The Runaways

Chapter 32 (Part 1)

Hailey

There was something about the way he slept, the way Caleb would breathe in the beautiful quiet of the early morning that left me peaceful.

It felt intrusive at first...being body-to-body close.

Watching his chest rise and fall under the blue faded cotton made it seem like the bumps and bruises beneath it were never there. I found an odd comfort in seeing him find a moment’s peace, sleeping through a night without gunfire for lullabies or police cars to count.

The quiet calm distanced my worries for a while, damping out the white noise of one too many troubles bubbling under the comfort of our pillows.

I woke up just before the night had cleared the way for the morning, too soon for the sun and the outside world to come kicking and screaming into consciousness. The stars had started to fade away in the windows, disappearing into the blue-grey gloom of a new day.

The air felt a little too familiar, a little too close to home and the ugly memories that came with mornings like these. But Caleb made the difference. Feeling him next me, breathing in his smell, losing myself in his warmth meant I was safe, miles away from the world that I’d come from.

For the first time since we’d tripped into each other at the tree house and stumbled over our shoelace feelings, I held on to Caleb without doubting myself, or without doubting him. 

We didn’t have the time to keep hiding behind excuses.

We didn’t have the time to keep hiding behind the truth.

That truth was as simple as realizing that Caleb was the scariest thing to ever happen to me. Not because he stole me out of a train station, and not because he lived with the kind of darkness that few people survive, but because he forced me to be me by trapping me with his honesty.

My parents were liars by trade.

Mom always painted her lies behind pretty pastels, while Dad deceived people for a living. Their mistakes were in my blood, living and breathing in opposition to all the raw truths Caleb carried around on the cuffs of his t-shirt. Maybe he’d molded me into something greater than my parent’s shadows.

Someone better—God knows, I wanted to be.

Caleb startled awake, eyes wild and gasping like he’d been drowning in his dreams. He kept saying he was sorry, over and over again, till I reached out and wrapped my arms around his waist to cradle him quiet.

But he didn’t stop, he couldn’t, he just held on to the corners of my clothes in handfuls and wheezed out apologies between tears.

             “I couldn’t find you,” he said.

            “What do you mean? I’m right here, it was just a—.”

            “No, you were gone. I went to sleep thinkin’ that you’d been there with me as soon as I shut my eyes, but you disappeared outta my dreams, just like that and things got bad again. I didn’t have anybody there, so I started thinkin’ about them again and I can’t—“

            “About who?”

            “Hailey, I’d tell you anythin’ at this point but please don’t make me tell you that, please. Just stay, just stay right here ‘til I believe it.”

            “Okay.”

And he kissed me, pulled my body so hard against his that I had to breathe through him to catch my breath.