Crushed (14 page)

Chapter
9

Her
body tingled with that horrible feeling th
at settled
in after a nightmare. T
he feeling that the prickly, sweaty, heart-pounding rush of fear create
d
. Sleep was such an elusive thing for
Cleo
. Like that four leaf clover that at the age of
nearly
eighteen, she
’d still never found. Too often after winning
her
hard earned battle
with insomnia, she
would have to
relinquish sleep as she
clawed
her
way out of another discombobulated memory.

Her nightmares always revolved around her mother’s death. Around finding her the
way she had. The horrible visions
of that day never seemed to get buried far enough under th
e surface of her mind to keep them
away.

She
blinked at the clock
. It glared back at
her
through the blackness. It would
still be
several
hours before her alarm would go off. How she
would spend those pre
cious hours was questionable. She
may be able to fall back to sleep.

Or she
may not.

She
flipped
her
covers off
. W
ith her pillow tucked under her arm she made her way across her
darkened room. There was enough of a g
low from the streetlights that she
didn’t need to turn
on a light. Besides, she ha
d made a similar trek in the middle
of the night countless times. Her
door creaked open
. W
ithout that paltry barrier, she
could hear Paul grinding out snores.

She
wished he’d sleep w
ith his door shut. Better yet, she
wish
ed
the door to what had been
the bedroom he’d shared with her
mom could be permanen
tly sealed shut. Or as long as she
was wishing,
she may as well go all out and say she
wish
ed she
never had to step foot in this house again.

But since the reality of it was
that
she did, she
dealt with it
as best she could. When it was just
her
and Luci
at home, she
kept that door shut. Not that it blocked the memories of that day, but
she
liked to pretend it helped.
And maybe it did help, not having to walk by and see a clear view of the bed.
It didn’t matter that it was new now, that it had been replaced. A
nd making that bed was the one bit of housework that
Paul
didn’t expect her
to do.

She had
not stepped into that room since that day.

Since there was no note, they never officially de
clared it a suicide. And maybe she was wrong, but Cleo
was
sure that’s exactly what it had been
.
A mixture of her anti-depressants and Paul’s liquor. They suggested maybe in a drunken
stupor she’d forgotten she’d taken her pills
, accidentally
taking too many.

Too many? She had taken the remainder of the bottle. But there had been no note. And
no prior mention of suicide. So there had been the possibility that it had been an
accident. It was possible, but not likely.

Cleo didn’t believe
it was an accident. H
er
mom didn’t drink. The fact that she did drink
that
day made her
believe it was for a reason. That she had a clear intention.

The bed wasn’t made
that
day either.
Sometimes she couldn’t stop herself from wondering if her mom had known that Cleo
would be
the one to find her…W
ould it have changed things? Would she have changed her mind? If she would have known
how permanently the sight of
her had imb
edded itself into Cleo’s memory? Into her subconscious? I
nto her
dreams?

For weeks after, the memory of finding her replayed itself vividly
. O
ver and over behind the darkened screen
of her
closed eyelids. It
was
better now. But
Cleo had found that when her mind was humming with anxiety, it seemed
to latch onto that memory and bring it to the forefront.

It had
been doing that a lot over the last few months.

She
tiptoed down th
e hall, to the door next to hers
. Luci
never closed her door. Cleo silently made her
wa
y across the room and lifted Luci’s covers. Luci
always slept on the inside of her bed, closest to the wall.
They’d never talked about it, but she thought
it was
Luci’s
way of sayin
g that she didn’t mind. And Cleo always realized the irony. Her
baby sister sho
uld be crawling into bed with her
to seek comfort.

Not the other way around.

The bed dipped under Cleo’s
weight
.
Luci let out a sleepy sigh.

Cleo
carefull
y tugged the covers up around them
.
She
tried to let Luci’s
light, steady breathing calm her
. It worked.

But not enough.

