.

I can hear the murmur of voices and a shout in the background over the phone, and I wonder what the police department is like. When Mom died, they came to our house to interview me. Jeff said it was better, that it would protect me from being too upset, that going to the police department was too stressful.

I’ve never been arrested, never had to bail anyone out of jail, never had a reason to go to the police department since third grade, when we went on a tour. I barely remember that, though. Again, my mind just jumps like a flea hopping from place to place. Quick. It processes all these bits of trivia as I stand there on the phone with Marissa staring dumbly at me.

“When can you get back here?” His voice is sharper now.

My mind goes blank. Chase is gone, and Chase is how I got here, so I can’t get a ride with him.

Marissa nudges me. “What’s going on?” she asks.

I cover the mouthpiece on the phone. “He wants me to come back and identify the body. Says I’m next of kin.”

“We’ll both go back,” she says. “Morty has a car. He’ll take us home.”

My stomach fills with an intense heat that radiates through my bones. And then a weird calm fills me and I nod. I uncover the mouthpiece to the phone and say, “Okay Detective Knowles, my sister and I will be back.”

When?
I mouth to Marissa, and she mouths back,
Tonight
.

“We’ll be there tonight or tomorrow morning,” I tell him. 

“That’s good, Allie,” he says. His voice is reassuring. “Please come directly to the police department when you get into town.”

And then the phone goes to dead air.

Dead air.

Marissa’s hands are firm on my shoulders as she plants them there. The phone is in my hands but it feels like a lead weight.

“Jeff’s dead,” I whisper.

“Dead,” she whispers back.

“What does this mean?” I ask.

Her eyes narrow. “What do
you
mean?” she asks.

I blurt the words out. “I met Chase the day his motorcycle gang came to the bar and they got into a fight with Jeff and his friends. Guns were pulled out, and glass shattered, and tables were thrown, and it was just one big mess.” I blink, remembering everything. 

“Chase protected me,” I explain to her. “And yesterday he kept getting all these texts, and said it was his dad, but...”  

Her eyes widen again as she gets it. “You think the motorcycle gang has something to do with this?”

I look at her and I don’t want to say the words that have to come out next. “I don’t know, but why else would Chase just up and disappear like this?”

She winces. “I really hope that’s not what happened. That Chase is somehow involved in Jeff’s death. Because that would be—” She makes a choking sound.  

I let out a very long exhale and look her straight in the eye. “That’s the understatement of the year, Marissa.”

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

The drive back home is so much faster than the long, slow trip here with Chase. I don’t know if it’s because we’re in a car, and the car can move faster. I don’t know if it’s because my heart won’t stop beating in double time. I don’t know. These days I don’t know anything.

Still no word from Chase. Every single minute I have to rein myself in from begging Marissa to check her phone. I want to call him. I want to text him. I want to see him. I want to kiss him. I can’t do any of those things.

A few hours pass by and we don’t even bother to stop for a bathroom break, or to catch a bite. Morty drops us off at our house, and Marissa looks like she’s about to go into battle.

After we grab our duffel bags, she leans down through the open driver’s door window and gives Morty a frantic kiss.

“Call me,” he says, those bright blue eyes serious and worried.

“I will,” she replies and slaps the car door hard, like getting a horse to start on its journey.