Chapter 20
Grayson had handed me a notepad and a pen he got from the trunk. I was staring at the blank page, pressing my fingers against the air vents, trying to warm them. The car was still sitting at the side of the road.
How could I make them understand, if I myself don’t even understand it? It was easier to start with Rachel’s letter. She understood me like no one else ever had.
I wrote her letter in our secret code we developed in high school, so we could send along letters in class without fear of someone reading it out loud.
To others, it was an incoherent mess of letters and numbers.
But to our practised eyes, it was daily gossip, swooning over boys and trash talking our nemeses.
We haven’t used it in a while, but it took me no time to start writing fluently.
Rachel
I’m okay. I really am. And I’m writing this so you would be too. I wish I could sit on that ugly couch of ours and tell you all the shit I’ve been through since the last time I saw you. Some of it has been real bad, I won’t lie.
But not all of it. In fact, I’ve met a guy.
You’ve met him too, actually. He had a gun pointed at us.
But don’t you dare judge me, Rach. Out of all people, you should have known something like this was bound to happen.
You know my weakness for bad boys in black.
Even though he might be a bad man, he’s so good to me, Rach.
Real, real good. But I won’t get into that here. Just know I’m cared for.
And I made a new friend. You will love her. I hope she gets to meet you someday. I hope they all do.
Rach, I want you to stop worrying about me.
I’m safe and happy. But I’m not coming home.
Not soon, anyway. I’m running off with my captor and his band of thieves.
I’m going on those adventures I was too scared to take.
He has awakened my soul, Rach. I cursed him for taking me from my life, but he has shown me that I never really lived.
And with him looking out for me, I finally have the courage to run wild.
I hope you understand. And I hope you don’t resent me for it.
My heart is battered and blue from missing you, Rach.
Not a day goes by that you are not on my mind.
I will come see you as soon as the dust settles, I promise.
We made a pact after all. I love you, Rachel. Please take care of Mom and Dad for me.
Your basket case bestie,
Ava.
I looked up at Grayson and he wiped the tears from my eyes.
“One down, one to go.” I tried to soothe myself, taking a few deep breaths.
Grayson picked up the letter I had placed on the dashboard and smiled. “You have a secret code?”
I nodded. “With Rachel. No one has been able to crack it.” I grinned proudly. Teachers and our parents have tried and failed miserably.
He arched a brow at me, the excitement of a challenge twinkling in his eyes.
“May I?”
“You can try,” I said, doubtfully.
He scanned the letter, a crease between his brows. It took him mere seconds before he started cracking it wide open.
“This number stands alone, so it must represent an I. The last word must be your name, so a and v, but then this word doesn’t make sense.
” He pointed to one in the second paragraph.
“Hmmm… some, not all of the letters’ symbols shift, don’t they?
That’s why you’re writing in clear paragraphs.
I thought that was odd.” He was quiet for a moment.
“You have three code sets, alternating it with each paragraph. But you keep just enough letters the same, so no one would suspect it. That’s clever.
” He smiled up at me and then laughed at my gaping mouth.
I was in utter shock. How did he do that so easily?
In our senior year, we had a teacher obsess over a note for months trying to decipher it. He was convinced we were talking shit about him. He wasn’t wrong. But he never could prove it.
“I’m sorry. I’ll stop.” Grayson placed the letter back on the dashboard.
“How smart are you anyway?” I grumbled. “This can’t be normal.”
Grayson declined to comment, so I continued on with my letter to my parents.
This one was much more difficult to write.
I wanted them to understand that I was thinking clearly and that I was of sound mind, when I wasn’t even sure if I was.
I knew that no matter what I wrote, they would still worry, but I had to try.
When I was done, Grayson continued the drive into town. We drove through the familiar streets and my heart panged. I directed Grayson towards my parents’ house. The place where I grew up. The place that held ninety percent of my childhood memories.
We stopped around the corner by the park where I had my first kiss. Grayson pulled a black hoodie over my head so I would blend in the shadows, in case we needed to hide.
