Finding Allie (11 page)

I don’t believe Jeff. I
can’t
believe Jeff. There’s no way Chase killed his mom. He told me the truth today out there in the desert. Jeff’s been told a lie. The way he smiles as he tells it is what’s creepy. Not Chase. Jeff’s the one who’s more likely to have killed a mom.

My
mom.

Marissa and I don’t talk about it anymore, but we’re pretty sure Jeff killed our mother. We don’t have any proof, and when it happened we were just stupid teen girls in the eyes of the cops who investigated. Jeff was smooth, and able to talk to them man to man. He played the grieving spouse, the out-of-his-mind loving husband who didn’t know where his wife had fallen.

Meanwhile, it was me and Marissa who were out of our minds with true sorrow.

Jeff was never arrested. When they found Mom’s body he cried, but only in public. Never in private.

Doesn’t that say so much?

“I don’t give a shit what a lot of people say,” I snap at him, then break into a run. Screw Jeff. I can’t take the car and it’s sweltering outside, but I spy my bicycle out of the corner of my eye. I’ve stored it by the side of the bar for a long time and only use it when I’m desperate.

I’m desperate
now
.

Chapter Thirteen

The gears creak with neglect, but the bike works. Tires are fine, and as I pull out of the parking lot I half expect Jeff to grab the back of my shirt and drag me down. The feeling takes me by surprise and sends a full-body chill through me as I pump my legs hard to get away from the bar as fast as possible. 

I know he’s not chasing me, but still. He’s mad. I’m madder.

Anything could happen right now.

Screw Jeff. He can tend the bar alone tonight. I’m not going back. I’m just not. The farther I get away from the bar, the angrier I feel. He had no right to say that about Chase. Those lies. Chase told me what happened, and I believe him.

So why am I so upset?

The road is long, boring and straight for more miles than I can see. Keeping the bike moving is so easy. My hair flies behind me like a kite tail and the breeze feels so good in this crazy-hot place. All I’ve ever known is this town, these barren lands, this brown state. I’m biking in the general direction of Los Angeles, headed west, and I wonder.

I wonder what would happen if I just kept going.

My stash is back at the bar, unfortunately. While the idea of leaving right now and just riding forever until I literally fall into the ocean is appealing, I can’t. Not yet. I’m so close to getting it right.

Plus, there’s Chase.

If he’ll go, I want him there, too.

A car passes, blowing a huge gust of wind on me. The cars are generally polite when it comes to bike riders. Why not? The roads are wide and it’s not like there isn’t enough room. Another car passes me, then a third. The engines fade off in the distance.

My thighs are starting to complain. I don’t ride enough anymore to be in shape the way I was before I got my driver’s license. Jeff doesn’t let me use the car very often, and only when he needs me to run an errand for him. I’ve grown accustomed to driving places or being driven. My bike became an after thought.

Now it’s a lifeline.

Knowing I can just get away from Jeff feels so good. In a few hours I know I’ll regret this. I should go back. I should work the bar. I should shut up and act like nothing ever happened, like I didn’t mouth off to him.

As these thoughts pepper my brain, another engine roars in the distance.

This one isn’t a car.

The motorcycle speeds past me just as I hit a huge bump and go flying over the handlebars onto the ragged rocks at the edge of the road, my elbows in front of me, arms bent out of instinct to protect my face. I fall so quickly I don’t even have time to scream. I’m not wearing a helmet. 

The crunch of gravel and dirt against my face feels like I’m being peeled alive. My skin burns and burns, and then I’m wet. The sound of an engine dies out and I hear someone screaming my name.

I can’t move. I’m in a box of nothing but pain and throbbing.

“Allie!” It’s Chase. “Oh, God, are you okay? Holy shit. Don’t move. Let me make sure your neck and back are fine.” His voice is commanding. Responsible. In charge. I can hear him tear off his riding gloves and then soft, gentle hands are touching my neck, my back, my hips.

“Road rash,” he says under his breath. “Bad.”

I can’t talk. My chest feels like someone put an entire mountain on top of it. Black spots start to dot my vision. I close my eyes, willing them away.

“What are you doing out here on a bicycle?” he asks in a tender voice, his hands on my hair, pulling it off my face. A light breeze makes my face and arms feel cooler than they should, even through the burning. 

