Rush (30 page)

I was beaten.

***

I walked home. Normally, a walk will
calm me and take me to a place where things look less hopeless, but not
tonight. When I got to my house, I stared up at the second floor and couldn’t
bring myself to walk up to my apartment. The thought of one more night alone in
that place was too much.

I got into my car and drove out to Brad
and Marie’s place. The lights were on in the living room. They were home and I
was going to tell them what I’d done and they were going to be so fucking mad
at me. But it was the only place I had to go.

“Hi, Max!” Marie’s welcoming smile faded
when she got a better look at me. “Damn, you look like crap.”

“That’s what everyone says these days.”

“Come in. Brad’s in the living room
watching TV.”

I followed her into the living room.
Brad took one look at me and turned the TV off, motioning me to sit with him on
the couch. They flanked me, like they were trying to prevent me from escaping.
I sat down and stared at the blank TV screen, my hands loose on my lap.

“What happened, hon?” Marie said.

“You look like someone died,” Brad
added.

“Caroline left me.”

Marie’s small hand covered one of mine. “I’m
so sorry to hear that.”

“It was my fault. I drove her away.”

She squeezed my hand, but said nothing.
Both of them sat silently with me, waiting. I stared at the TV. The only other
time I could remember feeling pain like this was that day, that long ago day,
when my brother had died because of me.

“I used her to hurt Trent and she found
out,” I said.

“Oh, Max.” Marie sounded so disappointed
in me.

“I didn’t mean—I thought we could move
on, that it didn’t matter—”

“But it did,” Brad said. “Didn’t it?”

“Yeah.” It did.

“You love her,” Marie said.

“Yeah.”

She patted my hand. I just kept staring
at that blank TV. I didn’t know where else to look or what to do. It seemed
that nothing I said or did would get Caroline to even listen to what I had to
say, let alone think about coming back to me. So I sat and stared and tried not
to think about anything.

“You look like you haven’t been eating,”
Marie said.

I shrugged.

“Come on.” She tugged at my arm. “We
just finished dinner. I’ll get you something.”

“Not hungry.”

“Take a few bites for me.”

“Leave the boy alone,” Brad said.

“He needs to eat or he’ll make himself
sick.”

Getting sick sounded good right now. It
would almost be a relief to sink into illness, something that would blank out
my mind even more than it already was.

“Get up, Max.” She tugged me again. “Come
on. Just a few bites. Then I’ll stop bugging you.”

I gave in because I knew it would make
her feel better to take care of me. The kitchen still smelled like pan-fried
chicken. She bustled around in between the fridge and the cupboards while Brad
pulled out a chair and sat down next to me.

“You want a beer?” he said.

“Sure.”

Marie set a bottle of ale in front of
me. I took my key chain out and used the miniature bottle opener to open it.
Even though this house was new to me, the sight and sound of my foster parents
and the smell of Marie’s cooking was familiar and comforting.

Brad laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. “You’re
not alone, Max. You have us. You’ll always have us to come home to.”

My eyes stung. “Thanks,” I said
hoarsely.

Marie set a plate in front of me. Just a
few bites, she’d said. She’d given me a large piece of the chicken, plus a
giant helping of homemade mashed potatoes and gravy and some kind of carrot
dish.

“Thanks.” There was no way I could
finish this.

I stuck my fork listlessly into the
mashed potatoes and put it in my mouth. They were buttery and perfect. I took
another bite.

“We love you,” Marie said, taking the
remaining chair.

“I love you, too,” I said, sticking a
piece of chicken in my mouth.

She smiled at me. She wasn’t going to
lecture me on my shameful behavior toward Caroline, apparently, and for that I
was grateful. I didn’t think I could handle a scolding at the moment.

When I’d put away about half the food, I
pushed the plate across the table. It was probably more than I’d eaten in the
whole two weeks Caroline had been gone. “Sorry, but I can’t eat anymore.”

“That’s okay. You did good.” She took
the plate and put it in the sink. “Would you like to stay here for the night?”

I looked at her and then Brad and slowly
nodded. “Yeah.” They were babying me and I really didn’t care. I didn’t want to
be alone right now.

***

Chapter 25

Caroline

I’d never felt more alone than when I
watched Max walking away from me. Leaving me. Clearly I’d lost my mind, because
I was the one who’d made him go. But, God, it tore me apart to see him do it.

I’d been on my way to meet Paige for
dinner. I probably wouldn’t have eaten more than a bite or two, but she wanted
to see me and I owed her for getting my stuff for me. Now I didn’t think I
could face her or anyone else. I turned around and went back in my room,
texting her that I was canceling.

Then I lay down on my bed and stared at
the ceiling. Maybe I should withdraw from this term and go home for a few
months. I could always come back in the spring, when I’d had a chance to get
over him. It would be running away, but so what? At least I wouldn’t have to
worry about running into him or having him come to my room and wait in the
hall. How long had he been waiting out there? An hour at least.

I rubbed my eyes. They were dry of
tears, but my throat was thick and tight with the need to cry. Love sucked. It
sucked big time.

