in-depth conversation about this girlfriend of his.”
“Oh great.” He groaned.
She ignored him. “We’ll see you guys later tonight?”
Mason nodded. “Yeah. We’re just going to our mom’s house. Taylor’s over there. We’ll be back tonight.”
“Good. See you two.”
As we left, it was a weird feeling. I felt like I was running away from my mother and her announcement wasn’t a surprise. It didn’t do anything to change my life. Her and James had been together for four years now. They’d had their own tough times and endured it together. They’d been engaged for the last two years. The marriage part was coming. It had been a matter of time, but still, hearing it said out loud with a date and everything, it was final. My hand found Mason’s as we grabbed our coats and stepped outside the door. He and Logan really would be my stepbrothers. Our family would be finalized.
He glanced down at me. “You okay?”
I shook my head, holding tight to his hand. “That wedding is going to be one big fucked-up ceremony. That’s all I’m thinking right now.”
He grunted, placing his arm around my shoulders. He pulled me close to him. “Well, think of it this way, now Logan will be happy. He really can call you sister now.”
Yeah. That was one silver lining, but it wasn’t the marriage announcement that was the problem. Analise was back and she was never leaving again. That was the real undertones of the dinner.
ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE START THAT WAS CUT
I was running.
Breathe. Run. Two, three, four steps in a row. Breathe again. Five, six, seven. Breathe. Pump your elbows. Go farther. Go faster. I had to keep going. This was my escape. I had to go, as long as I could, as far as I could. I needed to go until I couldn’t breathe anymore.
Run.
Keep going.
Run more. Run faster.
Keep going.
That’s all I was thinking, over and over. It was on repeat in my mind as I sped down the wood-chipped paths behind Fallen Crest. It was beautiful. I was weaving through red pines, up a small hill that was more a mountain, and back down only to speed up another hill/mountain. To the right of me was a deep valley. I got glimpses of it as the trees thinned, but I kept going. I’d stop at the very top of the last hill and watch the sunset. Then, I’d start back home. I’d get there just as the last of the sunlight would fade.
This was my pattern and I loved it. I felt exhilarated. I’d been running this path for the last week since Mason and I returned to Fallen Crest. So much had changed. Logan wasn’t with us, which felt wrong. It was like an arm was missing, but he was staying with Taylor for the first half of the summer, remaining at Cain. Mason was home. He was working an internship at James’ company for the first half of the summer. The second half would be in Cain. He’d leave for early football training. He didn’t need to play. He could’ve gone pro after his sophomore year, but he wanted to finish out his years. He wanted to graduate with a degree. Being a football star at Cain University, and also one featured heavily on ESPN, he had to be ‘good and saintly’ off the field. I could tell it was hard on him, but he was home for the next month and a half and I knew he was more relaxed. There was less of a spotlight on him.
I did not hold the same sentiment.
Being home was not relaxing for me. Analise was back, had been for the last year and a half. We were fast approaching June. She moved back to Fallen Crest, leaving the group home where she’d been for almost two years. She returned the Christmas of our freshman year and I spent the next year and a half avoiding Fallen Crest as much as possible. I couldn’t any longer.
Mason was here. So was I.
That’s how we were. Where he went, I went. Where I went, so did he. We were together and everything had been ‘quiet’ since my freshman year, his sophomore year. No one tried breaking us up. No one tried hurting me, or hurting him. There’d been no ‘fights’ against an adversary. It’d been us, college, and stability. I loved it.
This summer was the end of peace. I could feel it in my bones, and it was part of the reason I’d been running two hours every night.
I was cresting to the top of the last hill now. My lungs were screaming, but I loved that feeling. They wanted a break. Too bad. I kept going, until every organ was yelling at me to stop. Once I got there, the last few steps until the entire town of Fallen Crest opened beneath me, I gave in and appeased my body. Stopping, my hands on my hips, I gulped in breaths.
It was beautiful. Nestled among trees and in a valley, this town had brought so much tragedy to my life, but it brought so much love as well.
Mason. Logan.
Heather.
Malinda and David.
Even Mark.
I was content. I had the family that I lost. Even a little sister, from my biological father who was now in my life again.
The only one missing was my actual mother, but she was waiting. I found the Kade mansion. It stuck out among all the other larger mansions in Fallen Crest. It was the largest. It was more a mausoleum. I remembered the first day Analise and I moved in. Things had been so different back then.
Things weren’t like that anymore.