Air seeps slowly back into my lungs, making my body explode with pain. I start to shake. I don’t want to feel all this. The pain is worse with each second.

“Allie?” Chase’s voice has an urgency to it. A worried tone. I need to answer him, but all I can do is move my knee and groan.

A piercing feeling makes me nearly scream.

Chase looks down and whistles, the kind of sound you don’t want to hear after you’ve taken a spill like this. “Damn, that’s bad. You have this flap of skin just hanging off your knee cap.”

I think I might throw up.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Inhale. Exhale. All the processes my body normally goes through I have to do consciously.

“Allie.” The way Chase says my name has a terrifying quality to it. “I can hear you breathe. I think you understand me. Do I need to get an ambulance? Did you break something? Man, I saw you go flying and you must be so hurt.” He starts rubbing my back and it finally makes me swallow and reply.

“I, oh, it hurts,” I croak out and start to cry.

“Can you sit up, honey?” He called me ‘honey’. I’m in so much pain I can’t revel in the fact that Chase just called me a sweet name. I move one arm and it’s so sore already, shaking. I don’t trust my elbow.

“I can try,” I say, moving my legs to roll over.

“Can I help?” Now I can see Chase’s face, and he’s so worried. So concerned. The press of his palm on my hair, how he tucks it back behind my ear and winces, the low, soothing tone in his voice all make me feel better. 

But not much.

“I don’t know.” I start to sit up and nearly scream. My knees are raw hamburger and my jeans are shredded. Elbows, too. And the side of my face— 

“Oh, baby,” Chase says in a deep, mournful tone.

Yeah. My face is as bad as it feels.

“I look like something out of
The Walking Dead
, don’t I?”

His eyes go soft and pitying. “It’s not that bad.” 

“Liar.”

He makes a funny sound through his nose, not quite a laugh. “It’ll heal. You’re beautiful no matter what. Can you move all your joints? Any broken bones?” He’s so practical and responsible, helping me go through the motions to make sure I’m okay, that I feel like I’m seeing a new side of him. Chase isn’t just some biker dude with the hots for me. 

There’s so much more there.

We both look over at my bicycle at the same time and I choke up. The front wheel looks like someone put it through a meat grinder. The frame is bent, and there’s blood on the tape around the handlebars.

I look at my forearms now, bending them back.

They’re red, with bits of brown dirt embedded in there. Chase’s shirt is streaked with blood, and so is mine.

“Wow,” is all I can think to say through the haze of pain and horror.

“You don’t do anything small, do you?” Chase asks, moving next to me and gingerly putting his arm around my shoulders. I rest my cheek—the one that isn’t rubbed raw by road rash—on his shoulder. 

“What do you mean?”

“That was one hell of a fall. You went ass over tea kettle.”

“Ass over what?” I’ve never heard that expression before.

He laughs. “My mom used to say that all the time when someone took a spectacular fall. ‘Ass over tea kettle.’ I think it’s like making a somersault.”

That
I understand.

The pain is a throbbing horror, all pouring in now and in different forms. The raw skin feels like I’m being flayed. My knees and elbows are pulsing with the pain of impact, I guess, and my entire body feels drained. I probably tightened up with tension and shock as soon as I went flying, and tomorrow I’ll be a bundle of muscle pain.

Tears well up in my eyes and I go to wipe them, but my palm is filled with gravel and blood. I can’t even wipe away my own tears.

That makes me start to sob. At least my lungs work again, and Chase just quietly puts his arms around me and holds me while I cry, on the side of the road in the desert, my body, mind, soul and heart completely destroyed and my life falling apart.

Jeff’s going to kill me (not really, but...), Marissa is in Los Angeles living like a real human being instead of me and my stupid life, David’s going off to college, and here I am sitting by the side of the road covered in cuts and sobbing into the arms of...

Okay. So that part of my life is just fine.

Chase kisses my temple so sweetly.

“That’s the only part of my face that doesn’t have blood on it,” I say.

One side of his mouth moves up in a smile. “It’s all gorgeous, blood and cuts included.” He frowns. “Why were you on your bike? I thought you had to work tonight.”

The tears start up again and I babble. I can’t help it. So much has built up inside me that I’m like Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park. Ready to blow at any time.

