Seasons of Change (18 page)

“He said that something bad would happen to her if I came near you, talked to you, made any contact with you at all. That’s why I haven’t been around, that’s why I haven’t been there for you,” I explain.

“And I’m sorry, but what the
hell
was I supposed to do?” I ask, looking for an answer but not actually expecting to receive one. “That’s why I had to ask your mom to give you a message for me. It was the only way I could think of that might keep them from finding out what I’d done.”

A single tear fall down my cheek and I scrub it off with the back of my hand. I know that if I start crying now, I may never be able to stop.

“Oh God." Jake says eventually. "Aimee... I'm so sorry. I didn’t know.” His voice is quiet and he’s hanging his head like he doesn’t want to look at me.

“It’s not your fault,” I tell him. “You couldn’t have known.”

Then the question that I’ve wanted to know the answer to since that day that Ryan visited me at the diner comes out of my mouth.

“
You
could have called though,” I say in a small voice. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because I was angry at you,” Jake replies after a few moments. “Because I was angry with you and I wanted you to be the one to tell me what the hell was going on. It had to come from you. You were the one that left, so it was up to you to come back if that’s what you wanted,” he says simply, and I feel my heart ache.

“I did want to come back,” I tell him, taking a step closer to him. “As soon as I left I wanted to come back.”

“So why did you leave?” he asks, shaking his head like he doesn’t believe me and cradling his injured shoulder.

“Let me take a look at that,” I tell him, motioning for him to take a seat on the bed.

Jake eyes me like he’s not sure what’s going on, so I go to our default style of interaction: making fun of each other.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to hold you down and force you to be my sex slave, I’m just going to take a look at the shoulder where I hit you with a bat,” I tell him. “Now sit, take your shirt off, and I’ll be back in a second.” I feel more comfortable with this kind of an exchange, where there aren’t any deep emotions or hurt feelings in the mix.

I pull out some ice from the freezer and fill a cloth with the cubes, wrapping them up tightly so they don’t fall out as I head back upstairs. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I run up the stairs: my hair is piled high on my head and looks like a good impression of a bird’s nest.

My eyes are wide and scared, but there’s color to my cheeks that I know wasn’t there before Jake had arrived. I shake my head that, in spite of all the drama and the craziness that’s going on, Jake can still make me feel like this—like I’m warmed all the way through.

I have to pause for a moment when I get to my bedroom as Jake has followed my instructions and he’s sitting on the bed, topless, the ripples of his muscles looking even more defined in the low light. The chiseled square of his jaw is set tight—in pain or in determination, I’m not sure. He raises his eyes to look at me and I blush, knowing that I’ve been caught staring. The expression on Jake’s face doesn’t tell me anything, apart from the fact that he’s even more confused now than he was before.

I walk over to him and take a seat by him, holding out the ice pack onto his injured shoulder. “It looks like you’re going to have a pretty impressive bruise there tomorrow,” I inform him. “Didn’t know I was so good with a bat.”

“You don’t have to sound so pleased with yourself, I’m a much bigger target than a baseball,” he replies wryly, and I see the beginnings of a smile start to appear on his lips before his beautiful mouth is set again in a hard line. He flinches as the cold pack comes into contact with his warm skin and I try to ignore the way that his scent makes my head spin.

We sit in a silence that is not altogether uncomfortable for what could be a few minutes or even a few moments. We’re quiet until my eyes rest on the shape underneath the t-shirt that Jake has cast off on my dresser. A thousand thoughts go revolving around in my head and I just say the first one that comes out. “You brought it with you?” I ask, so surprised I’m shocked that I can even say the words.

“What?” Jake asks, his head snapping up and following my gaze towards the shape under his shirt.

I stand up quickly and make my way over to the dresser, tossing his shirt on the floor, and there it sits: an ugly black machine, like one that killed my dad. “This.” I gesture to the gun lying there, looking smaller than I had imagined it. “Why would you bring this here?”

“Because I’ve been carrying it around with me everywhere since I got it. I feel better when I have it with me, like I’m not just waiting for something to happen the whole time,” he says, and there’s a challenge in his voice. “You don’t have a problem with guns anyway, so what’s the big deal? Every other person in this town owns one.” He shrugs like it’s nothing to get worked up about.

“Yeah, ever wonder why the death rate is so high in Painted Rock?” I reply.

“Guns don’t kill people you know. People kill people,” Jake says, his voice level and calm as if we were talking about the weather.

“You’re right, guns don’t kill people, they just help us kill each other a
whole lot
faster,” I respond, turning away. I can’t look at him right now.

“Please don’t do this,” I plead with him. “You’re going to get yourself killed.” I am under no illusions as to how this story is going to play out.

“Dead or a patched member of the Angels, it’s all the same to me,” he comments so flippantly that I can’t believe he’s being sincere.

“You don’t mean that,” I say, my voice quiet.

“Don’t I?” he asks, like he’s throwing a challenge out for me to pick up. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to know the things that they’re going to make me do? The things that they’re going to ask of me? And to know that there’s nothing I can do to change the way things are going to play out, other than to fight for my life?” he asks, the full weight and emotion of his words threatening to push him over the edge.