I heard a rustle and a sigh from the
other side of the room. My heart paused and I went cold. Slowly, I turned my
head, expecting Retro-girl, but it wasn’t her. It was a man.

He sat in my desk chair, watching me. He
had dark hair and wore an odd, old-fashioned looking brown suit. His face,
especially the eyes, reminded me of Max.

“W-who are you?” I whispered, clutching
my comforter in my fists.

“I apologize if I startled you,” he
said. “My name is Frederick Marchand.”

“You’re F-fred? Max’s Fred?”

“The same.” He smiled and it was Max’s
smile. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss Caroline Winters.”

“Um...it’s nice to meet you, too.” What
a bizarre thing to say to a ghost. Slowly I sat up. “I don’t mean to be rude,
but why are you here?”

“To plead Max’s case.”

I closed my eyes. “Look, Fred, there’s
nothing to plead. Max and I are finished.”

“He loves you.”

“No, he doesn’t. He only said that to
get me away from Trent.”

“Is that so? Then why didn’t he drop you
as soon as you broke up with his stepbrother? Why say he loved you? There was
no need, if his only purpose was to hurt Trent.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. And I
don’t care. I can’t take him back. I could never trust him again.”

“I urge you to reconsider.”

God, how I wanted to give in. How I
wanted to call Max and tell him to come over, that I forgave him, that
everything was all right. But it wasn’t all right. He’d lied to me.

“I’m better off without a man,” I said.

“Are you?”

“Yes. They’re overwhelming and
dictatorial and untruthful and I—”
Miss him so damn much I can’t stand it.
I blinked rapidly to hold back the tears.

“Please think about giving him another
chance,” Fred said. “You won’t regret it.”

I couldn’t speak. If I opened my mouth,
I’d start sobbing and I really didn’t want to cry in front of a stranger. Even
if he was a ghost.

My hands came up to cover my eyes. He
made no sound and when I lowered my hands a few minutes later, he was gone.

***

On Saturday morning, I was getting ready
to go to breakfast when I got a knock on my door. My whole body tensed. Could
it be Max? My heart raced as I went to answer it. I ought to be furious with
him for ignoring my rejection, and part of me was, but most of me rejoiced that
he’d come back. Most of me wanted to throw my arms around him and kiss him.

I opened the door. It wasn’t Max. A
petite, brown-haired woman stood there, staring at me in obvious apprehension.

Her hair was cut in a chic bob and she
wore skinny jeans and kitten heels with a loosely-knitted, artistic looking
gray tunic with a long, narrow red scarf. Interesting outfit.

Then I took a better look at her face
and my breath stopped. I recognized her. I knew her.

“I’m looking for Caroline Winters,” she
said, looking unsure of herself.

“Aunt Jo?”

She broke into a huge smile. “Caroline!
Oh, my God, it is you! You’re all grown up.”

“I can’t believe it’s you. How did you
find me?”

“A friend let me know where you were,”
she said.

That sounded mysterious.

“I was about to get some breakfast. Want
to come with me?” I said.

“Yes. I’d love to.”

I locked up and we started down the
hall. “I asked Mom where you were but she didn’t know.”

“Yeah, she hasn’t talked to me since
they kicked me out.”

“I’m so sorry about that. I never meant
to get you in trouble.”

Jo frowned at me. “What are you talking
about?”

“They kicked you out because of me.
Because I—well, you know—I was talking to an invisible friend.”

“Sweetheart, it had nothing to do with
you. Your parents wanted me to get treatment and I refused. It wasn’t your
fault.”

I bit my lip as I pushed the elevator
call button. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” She looked at me
with wide eyes. “Have you blamed yourself all these years?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. Kind of.”

She made a pained sound. “I’m so sorry.
It’s my fault, all of it. If I hadn’t started drinking, they wouldn’t have
kicked me out.”

I couldn’t argue with that, so I didn’t
say anything.

We went to a nearby family-style
restaurant that served pancakes and eggs. Jo kept staring at me in what looked
like wonder. I didn’t know why, or what was so wonderful about me, but I guess
it was because she hadn’t seen me in so long. I’d been a little girl of eleven
when she’d left.

“You look so much like your mom,” she
said after we’d ordered.

“Do I?” I’d never thought that.

“Oh, yeah. Your hair is exactly the
same, and your eyes are really similar, too.”

My mom did have brown eyes. But the
hair...

“She makes her hair straight,” I said.

“Does she? She used to have it curly.”

“Not anymore. It’s so shiny and smooth
it looks like a mirror. She’s always ironing it and covering it in some kind of
gloss stuff.”

“I like the way you have yours better,”
Jo said. “It’s natural.”

That’s what Max had said. “Thanks. You
look good, too.”

She smiled. “I’m doing pretty well. I’m
sober and I have a decent job as an office manager in Portland.”

“I’m so glad.”

It was good to see her looking healthy
and happy. That was something I’d thought would never happen. I’d always
imagined her dying alone and cold under a freeway overpass or something like
that. I’d had nightmares about it for years.

“I worried about you,” I said.