I had family. My eyes trailed to the house down the street and across from the Kade Mansion. Malinda and David lived there, the man who raised me all my life. He wasn’t my birth father, but he was my father in every other way. And across from them was the house that Mason and Logan’s mother bought. She wasn’t there. She lived in Fallen Crest for Logan’s last year of high school, but since he went to university, she had resumed her traveling lifestyle. She’d been in Paris, a favorite of hers, and was staying there for the last six months. Malinda and David had a room for me. Their house had become my ‘home’, but I was staying at Helen’s house with Mason. It felt more like our house since it was just the two of us, and the last week had been glorious. It was like our own honeymoon. No Logan. No Nate. I loved both of them, but they lived with us at Cain University. Logan was Mason’s brother. He was family. Nate was family too, Mason’s best friend and Logan’s bar buddy, but it was still nice to have the house to ourselves. No stepmother. No dad. Mark wasn’t there. He was staying at his college for the summer as well. Just Mason and me, but even as I was thinking that, my eyes kept trailing back to the Kade Mansion.
She was there.
She being my mother. She hadn’t said much over the last year and a half. There were a few phone calls, requests to go for coffee, or dinner. Or the two times James came to Cain and all of us went for dinner. I’d been able to push her to the farthest region of my mind, but she was there. I felt her. I felt her silent begging like a plaque. She wouldn’t go away. I didn’t think she ever would go away.
Analise wanted a relationship with me.
But, feeling the old panic that always rose up in me as I let myself think about it, my hands turned into fists and I couldn’t let her in. My chest tightened. A wave of dizziness was threatening to crash over me.
I couldn’t.
There was no way.
And, still feeling her on my back, as if she were physically standing behind me, I turned and started the run back home. This time, I felt as if I were being chased. She was with me, right behind me, always watching me.
I ran harder, kicking off with more force, but the run back wasn’t as freeing as it had been before.
AN ALTERNATIVE BEGINNING TO FALLEN CREST PUBLIC
(This was deleted and a new storyline was created.)
CHAPTER ONE
When I let myself into Garrett’s new house, I dropped my two bags in the foyer and walked to the kitchen. It was a large room with granite countertops and a steel-encased grill in the middle of it all. As I glanced around and skimmed where his office was, I knew I didn’t need to look further. He wasn’t there. And then I saw a note left on the counter and grabbed it.
‘Heya, Sammy. Had to fly to Boston. Be back in deuces. Mi casa es su casa and I mean that. There’s a tub of cond
oms in your bathroom. Tell your mom. I live to piss her off. C ya in dos dias, peaches!
G’
The note fluttered down as I let go of it and turned to survey the house. When my bio dad had decided to move closer and get to know me, no one had known how literally he meant it. He moved two houses down from James Kade’s house. And when he gave me a key, extended his wish that I’d stay with him every now and then, Analise had flipped a lid. Plates had been shattered. Mugs were thrown across the room. She kicked a few vases over. When she had picked up a wine glass, she hesitated and set it back down. As she had done that, Mason and Logan both bent over in laughter.
James stood in the back and waited. It seemed like he was always waiting, but when my mom started to quiet down, he scooped her up in his arms and whisked her from the room. I didn’t hear a word from my mother for three days after that and whatever James had been telling her, it must’ve worked. A week later my mom returned to her tea drinking, dress wearing, and being fake in ways that she’d taken up when we moved into the Kade mansion.
Analise Summers Strattan was back. Or—well—she was going to be Analise Summers Kade by the end of the summer. There’d been a hurry order placed on the divorce hearings and she was excited when she exclaimed the divorce would be final around Valentine’s Day. My mother had been gleeful when she declared that was ironic timing.
My hate returned for her at that moment. But she didn’t care. She turned back to the television with her wine and then her phone started lighting up. I heard enough to know that she was planning some benefit or banquet event.
I didn’t care.
It wasn’t long before Garrett had extended his first home welcoming. Everyone had gone, David included, but Analise stayed home. James went in her place. And I promised Garrett that Friday night to stay with him for an entire week the next Monday. It was that day today and when I returned home from school to pack, Analise spoke her first genuine words to me in nearly a month.
“Are you sure you have to go? I don’t think it’s safe. He flies back to Boston all the time. His firm is still there. What if he’s not there? I don’t want you to be alone. Sam, it’s not safe. Don’t go. Stay here. You can stay with him another time when we know he’ll be there for sure. I’m not comfortable with this.”
It went on and on like that. It was on the tip of my tongue to remind her that I wouldn’t be alone, but that wasn’t a conversation I wanted to remind her about. She disapproved of my relationship with Mason and I knew she would always disapprove. James hadn’t liked it either. There’d been a few tense conversations between father and son, but Mason never shared what was said. He always shrugged and commented that James needed to say what he needed to say and then he would forget for awhile. And that’d been the pattern for the last three months.
