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Jeremy sounded so sincere as he pulled me in for a hug. I wanted to cherish that comfort but knew how quickly it could be yanked back out from under me, so instead, I pushed him away.
“Yeah, your family found me, in the apartment you rented for me… Then they took it away, kicked me out with nothing but a backpack full of clothing. They took my laptop, my schoolbooks…” I had to battle not to choke on the emotion.
“They left me with no home, money, barely any clothes, and they cut off my tuition, too. They tried to take back that semester’s tuition, but the school wouldn’t allow them to. They left me so desperate I ended up living with a serial killer who was watching me use the bathroom on live video feeds. He watched me in my bedroom, too. He had the corpses of his victims in the basement, all girls like me, many younger, who he would go visit - even while I lived there. He kept them because he wasn’t done using and defiling them even after they were dead.”
“Nova?” Jeremy’s voice cracked as he said my name. His horrified face didn’t stop me from spilling every bit of crazy I had experienced from the moment he turned his back on me and walked out of his house.
“Then a motorcycle club took me in and kept me safe until they didn’t. Now, I have nowhere to go again, but I’m glad you searched so hard. Your family knew where I was. They took that away from me. They cut off my phone, too. I had that in my pocket, and those strange men didn’t think to take it from me, but it didn’t do a lot of good when it didn’t work.
“Nova, please, I wasn’t made aware of that until I came back to town and went to find you. When I realized the apartment had been rented out to someone else, I asked what the hell happened. At first, they tried to lie to me and told me that you just ran off with your mom. I contacted the school, and they wouldn’t tell me anything about you, but I knew you were still registered there. By the time I found out which classes you were taking, to try to catch you there, you were no longer showing up to class. I nearly got arrested trying to find out why you weren’t coming to school anymore. They thought I was some stalker you were afraid of.”
“The serial killer. No one knows about him though because he’s dead now. He had partners though, and they saw video of me, so they’re after me now, too.”
“Nova, come with me. I can take you to my cabin. You know the one near Helen that borders Unicoi State Park. It’s about a three-and-a-half-hour drive. No one will think to look for you there.”
“And what happens when we get there? Do you take it all away from me again because of things I had no control over?”
“No, Nova. I swear to you, you will be safe there. I own the place outright and family doesn’t know anything about it. If you need me to sign it over to you, so that you know you’re safe to stay there, I will. I promise that you will never be in that position again. Please, let me get you away from here and somewhere safe.”
“Fine, my car’s out front.”
“Leave it,” he told me. When I was about to argue, he stopped me. “They probably have trackers on your car. Maybe they’ve even put them on your phone, too. We’ll leave your phone behind in the car, get you a new one to use, and whatever else you need from your car, you can toss it in mine. We should probably hurry, though. If you started running, that means someone is probably looking for you already.”
What he said made sense and it was also my only option because I didn’t want to be found. Breakneck could go to hell and he could take his club right along with him. “Okay,” I mumbled, but then Jeremy had me moving quickly. We grabbed my bags out of the car, and I took a moment to text Kip and let him know that I wouldn’t be coming back.
Nova:I can’t be there anymore. I’m so sorry to leave you without anyone to watch Knoxville. Know that I love him and wish things could be different. Please, don’t hate me. I’m sorry.
I turned my phone off and left it along with my keys, and unfortunately the laptop that Kip had given me to use had to be left behind with my car as well.
Fortunately, I started saving my schoolwork to the cloud, so that I didn’t ever lose it again. We put everything else in Jeremy’s car and started heading north to the mountains. We would still be in Georgia, but he was right, no one would think to look for us there.
I’m not sure how long Jeremy drove before I fell asleep. Time moves differently when your heart is in pieces. Everything goes too fast and too slow all at once and there’s no real frame of reference for how long you’ve felt the pain, when it got worse, or better. I knew this. I knew it because I’d lived it before. Knowing it, experiencing it before, didn’t prepare me for how it would feel again.
I wasn’t aware of the entire four-hour trip. It took slightly longer than expected because Jeremy said everything was stop and go due to an accident on the way, but I’d slept through all of it. My brain and body just shut down and stopped processing for a while.
I took a seat out on the porch and stared at the trees after we got there. The sky was too blue, the clouds a little too puffy and white to be real. All of it seemed like something I was dreaming or imagining. There was no denying I was in the mountains though. The air felt cleaner, purer somehow. You wouldn’t think that just a few hours could make a huge difference, but it did. It made a difference with the chill in the air as well. At first, it didn’t even bother me because it felt like it should be there. That chill was the only thing that matched my mood. December’s mountain temperatures matched the numbness I felt inside.
“I haven’t been here in a while, so I need to run into town and stock up on some groceries. I’m guessing you’re not up for that right now, so is there anything you need?”
“Can you get some macaroni and cheese?”
Jeremy scrunched his brow in question. “Whatever you need,” he agreed despite not knowing why I would request something I’d never eaten around him before. It was the first time either of us realized that we were strangers to one another now. The daughter he raised had been through things he would never understand, and it changed me. The father who raised me had disappointed me so spectacularly that there was no way they were the same person. It was something we would have to work through if he was serious about giving me a place to escape.
“I’ll be back with everything we need and probably a few things we don’t.”
I continued to sit on the porch with my two backpacks at my feet. My phone had been left behind, so even if I had someone to call, I couldn’t. My life had just blown up for the second time and all I felt was numb.
~*~
“Hey, sleepyhead,” my dad called out to me the way he used to when I was younger and hated getting up and ready for school so early. “You need to come inside now. It’s starting to get too cold for you to be outside dressed that way. The temps are supposed to go down even lower tonight.”
I opened my eyes up to see that the sun had set somewhere behind a mountain. There was still a bit of ambient light left, enough to let me know the sun had only recently sunk so low. “Did you just get back?”
“I got back and put everything away. It took a little longer than expected because I had to actually go to the next town over to stock up on all the supplies we needed.” He put a phone in my hand.
“I left it in the box, so you know it hasn’t been tampered with. I can put it on my plan, or you can put it on your own, if you want.”
“You can put it in yours. I don’t really have anyone to contact except school, when I need to turn my work in.” My heart fluttered tightly in my chest at the thought of school. Being a nanny for Knoxville was my internship. With me running, there wouldn’t be an internship to speak of, which meant that I would have to find out how to pay for another semester of school and find another internship if I wanted to ever graduate.
