Nothing.
“And ask your brothers to pick you up from the shelter at night. Or have someone walk you to your car. You still shouldn’t be alone there,” I reminded her.
Still no reply.
I sighed, pulling back and looking down at her distraught face. I hadn’t lied. She was so damn pretty, with her unusual eyes and unusual hair and face in between round like her mom’s and angular like her dad’s. Pouty lips that were always pink, and she had a total of seven little freckles that dotted the area around her nose. I couldn’t see them in the dark, but I knew they were there. I’d seen them countless times before. I knew every detail of her, and I wasn’t sure if that would help or hurt me when I was away, but I knew I wanted to hold onto them.
Pushing hair away from her forehead, I said. “Go on up to the house. Maybe start getting your stuff? I’ll drive this thing back to the garage.”
She held onto my sides loosely, hanging desperately onto my eyes as her fingers curled into my skin. “I-I want to go with you.”
I had the distinct impression that she was and wasn’t talking about going with me to the garage. Itsoundedlike she’d go with me anywhere, but I just couldn’t guess anymore. I couldn't keep assuming her feelings.
With gentle hands, I dislodged hers from my body and took a step away. “I’ll be back before you know it. Go on up.”
It took a minute, but finally, she took a step away. Then two. Then she was picking her way back up the beach toward the boardwalk that led to my back gate. Every few seconds she would glance back, first to her side like she was expecting someone to be there and then to the beach where I stood.
I realized then that Ceci hadn’t walked alone since the moment we became friends. I made sure I was there for her, and she’d been there for me too. Now, she kept looking to her side because she was hoping that I’d still be there.
And it broke my heart all over again that, this time, I couldn’t be.
Chapter Forty-one
CECI
One, two, three, two.
Five, six, three, two.
One, two.
One, two.
One.
One.
One.
One.
“Stop!” Jenny’s voice cut through the quiet of the gym. I contemplated not stopping, but the seriousness in her tone stopped me from disobeying.
Turning away from the bag, I whipped around to look at her. She had a tight frown on her face, but her eyes were sympathetic. That had been her look for the past two weeks. Ever since I’d shown up the earliest I’d ever come to the gym and asked to just hit the bag. It had taken a few days of me hanging around the gym like it was my second home for Jenny to get the full story out of me. And ever since, she hadn’t said much about it. She stood by quietly as I took my anger and frustration and confusion and sadness out at the gym. But in my lessons, she was still holding strong to her hard-ass regimens. I appreciated it, even if sometimes I lost focus. “You’re spiraling again. Take a hike, cool your head.”
“Take a hike” to Jenny meant a sequence of sprinting suicides up and back along the boxing room, at least three hundred uninterrupted jumps on the jump rope, and a perfect round of shadow boxing before you could return to what you were doing prior. I had been sent on so many “hikes” in the last two weeks, they’d stopped feeling like punishment to me. I welcomed the burn of the physical strain. I welcomed anything that would distract me from the Connor sized hole that went straight through my center.
I was back at the bag in less than five minutes.
“You’re starting to get too good at that,” Jenny mumbled. Then, pushing hair away from her face, she took a breath and said, “Alright, again. We’re doing sequences, remember. Keep your mind here, Ceci. In this room, on this task. Three minutes. Let’s go.”
I started again. Trying not to think of Connor. Trying not to think of the way he sent me packing with all my stuff like he never wanted to see me again. The way he looked at me, like I was everything and nothing all wrapped up in the same little bow. The way he hadn’t called me or texted me or so much as sent me a funny video online. The way he was attempting to totally forget me off in another country. The way he’d said he was sick of me. Or more accurately, he couldn’t do this anymore with me.
One.
One.
One, one, and more fucking one.