When I had finally left the mansion and got into my car, I let out a deep breath of relief. I loved my mother. I loved my father, David. And I even loved living with Mason and Logan, but I was excited to live in a house all by myself. Garrett would be there, I had no doubt, but like Analise had said—a part of me was okay if he wasn’t. Peace. That’s what I wanted. My life had been too dramatic for too long now.
But then I got inside, read the note, and a sense of disappointment filled me.
I really was alone and when I glanced at the clock, I knew it’d be hours until Mason would show up.
It was five now. I had four hours to kill.
And then I was doing something before I really knew what I was doing. I had my cellphone out and I had already pushed her number before I blinked at what was going on. Then I blinked and I held my breath.
When Becky answered, my heart skipped a beat and my fingers got clumsy. The phone fell from my hand and I yelled as I bent to scoop it up, “Don’t hang up! Please. I dropped the phone. I’m coming back. I got it—” I panted as I plastered my phone against my ear. “Hey! Hi! How are you?”
There was silence on the other end.
I frowned, but rushed out, “You picked up. I’m hoping that’s a good thing. Can you talk to me? I was really hoping you’d talk to me?”
Then I stopped and the silence grew painful. My heart beat in my ear and I gritted my teeth, but then she replied in a quiet voice, “Why are you calling me?”
“Uh, because I miss you. You haven’t talked to me for three months, since…” I clasped my eyes shut. “I’m just happy that you answered! Thank you. Thank you for that.”
There was some more silence again.
Then she murmured, “You don’t ever call me, Sam. You were calling. Is something wrong?”
“No.” I glanced around at the empty house. “Well, I mean, not really. I mean…”
“What’s going on?”
“You see, my bio dad moved here. Did you know that?”
She seemed in pain as she admitted, “I might’ve heard that, yes.”
“Okay, well, and I told him I’d stay with him for a week and today is the first day, but he’s not here. He had to fly back to Boston so I’m all alone and this is a really big place and he has a theatre in the basement. It’s pretty great, actually. I was thinking we could order a pizza, maybe have some wine even? I know he’s got a bunch in one of these rooms, but I don’t feel like exploring on my own and…” My heart was pounding now. “I don’t know who else to call. Do you want to come over?”
“Why don’t you call Mason or Logan?” She sounded so small.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It wouldn’t be fun with them.” And they had things to do after school, like their first basketball practice.
“Oh.”
“So will you come?” I kept my eyes closed and waited.
“It’s the new house next to the Kades, right?”
Why wasn’t I surprised she had known that? I gripped the phone tighter and grinned into it. “Yes, that one. My car’s in the driveway. It has the red gate.”
“I know! I’ll be there quick.” And she hung up, sounding in a breathless excitement like I’d known her to be so many other times.
I shook my head as I let loose a deep breath. The girl was going to kill me. She’d become a friend when no one else wanted anything to do with me, but she found out three months ago that her fairytale hero had been using her to get to me and Becky ceased to exist from my life. The rumors hit not long after that about Mason and me and nothing seemed like normal anymore. I had people trying to be friends when they’d been the ones gossiping behind my back and others who decided they wanted to kill me when they had gotten along with me prior.
It didn’t take that long until my doorbell rung. I had taken my bags to my room, ordered a pizza, and worried if I’d given the right address before I opened the door to Becky. She looked up and gave me a small smile. Her red hair was pulled back in two pigtails that were low on her head and she had her hands clasped together.
“Hi.”
I grinned. I was just glad she’d shown up. “Hey.” And I opened the door wider. “Come in. Please. I need company.”
She grinned, but shook her head as she went in and her head started to swivel around. “This place is gorgeous, Sam. I can’t believe it.”
“Well,” I felt so awkward. “My bio dad is a senior partner in his law firm so I guess…” I spread my arms wide. “That means he can own something like this.”
She went from one room to the next. She started in the main living room with leather couches and a chandelier from the ceiling, to the next living room that had red couches. A piano had been placed in an open area by a small fountain and then she bypassed it the dining room and patio room. Both were extensions from the kitchen.
She arched an eyebrow. “Is this place bigger than the Kade mansion?”
“No.” I cringed. I’d spoken too soon.
“Really?” Her awestruck tone had come back.
“I mean, that place is so formal and all.”
“Is it bigger or not?” She pinned me down with her eyes.
I squirmed under her ga
ze and then relinquished, “No, it’s not, but it’s more modern. James’ place is just huge.”
She glanced under her eyelids at me before she looked away. “I wouldn’t know. You never invited me over.”
And this was where I held my tongue. I only knew one other person that’d been invited inside and I wasn’t going to start any drama, had enough of that, so I never invited Becky over. It was something that I knew had hurt her, but I gave her a small smile instead of the response that she hadn’t made the short list allowed