Chapter 19 #3
We spend the next ten minutes stretching and lightly chatting. Once we’re good and stretched, River takes another sip of his water then asks, “You ready to do this?” He’s on the brink of actually appearing happy.
“Yep.” I adjust my hair into a ponytail. “What should we do with our stuff?”
“Just leave it here.”
“Won’t it get stolen?”
He shakes his head. “Even if someone wanted to steal something here, there are cameras all over the place.”
“Right.” And why would anyone steal anything when everyone who attends here has everything they could need?
He nods his head as he exits through the gated area. “Come on. I promise your stuff will be safe.”
“Yeah, I get that now.” I follow him. “On northside, our stuff would be gone the moment we walked out of here. And even if there was a camera nearby, it would more than likely be busted.”
We start to jog down a path that stretches across the campus yard.
“I’ve only been in that area a few times, but I kind of got that vibe from it,” he explains. “Someone once stole the tires off of Finn’s car while it was parked in this parking garage down on the farthest side of that area.”
“He’s lucky they didn’t steal the car.”
“It has an excellent alarm system.”
“A lot of people know how to disable those. The thief must have been an amateur.” We reach the end of the sidewalk and head toward the path that leads off campus. “What was he doing down there?”
He presses his lips together and stares out at the parking lot area. “I can’t tell you.”
“Dude, you’re so sketchy,” I say, mostly joking. “You keep mentioning you’ve been in northside—and I know you’ve been arrested there—and yet you won’t tell me why.”
He tosses me a look. “You won’t tell me why you were in jail.”
“Hmm …” I debate whether or not to tell him. I could, then perhaps he’ll tell me. “If I tell you, will you tell me why you were?”
He considers what I said, his interest piqued. “Only if you promise not to ask questions.”
I deliberate. “The same has to go for you, too.”
He sticks out his hand. “Deal.”
We shake on it, and I fight back a laugh. But I’m sure we look funny, running down the road, shaking hands.
“I got jumped by this group of people and was fighting back,” I tell him, swatting a bug away from my face.
“You got arrested for that?”
“Yep. It’s pretty ridiculous and isn’t the first time something like that has happened.”
He appears taken aback, his face creased. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“But it’s not the stupidest thing that’s happened there. Trust me.”
His eyes are wide as he absorbs this in.
“Now you go,” I say as we round the corner and head downhill.
He hesitates. “We were down there for a car race.”
My brows rise. “What? Like an illegal one.”
He bobs his head up and down. “Yeah, and it got busted.”
I want to ask so many more questions, but I promised I wouldn’t.
“This no-questions thing might have been a dumb idea,” I state with a smile.
He smiles back. “A deal’s a deal.”
“Oh, fine.” I resist a sigh. “Where are we even running to? And what’s the plan? Or are we just jogging for today?”
“I want to go far today and run a bit slower,” he tells me as the clouds grow thicker. “Just to see where your endurance is. Then, when we get back to the track, we’ll do some strides.”
“My endurance is fabulous, so be prepared to be impressed.” I dazzle him with a cheeky grin.
He sinks his teeth into his bottom lip. “All right, Maddison, impress me.”
He quickens his pace, and I accelerate with him, both of us taking off down the hill. We continue to run for miles, all the way to where the road meets the city’s border.
Traffic starts to thicken, and lavish houses and towering, sparkling buildings line the street. Each step makes more adrenaline rush through my body, and I hit this zone where my mind is in tune with nothing else but pushing forward—harder. I feel great. Better than I have in a long time.
Eventually, River slows to a stop near a café located on the corner street of a series of old but nicely remodeled buildings. People are roaming around on the sidewalks, shopping or heading to work—it’s hard to tell.
He places his hands on his hips as he works to calm down his breathing. “How are you feeling?”
I put my hands on the back of my head to avoid hunching over. “Fantastic.” I’m a bit breathless, and my legs have a dull ache in them, but I still feel like I could run for miles.
“Good.” He glances at his watch. “That was about three point five miles. Do you think you can make it back? Your records online showed you can handle long distances, but I’m not sure where you’re at right now. I know with me, my endurance varies depending on where I’m at with my training.”
“I can make it back. Honestly, it’ll be good for me, because I’m going to have to run to that bus stop at the end of Royal Road every weekend.”