“I worried about you, too.” She studied
me thoughtfully. “Do you still see them?”

I blinked. “See them? You mean ghosts?”

“Yes.”

I took a sip of my coffee in order to
gather my thoughts. “For a long time, I didn’t see anything. Recently, though,
I’ve been having...experiences.” I glanced at her. “Do you see them too?”

“Oh, yes. I started drinking to get rid
of them, but that didn’t work. It only made me an alcoholic and a drug addict.”

Wow. That was just what Max had said.
Suddenly the yearning for him came back full force, hitting me with a choking
wave of sadness.

Jo leaned over the table, looking
concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I waved my hand vaguely. “What
you said just reminded me of my ex-boyfriend.”

“Oh. A recent break-up?”

“Two weeks ago,” I said through the lump
in my throat. “I l-loved him.”

“That’s always so hard.”

I nodded, unable to speak.

“Hang in there. Things will get better
eventually.”

I nodded again.

“Is that why you look so thin? I didn’t
want to say anything earlier, but you look like you don’t eat enough.”

“I don’t have much of an appetite.”

“That happens to me, too, when I’m sad.
You’ve got to force down a few bites, though, or you’ll hurt yourself.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I lifted my coffee cup
so I’d have an excuse not to say anything more.

Paige was always pestering me to eat.
She kept bringing me treats like cookies and ice cream sandwiches, ordering
pizzas and waving them under my nose in an effort to make me hungry. It never
worked. I had no appetite at all and I didn’t care enough to force myself. The
only time I put food in my mouth was basically when Paige held something to my
lips and refused to take it away.

“So, how are your parents and the twins?”
Jo said brightly.

“They’re good. Lily and Landon are in
fourth grade this year.”

My aunt shook her head in amazement. “I
can hardly believe it.”

I pulled out my phone and called up my
pictures of them to show her. She pored over them, not even looking up when the
waitress brought our food. I could see lines around her eyes and mouth that I
didn’t remember from before, and there were silver streaks in her hair, but she
still looked beautiful. My strange and lovely aunt.

“Max believes in ghosts,” I said.

She looked up from my phone. “Is he the
ex?”

“Yeah. He’s an occultist.”

“Really? What tradition does he
practice?”

“I have no idea. He took me to this
drumming thing once, though.”

“Hmm.” Her eyes sparkled. “He sounds
interesting.”

“He is.” And charming. And sexy. Very
sexy.

“I think you’re still in love with him,”
she said. There was no judgment in her eyes, only acceptance.

“Yeah,” I said. “But he lied to me.”

I told her our story, right up to him
pleading with me to hear him out. The whole time I was talking, I kept moving
my fork across my plate, cutting my scrambled eggs and pancakes into tiny
pieces. But I didn’t eat any of it.

“It sounds to me like you should hear
him out,” Jo said. “Give him a chance to explain.”

“I can’t. What if he lies to me again?”

“There’s always a chance your partner
will hold something back from you, but Max wants you. He obviously didn’t only
pursue you to get back at Trent, or he would have dropped you right away.”

That was what Fred had told me.

“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

“Good. Now eat your food like a good
girl.”

I sighed. “Okay, I’ll try.”

I forked up a bite of pancake and put it
in my mouth, chewing gingerly. Part of me tasted it and knew it was good. That
was the part of me that thought and felt the way I’d always—normally—thought
and felt. But the me who was mourning the loss of Max couldn’t tell the
difference between fluffy pancakes with maple syrup and sawdust. Mushy sawdust.

I stuck another bite in my face to
pacify Aunt Jo. She was right anyhow. I couldn’t continue taking in nothing but
coffee or I’d make myself sick.

Should I forgive Max? Should I call him
and tell him I wanted him back? It seemed I’d be sending the message it was
okay to lie to me. That I could be manipulated and used and I’d still hang
around hoping for some affection. I’d known girls—even grown women—like that,
and I didn’t want to be one of them.

But it hurt so badly. I would never find
another man like Max, never find anyone else I wanted as deeply, as hotly, as I
wanted him. I feared was consigning myself to a sexless life if I didn’t take
him back.

A sexless but dignified life versus a
passionate life lived at the mercy of a man who couldn’t be trusted. What a
choice.

I covered my sigh with a gulp of hot
coffee. Dignity was better—I was reasonably sure of it. At least I wouldn’t be
jerked around. Right?

I’d lost the only man I’d ever met who
understood my budding psychic abilities, the only man who’d never make a
disparaging remark about them. But there had to be more men like him out there
somewhere. Wolf, for example—not that I was romantically interested in him. It
was the fact of his existence from which I had to take courage.

Where Wolf and Max existed, there had to
be more like them.

Looking at Jo sitting across from me, I
didn’t worry anymore about going off the deep end because of my abilities.
Seeing her, well-dressed, well-spoken and sane, was a complete reassurance to
me that my ghost sightings did not mean I’d lost my mind, and that knowledge
lifted a burden from me I hadn’t been fully aware I carried. The weight of my
fear of insanity melted away and with it, some of my pain.