“Are you sure about this?” Grayson asked as he closed the car door behind me.
I nodded.
He took my face in his hands. “Fuck, Ava! I know what I said but I’ll give you one more chance to change your mind. I’ll be unselfish for the first time in my fucking life. I’ll let you go. I’ll try. I’ll let you go, Princess.”
My stomach tingled at his words and the emotions behind them. “You can stop. I’m not changing my mind.”
He sighed out a ragged breath, like he’d been in pain, and roughly pressed his forehead to mine.
I expected his kiss to be rough too as he lowered his mouth to mine, but it was tender and all consuming.
He took his time, softly exploring my lips and mouth like he owned them, like they were created for his pleasure.
I was now certain that if I ever see the park again, my first kiss at sixteen wouldn’t be the one I thought about.
We kept to the shadows as we neared my childhood home.
“So this is where you grew up?” Grayson whispered as he looked up at the house.
His expression was sad. I knew he was thinking of his own childhood.
I also knew that I was the only one who got to see this side of him.
Not even Hunter or Gemma did. This sadness he kept to himself.
Gemma, I had figured out, knew about his mother and sister, but not the specifics, like he’d told me in the tent.
And not how it still dragged him down to the deepest pits of hell some days.
“Yes,” I answered, standing next to him, holding his hand as we just stared at it. Him for completely different reasons than me. I wondered how my parents were doing. Would they be okay? Would they be able to accept their only daughter leaving them? Not forever, or so I told myself.
“And you’re giving this up?”
My heart broke. Not for me. But him. It was unfathomable to him.
I quickly placed the folded letter in the mailbox and snaked my hands over his perfect body and around his neck.
He pulled me in and lifted me slightly. “I want nothing but you,” I whispered.
The emotion in his eyes made my breath hitch.
There had been a long line of men and women who had been smitten with me.
But none had ever looked at me quite like him.
Like I was to be worshipped. Like he would go to battle for me.
Like I was the only thing that mattered.
Like I was the light at the end of his tunnel.
“Then you have another letter to deliver before dawn.”
We stopped a block away from my house. Mine and Rachel’s little white cottage that we had painstakingly restored.
I wondered who was going to take care of all the wildflowers and vines that adorned our cottage when I was gone.
Rachel could never keep any plant alive.
I knew Macey, my shop assistant, would continue with the herb garden out back.
I had asked my parents that they give Macey my shop until I returned.
She would do good. I had taught her everything I knew.
It hadn’t sunken in quite yet. In this moment, I could pretend that I was only going on a long vacation. I knew it would hit me later. Hard.
I quietly walked onto the porch, took a deep breath and slipped the letter through the mail slot on the front door.
We had it installed after we caught the nosy neighbour looking through our mail one day.
The same one who liked to ask her church to pray for my soul, because, according to her, I was practicing witchcraft with my remedies.
She was probably whispering around town, to anyone who’d listen, that I was taken because I didn’t believe in her god.
“She had it coming. If only Ava listened and repented for her sins, she could have been saved from the devil.”
A smirk crawled onto my lips. I didn’t want to be saved. I liked my devil.
I reached Grayson who had been standing in the shadow of Mr. Moore’s house, a few houses from mine, across the street.
He grabbed my wrist and quickly pulled me into the shadows with him.
I spun to where he was looking. The foyer light of my house had gone on.
The door swung open, and Rachel came running out onto the street, searching for me.
Seeing her was like a punch to my gut. I grabbed Grayson’s arm to steady myself.
“Oh no. Rachel.” She was too thin, her shoulders hunched over.
A far cry from the confident stance she always carried herself by.
She had my blue pyjama set on, the one she’d bought me for Christmas but wore more than I had a chance to.
When she only saw the deserted streets, she held the letter up to the streetlight to read while one hand was clutched around her mouth.
She started wiping at tears I couldn’t see from here, but had me crushed, nonetheless.
I kept my hand clenched around Grayson’s arm to stop myself from running to her. Why was I doing this again?