Thunder booms in the distance, causing my gaze to lift to the sky.
“Wait—what?” he asks, drawing my attention to him.
“I have to go to work. I work at this café located on the farthest edge of northside. Although, I’ve been looking for a new job, one that’s closer to the academy, but I haven’t had any luck.”
“What job do you do there?” he asks as he reclines against the side of the café.
It starts to rain then, but just a light drizzle.
“I’m a waitress.” I wipe a raindrop off my head. “It’s not really a bad job, but like I said, it’s far. Plus, there’s some other complications that have come up that makes it kind of necessary for me to look for other employment.”
His brows knit. “Like what?”
I shake my head as I press my hands against the side of the building and stretch one of my legs back. “That is a question related to why I was in jail, and we promised not to ask questions about that.” I can feel his eyes on me, but I don’t look at him.
Yeah, River is nice and everything, but I’m not about to give him all the shitty details about my life in northside.
“I think I can help you get a job close to the academy,” he tells me. “It might take a few days, but let me look into a few things.”
I laugh, thinking he’s joking. When I glance at him, though, I realize he’s absolutely serious.
My laughter fades into perplexity. “How would you do that? My resume literally consists of employment as a waitress on northside, so—and please don’t take this the wrong way—but I feel like any connections you have are to companies and people who wouldn’t want to hire someone like me.”
“What do you mean, someone like you?” He rotates so he’s facing me with his shoulder propped against the side of the building.
“You’re attending the academy on a scholarship, you graduated with a four-point-oh, and you broke a ton of track and cross country records at your school. That’s pretty impressive.”
His words make me feel uncomfortable, like my stomach is trying to fly away to the drizzling sky.
I don’t like it because it could lead to other dangerous feelings, like liking him.
And I can’t go there, no matter how pretty his eyes are or how he’s looking at me like he one hundred percent genuinely means his words.
Honestly, this is the first nice thing anyone has ever said to me without strings attached.
“I’ve also been arrested,” I remind him as I switch legs.
“Yeah, but nothing’s on your record, right?”
“Not yet. But depending on how things go with the charges filed against me from last week, that could change.”
“Maybe they’ll be dropped.”
“Maybe.” It’s hard to say for sure.
“Regardless, let me look into a few things, okay?” He wipes rain from his face, chest, and arms with his hand, and it takes all of my energy not to gawk as his fingers trail across his body.
“If you want to, I won’t stop you. But it’s probably a waste of time.” I push away from the wall and bend over to stretch when the drizzle morphs into a full-blown storm.
“Shit,” River curses as the downpour cascades over us and starts flooding the ground.
The thunder and lightning picks up, the sky lighting up with streaks of electric blue and silver.
“Holy crap, that got bad quickly!” I shout over the rain and wind.
River snatches a hold of my hand and yanks me around the building. The feel of his hand in mine causes my heart to match the beat of the thunder as it slams against my ribcage with so much force I become more breathless than when we were running.
I should pull away, but instead, I latch on and run with him as he steers us out of the rain and into the entrance of the café. Our wet sneakers squeak against the polished floor, and patrons sitting at tables glance up as we barrel in, dripping wet and still holding hands.
The place has an old-school vibe with a checkerboard floor, pink walls, and a chalkboard menu, but I can tell everything is high-end quality.
“Come on; let’s go see if they’ll let us use their phone,” River says as he tows me with him around the tables and toward the counter.
Still holding my hand.
“Um … you have to have a shirt on to be in here,” the cashier tells River as he approaches the ordering section of the café. She’s in her mid-twenties, with dark hair, and her eyes are roving all over River’s body, despite her words.
“Yeah, I’m so sorry about that,” River replies in a charming tone I haven’t heard him use before.
“But my friend and I were out running when the storm came in, and we’re kind of stuck here unless I can use your phone to call someone to come pick us up.
Would that be okay? I promise I’ll make it quick, and then we’ll go stand outside and wait under the canopy.
” He dazzles her with a smile, and I’m surprised she doesn’t melt into a puddle on the floor.
Because it’s so pretty it’s alarming.
He’s still holding my hand as he flirts with her, so I discreetly wiggle it from his grip.
Reluctance masks the cashier’s expression. “I don’t know …”
“Please.” River rests both arms on the counter and actually bats his eyelashes at her. “I would really appreciate it.”