She shoved the memories of her mom out of her
head
. O
nly to
find it made enough room to let
thoughts of Reece tumble in. She’d
hated lying to him.
And she
had lied
yester
day. She
’d lied about
how things were going with
her and
Ethan. Up until that miserable day last
year, the last day of school, she
’d only ever lied to Reece once. And that
lie, too, had gnawed away at her. But it wasn’t as if she
’d had a choice then either.

If he’d known how
she
really
got the split lip
last year, he wouldn’t have let it go. It could’ve cost
her
Luci. And
she
couldn’t have that. If
someone
st
arted snooping around in
Cleo’s
business,
she
had a hu
nch they could take both her and Luci away
. And there would be no guarantee
they
would be together.

So
she tolerated what she
had to, grateful that Paul’s outbursts were infrequent.

Luci
murmured something in her sleep and flung an arm around
Cleo
, probably only aware of
her on
a subconscious level.

Cleo
squirmed a little closer to her as
she closed her
eyes
. M
or
e thoughts of Reece sifted in. She thought about the day she
’d flown out of sch
ool, accidentally catapulting her
self into his
arms. He’d insisted on taking her to his house. She
hadn’t had the ambition to argue. It was the first time in weeks, maybe even months
or longer
, that someone
had
offered to take care of her
. And wh
ile the fact that it was a boy she
barely knew should’ve
made her resist, she
couldn’t.
She’d
latched onto the little bit of kindne
ss he’d shown. She’d let him
pull her
out of the
deepest depths of her
desolation.

She
’d been
horrified when she woke up to find
her
self draped across him.
He
was
Reece Hilde
n
brandt
for heaven’s sake.
She
knew who he was.
Sheridan High was small eno
ugh that everyone knew everyone. A
t least by name, if not as an actual acquaintance. But
more importantly
, she
knew
who his
father
wa
s. And though for the life of her she
couldn’t ever remember having a single
conversation with him before, she
did know that he seemed like a nice guy.

The kind of guy everyone liked and that everyone got along with. But not the kind
of guy someone like
her
just randomly woke up snuggling with.

Instead of making things awkward, he made
her
a grilled cheese sandwich and a hot fudge sundae.
He didn’t even give
her a chance to let her
self be mortified ov
er everything that had happened; f
lying into him,
sobbing
on his shoulder
, spilling
her
heart out all over him,
and
l
ast of all, making
her
self cozy half on top of him.

They
’d spent that gloomy, dreary,
stormy
afternoon on his couch. They
’d shared a blanket, talked and pretended
to watch movies. He
had driven her
home after s
chool had gotten out for the day.
She had
thought that would be the end of it.

The next morning
she found him waiting for her at her
locker.
She
hadn’t realized at the time that it was just the beginning.

***

She
was a nervous
mess
as
she
waited for Reece to get to
her house
. Paul was already gone and
she’d told Luci that
Emma was on the way
. Cleo had then been
treated to a full-blow
n
pout session
. S
he
hurried her along to get her out
of
the door
on time. Cleo
was sure
Luci
purposefully a
te her breakfast in slow motion. T
rying to make an excuse to miss the bus
. Luci
couldn’t understand why Emma couldn’t drive her to school
,
too.

After she was gone,
Cleo
used the few extra minutes
to check her hair again. Then she
let out an exasperated sigh
because she realized that really, at this point… What did her
hair
, of all things matter?
She
decided it didn’t
. S
ince they
were going to be outside, and you never knew what the wind was
going to do, she
pulled it back in
to a ponytail. She
dabbed ano
ther layer of concealer under her
e
yes, brushed some powder over her
face
and basically
caved
to
the whole make-up routine.

She
grabbed
her
bag as
she
heard a vehicle pull up. As
she walked down
the
side
walk she
tried n
ot to think about how right it
felt. Because it wasn’t right. There was Mia to think about now. And the whole Ethan
fiasco. It shouldn’t feel f
amiliar. It should feel wrong. She tried to tell herself this as she
got into the passenger seat.