Runaways by Nicole Dykes
Something is off. I don’t know what it is. I tried to ask Tammy, but she said Rae was fine this morning when she left her house.
But I know something is wrong. Very wrong.
Even as her mouth tries to devour mine, I can feel something isn’t right.
“Rae.” I gently push her body back by her arms, and she flinches as she sits up.
“What?”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” She looks to be close to tears, and it’s obvious she isn’t fine. Not even close.
I sit up on my bed, pulling her to my side so we’re both resting against my headboard. My mom is God knows where. My dad hasn’t been back in a few months, and Nash is out with Elias, so it’s just us here right now.
As far as her mom and stepdad know, she’s with Tammy, celebrating with dinner and a movie. So we have a couple of hours. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She’s frustrated, her eyes flashing with anger as I flip on the lamp by my bed.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing at all.” Her tone says she’s lying. “Is it so strange for me to want to make out with my boyfriend?”
“But not usually that aggressively.” Not that I would have minded at all if I hadn’t quickly realized that something is bugging her. She’s been off all day, but when we got into my room and she shoved me on the bed, tearing at my clothes?
Yeah, I couldn’t do this without talking. Rae isn’t just a cheap fuck to me. She’s everything.
“Jesus.” She folds her arms in a huff, leaning further back against the headboard. “I didn’t realize this was so aggressive.”
She says it in a mocking tone. Deflecting. “What the hell is wrong? You weren’t kissing me like you usually do. It was like you were angry, like you’re trying to work something out.”
Her eyes snap to mine. “And is that so wrong?”
I move my hand to her thigh, wishing she would relax and just talk to me. Not that I’m the best about talking shit out. “No, it’s not wrong. It just felt forced.”
“You think I don’t want you?”
“Rae . . .” I sweep her blond hair behind her ear and hold on to the back of her head. “I love you. I know you love me, but there’s something you aren’t telling me. You know you can.”
She shakes her head. “There’s nothing you can do. I just want you to make me feel good.” A tear slides down her cheek, nearly choking me with emotions I don’t know how to deal with. “I just want to feel good.”
She straddles my lap, her hands moving to my shoulders.
“You always make me feel so good,” she whispers against my neck before nibbling the flesh there.
I’m achingly hard and quickly losing my resistance, but I don’t want her to think she has to do any of this. I’m just as happy hanging out and watching TV as I am fooling around. Well, almost. Let’s be honest.
Still, she doesn’t have to do anything to keep me. I want her and no one else.
“You make me feel good too, Rae.” I hold onto her hips, halting her movements as she starts to grind on my lap. “But not when you lie to me.”
“I’m not lying.” Her glare is so sharp it could cut through glass. “Why do you think I’m lying?”
“Because you aren’t acting like yourself. And you haven’t been lately. Something is up. Is it Colin? Did he touch you?” She winces, and I see red. “Has he?”
“Stop.”
She looks away, and I grip her chin firmly but not enough to hurt her as I force her eyes to my own. “Rae.”
“Stop. It’s nothing. He’s just an asshole.”
“An asshole who touched you?”
My eyes search hers for a lie, but she doesn’t speak, and I know for a certainty that fucker did touch her.
“What did he do?”
“Nothing.”
“Rae.”
“Nothing!” she shouts and climbs off my lap. She grabs her coat and flies out into the living room just as Nash comes through the front door. He’s wearing a big smile on his face until he sees Rae and then me.
“What’s going on?”
I can’t take it anymore. I just can’t. “Colin hurt her, and she won’t tell me what happened.”
Her head turns to me, betrayal written all over her face, but I don’t care. I’ve had it. Nash walks closer to us both. “Is that true, Rae?”
“No. It’s not. He’s jumping to conclusions,” she says with a straight face, but I know she’s lying. Da Silva did something to her, and she’s not talking about it, which is bad.
Nash’s cautious eyes meet mine. “Law—”
I cut him off, “She’s lying. I have no idea why.” I look at Rae. “Because this is a safe space.”
She scoffs and folds her arms, but she flinches when her hand touches her bicep and quickly drops it. I step closer to her. “Show me your arm.”
“What? No.” She steps back.
“Show me, Rae.”
“Okay, maybe you need to chill, Lawson.” I hear my brother, but I step closer to Rae, holding her face in my hands.
“Show me.”
More tears fall, and she shakes her head but drops her coat on the couch and then pulls the sleeve of her t-shirt up to reveal a bigass hand-shaped bruise on her otherwise perfect flesh.