“No,” I answer sincerely, turning back around to face him. “No I don’t know what that’s like. But you’re wrong about something. Putting your life on the line isn’t the only way that you can stop this from happening,” I tell him. Hesitantly, I reach up to his face, tracing the line of stubble along his jaw and I study his face as he stands perfectly still, not daring to move. “Come with me,” I ask him. “We’ll leave tomorrow. I’ve got the cash. We’ll take your car and we’ll get the hell out of here,” I explain, imagining the freedom as I say the words.

“You know that I can’t,” he replies quietly, covering my hand with his and letting it fall.

“It’s not just me that wants to get you out of town you know,” I tell him. “Your mom knows that you need to go and that now is the time.”

“But you know what they’ll do to my family, to your mom. Aimee, we’ve been through all this.” Jake sighs as if we’re just going over the same road again and again.

“Except they won’t,” I say confidently, and Jake stops staring down at the floor and looks up at me again. “They won’t hurt them,” I tell him.

“And how do you know this?” he asks, furrowing his brow.

“Your mom told me,” I sigh, not wanting to go into any more detail than that, not when I don’t have all the facts.

“And you just believe her?” he asks incredulously.

“You don’t? Why would she lie about something like that?” I ask him, and he doesn’t respond because he knows he can’t. “She wouldn’t put Jonah and Bill in danger, not even if it meant that you were free and clear, you know that,” I say gently, resting my hand on his chest and feeling the pounding of his heartbeat. “Sally said she would look after my mom too—she’s not going to let anything happen to anyone,” I tell him, and for the first time in what seems like years I see Jake’s shoulders drop. He relaxes like he’s just become instantly lighter.

“And what about the Angels?” Jake asks after a beat, sounding more tired than I’ve ever heard him. “They just get to carry on doing what they’re doing while we ride off into the sunset and leave this town to rot?” he asks, sounding so much like my dad I can’t stand it.

“One man and one gun is not going to change the hold that the Angels have over this town. If you really want to make Painted Rock what it used to be, then we need a plan and we need more support—whether we take what we know to the Feds, or the friggin’ mafia, or whoever. But to do that we have to get out of here. You have to live if you want to change things around here,” I tell him gently. “You have to live for me, because I don’t want to live without you.” I look up into his eyes and stand so still that I’m barely breathing.

“Aimee, you can’t do this again,” he steps away from me so I have to let my hand fall again by my side. “You can’t make me think that you feel something for me that you don’t, just so I’ll leave. It’s not fair, it’s not right.” He shakes his head like I’m telling him something that he doesn’t want to believe.

“Don’t you realize what I’m saying?” I shout at him. “I’m telling you that I love you, you idiot! Doesn’t that mean
anything?
”

“You'd say anything right now to stop me from doing this.” Jake gestures towards the gun that is still lying on the dresser.

“How can you even say that?” I ask him, shaking my head stubbornly. “So what was your big plan? Go into Wheels all guns blazing and start shooting until they put a bullet in your head? Sounds like an excellent idea,” I mumble, pushing past him to sit on my bed with my head in my hands.

“It won’t work, Jake,” I tell him with resigned certainty. “And when they’re scraping bits of you off of the floor, what then? What happens to your mom and dad? What happens to Jonah? Can you really do that to the people who love you? Can you really do that to me?” I ask, raising my head so that he can see the tears that are forming in my green eyes, threatening to spill over my cheeks at any moment.

Jake seems to be wrestling with some internal demon until he finally walks over and takes a seat beside me on the bed, putting his head in his hands. “I don’t know what to do anymore, Aimee,” he admits, his voice suddenly so small it almost breaks my heart. “I’m so tired of it all, I feel more tired than I thought it was possible for a twenty-year-old to feel.”

“Jake, I can’t make you come with me,” I tell him. “You have to make that decision for yourself. I
can
tell you that there’s no way I’m leaving this place without you, not in a million years,” I add, holding his gaze as he looks at me and sees that I’m serious.

“Aimee, don’t,” he nearly moans. “Don’t make me feel guilty for you winding up here. I can’t take that along with everything else.”

“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, Summers,” I say. “I’m just trying to make you see that wherever you are, that’s where I want to be. I don’t want to watch you die.”

My voice is breaking as the tears that I’ve been holding back finally run over my cheeks. “But I will if you make me. But please don’t make me, please don’t do this,” I ask him and, just like that, I feel Jake’s arms move around me as he pulls me towards him and I lay my head on his chest, almost instinctively, like I’ve found my place, like I know where it is that I’m supposed to be.

“Shh, shh, don’t cry Aimee, you know I can’t stand to see you cry,” Jake reaches up to my hair and pulls the elastic out of the ponytail, letting the dark, curly waves fall around us.

He sifts his hands through my hair and I try not to imagine that in a couple of days, he’s not going to be around anymore. The thought of that hurts me almost more than I can stand and that’s when I realize that he’s talking to me.

“Okay,” he says quietly. “Okay.”

“Okay what?” I mumble against his chest. “Okay, enough crying?” I ask, sniffing loudly and trying to wipe the tears away from my eyes.

“No, genius,” he replies, and I can feel his laugh reverberate against his chest and against my cheek. “Okay as in, we’ll go. We’ll leave.”