WANTED (The Runaways Series Book #2)

Chapter 6

Caleb

She left.

I let her go, I guess.

I did what any man would do in my situation—the right thing. But everything about this morning felt wrong, empty, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen such an ugly sunrise.

My body burned for a buzz, it ached to go back to feeling a little less heavy like I had around Hal. I promised myself I’d never touch whiskey in my life, but he talked me into trouble. Good thing he did, it was worth the weight it took off my shoulders for a little while.

But waking up sprawled on the floor, trying to piece together what I did and didn’t do last night didn’t feel worth it. Not much in life did these days.

I got to my feet and tried to figure out how I’d passed out by the door with my shoes, shirt, and pants on, like I was going somewhere. There wasn’t anywhere to go—except after her and I didn’t wanna think that I’d gotten that desperate.

No part of her leaving was hazy. I remembered every damn thing she did and said to me last night. Waking up numb to her would’ve been easier on my head, but my heart missed the hell out of her this morning. I felt every single inch of where she wasn’t, and where I wanted her to be.

The sheets on her side of the bed were messy like always, and her smell lingered in the air like dust in the sunlight, but she wasn’t anywhere. That’s how things were supposed to be now. Liars leave and losers stay behind I guess, I just had to get used to it.

The rattle and groan of Georgia’s brakes in the driveway dragged my attention off Hailey and pushed me head first into a panic. I told her I’d check in when I got home last night but forgot to call.

Shit.

She’d probably showed up with that shotgun mouth of hers to shoot my ear off. I didn’t mean to disappoint her, but sometimes I wished she’d stop treating me like the skinny seventeen-year-old kid I used to be. I could handle myself alright—at least that’s what I wanted to think.

            “Hailey honey? You awake up there? Did Caleb come home?”

I screwed up. Bad. I hadn’t heard her this worried since the night she left me and Hailey in Charlottesville.

I threw off yesterday’s clothes and pulled on a pair of jeans and a wife beater so I could fool Georgia into believing that I’d changed at least once since last night. Just ‘cause she knew I went out drinking didn’t mean she needed to find out how much.

            “Hold on a minute, Georgia! I just need to—“

The slow creak of her footsteps echoed through the stairway and I nearly killed myself scrambling across the house to pick my shit up off the floor. Georgia didn’t like anything out of place, so if she walked in and saw the mess I’d made last night she’d kill me.

Hailey was the neatest person in the house. She’d tried to teach me how to clean up and make the bed a couple times but I always paid more attention to the way she moved her mouth than to what she was actually saying.

I should’ve listened to her. Now I didn’t have a chance in hell of hiding the fact that she was gone.

            “You look like hell, Caleb.”

            “Hi Georgia.”

She took one look at me standing there with my dirty laundry in one hand and a cast on the other and narrowed her eyes at me from behind her glasses. Yep, trouble.