“That motherfucker,” I growl, afraid to touch her, so I release her face because my body is thrumming with rage.
“I’m fine.”
“Is that all?” She looks away. “Rae.” I know my voice isn’t gentle, although it should be, but I’m pissed. He touched her, hard enough to bruise her skin, and she didn’t tell me. How many other times have there been?
“Guessing you didn’t report that,” Nash says as he takes a seat on the couch, looking deceptively casual on the outside, but I know him well enough to recognize the fury flowing beneath the surface.
“It wouldn’t matter if I did.” She looks down at the floor. “He’s my stepfather and has my mother wrapped around his finger. He’s the school principal who all the women at the school drool after and the men want to be friends with.” I hate that she’s not wrong, but I don’t agree with her. “He’s even friends with all the cops in town. Hell, the mayor is his godfather.” She stifles a sob and wipes at her eyes. “Nothing can help me.” Her bottom lip quivers as she looks into my eyes. “I just wanted to forget about it for a little bit tonight.”
Nash grunts something before getting up and walking to us. “You should report it to someone else.”
Why is he not offering to kill this guy with me? To find a place to bury the body? If anyone so much as looked at me wrong growing up, they had to deal with my brother. Not that I want to actually commit murder, but report it? That’s all he’s got?
“It won’t matter. He’ll talk his way out of it.”
Nash looks disappointed as he shakes his head at her. “You should try. Tell your mom again. I mean, hell, you have proof.”
“Her mom is useless.” I know she is. Way too dick-whipped, and I’ve only been around her a few times. And she looks at me as a problem to be dealt with.
Rae grabs her coat again, holding it to her body. “I should go.”
“Rae.” I pull her to me. “Don’t go like this. I can’t let you leave and go back there where he can hurt you.”
“You don’t have a choice, Lawson.” I hear my brother’s voice and turn my glare on him.
“Really? You’re fine with him doing whatever the hell he wants to her? Who the hell are you?” I shove his chest, and he shoves me back, although I know he held back.
“I want to see you make it. If you go to jail because you’re standing up for your girlfriend, how the hell are you going to do that?”
“This is bullshit,” I shout in his direction, feeling so useless I want to drop to my knees and curl up in a ball. But that’s not what Rae needs. “You aren’t going home,” I say to her.
“Yes. She is,” Nash says.
Just as Rae says, “I am.”
They’re both insane. I grip Rae’s face in my hands again, desperate not to let her go. “No. If he touches you again, I’ll kill him.”
Her forehead rests against mine. “I won’t let you.” She sniffles and presses a kiss to my lips. “I’m okay. He didn’t . . .” she falters. “He didn’t do anything other than try to scare me.”
My eyes close, hoping she’s telling me the truth but still wanting to protect her. I want her out of this situation. “Maybe we could report it.”
Her head shakes, her skin sliding over my forehead. “No. It won’t do any good.”
“We have to try, Rae.”
“I love you.” She kisses me softly.
She pulls away and waves to Nash before walking outside to her new car. Her mother left the keys on the counter but couldn’t bother to be there to see Rae’s reaction to her birthday present. I stand at the door and watch her drive away.
I turn to look at Nash, disgust forming in my stomach as I look at him for the first time in my life. “How could you let her leave?”
“We don’t share the same last name. She isn’t my kid or my sister. You’re my responsibility.”
“She’s Rae!” I point to the door like an enraged lunatic. “She’s everything to me. So if you give a damn about me, you’d care about her.”
“I do care about her. But you heard her, there’s nothing anyone can do.”
“So we just let her get raped by that psychopath?” Even saying the words makes me feel so sick I sink to the floor, leaning against the wall.
“She said he was just scaring her.” I see the sympathy on his face now.
“You believe her?”
“You don’t believe your own girlfriend?” he throws back.
I pull my knees up and look at the floor between my feet. “Not when it comes to her being afraid of me getting in trouble or doing something drastic.”
“Won’t you?”
My eyes meet his as my head lifts. “If he does it again, yeah.”
He shakes his head, apprehension sliding through his gaze toward me. “You have to be careful. Please. I’m fucking begging you.”
I swallow the thick essence of dread swelling in my throat. Rae really is everything to me. I can’t stand the thought of hands on her she doesn’t invite.
“I love her.”
He just nods in acknowledgement but doesn’t say anything. He just walks out, leaving me on the living room floor with his shoulders slumped, probably knowing he can’t stop me from trying.
Because I’ll never stop trying to protect Rae.