“Jeff and I got into a fight when I went to work. He told me never to see you and that you killed your mother.”

Chase’s jaw drops.

“I told him that was a lie,” I hiss through clenched teeth. I can taste blood and sand but I don’t care. “A vicious, nasty lie.”

The whites of his eyes are so big right now and he nods fast. “It’s a huge lie. Who the fuck is saying that about me?”

“Well, Jeff, for one. He’s such an asshole.”

Chase looks shocked.

“What?” I ask. I actually spit into the ditch because my mouth finally can’t handle the nasty dirt in it.

“You used a bad word.”

I give him an incredulous look, but then it hurts when I move the muscles of my face. Great. I can’t even make a facial expression without feeling pain.

FML.

“I know a lot of bad words, Chase!” I shout. I’m over-the-top upset now, exasperated and done. Just done with everyone and everything. Even Chase, and that means things are bad. I want to go home and crawl under the covers and hide until everything goes away.

No. No, I don’t.

I want to get on Chase’s motorcycle and ride off west to the ocean.

With or without him.

“Slow down there. Slow down,” he says like he’s gentling a horse. “It’s okay, Allie. You can’t go home, can’t go back to the bar. I get that. Now, unless you really do think I murdered my own mother—”

“NO!” I shout.

He nods, “Then let me take you back to my little shack in the desert, clean you up, feed you, and we’ll figure all this out.”

A car shoots past us and I turn to watch it, but my neck hurts so much I yelp. Chase gives me a little squeeze, the kind you give someone as a show of support, and then he stands and brushes the dirt off his ass. It’s a nice ass.

How can I notice his ass when I look like someone dragged me half a mile behind a car?

I stand, too, and run a shaky hand through my hair. Half a garden’s worth of dirt floats out.

“I must look awful,” I mutter, slowly walking over to Chase’s bike. My knees are killing me. I look at my reflection in one of his mirrors.

“You didn’t tell me I look this bad,” I complain as he picks up my destroyed bike and pulls a bungee cord out of a box on the back of his bike.

“Because you don’t look that bad,” he says, then peers at me, eyes narrowed. “Geez, Allie, that split lip’s gotta hurt.”

I reach up and touch it. The skin stings. He’s right again—my lip is fat and swollen, split deep.

I lick it, the pain easing as it gets some moisture.

“We’re about thirty minutes from my place. You think you can handle riding on back?” he asks as he uses the bungee cords to secure my broken bike frame to the back of his motorcycle.

Oh. I hadn’t thought about that. If I go to Chase’s place with him, I have to straddle the bike and hold on tight to him.

I’m suddenly really warm.

Hot, even.

My legs will have to wrap around that same nice ass I was just admiring.

Who have I become? Why am I thinking like this? It’s impossible for my face to turn any more red between the heat, the blood, the cuts and my stupid hormones. 

Chase is staring at me with expectation.

“Um, yes. Sure. Okay. I can ride.” My thighs begin to quiver at the thought of slinging them over that big, vibrating bike and linking my hands around Chase’s waist. I start breathing hard and imagining the power of it all.

I want it.

I want everything.

“Climb on,” Chase says with a look in his eye of excitement and compassion. It’s a strange mix. He straddles the bike and turns it on, the engine burbling until it smooths out. I lift one leg and try my best to be elegant, but the pain in my knee makes me stumble. I grab on to Chase’s arm and he is rock steady. Strong and firm.

I make it onto the bike in a clumsy sort of way and put my feet on the footrests. My thighs are hugging Chase’s ass and he’s so warm. So muscled. So attractive.

He revs the engine and the vibration rips through me, making me gasp in his ear.

“Bet you’ve never had this kind of power between your legs before, Allie.”

Oh, God. Every cell in my body starts to tingle.

And with that, Chase hands me a helmet. It’s a little one, without a visor, like the kind they wore during WWII in Europe. I feel silly but it’s better than nothing. Chase puts his on and he squares his shoulders.

And with that, we move forward, the wheels catching the asphalt and our bodies and the motorcycle proceeding as one.

Chapter Fourteen

I’m so tired. The drive there is soothing, the feel of hugging Chase from behind becoming ordinary really quickly. Not in a boring kind of way. More like comfortable. Casual.