Page 80 of Crawl
He’s trying to help me, isn’t he? My heart stops, completely confused. I swing around; Cash’s eyes are full of hunger and greed, but it’s not real. He can admit that he wants me, that he’s obsessed with me, that heusedme. But even when he’s trying to help me find a stable future without him, he’ll never admit that he hasfeelingsfor me.
If he’s telling the truth about this person and their car wash, then he’s trying to help me run away. It’s probably hard for Cash to do something like that. But if he can’t acknowledge his own feelings, then I’m not going to put up with him anymore. I’ll find my way without him.
I reach the front door and pull the strap of my purse higher on my shoulder. The camera is in there. I don’t think I’ll do anything with it, but I like having it as security against him.
But my last thought is Jenna. I still haven’t texted her with the pictures of Winstone’s corpse, but if I know Cash, he sees her as a loose end. Even if he doesn’t kill me, he won’t hesitate with her.
“If you touch Jenna,” I say, my voice quivering, “If you so much as lay a hand on her,I will kill you,Cash.”
His eyes stay unmoved. Those dark brown spots dot his vision. All he sees is me.
“I have no interest in your friend,” he says. “I never touched her, and I never will.”
“But you’ve thought about killing her.” I ball my fists, then raise them up. I want to punch him in the face, but it won’t make a difference. “You thought about killingme.”
He blinks. “That honestly surprises you?”
I flatten my hands against my sides. “I thought I could trust you,” I hiss. “I thought you were the only person I could be real with.”
“Funny, isn’t it?” he sighs.
And in a way, it is funny. It’s pathetic and sad and I want to scream. By giving me this information about getting a new identity, he’s throwing me a lifeline. And yet he’s still denying his feelings for me.
I don’t want his help anymore.
“I didn’t need this,” I cry. I point to the downstairs office. “Winstone. Brody. Dean. My stepdad. I wanted you, Cash, because I thought you saw me. But all you see is yourself.”
He huffs through his nose like I’m a housefly that he’s finally going to squash.
“Good luck turning in those videos,” he says, tilting his head at my purse. “You’re incriminating yourself just as much as me.”
Cash knows me better than anyone else, and yet, he still thinks I’m going to turn him into the police. He truly can’t trust me, and thathurts.
“I left the rest of the cameras for you,” I say, motioning at the little black devices littering the ceiling. I open the front door. “Don’t follow me.”
I stomp down the steps to my car. I drop into the front seat and immediately start the engine, getting the hell off of that street. Cash might follow me, but right now, he’s too proud to do anything.
I stop the car in front of my rental house. It’s empty and dark, and I can’t imagine going inside anymore. Cash used to wait for me in the crawl space, but for some reason, I can’t shake the idea that it’s really done this time.
The tears surprise me, like a trickle, then suddenly, the sobs take my breath away. I hit the steering wheel until my palms hurt. My shoulders heave, and I find myself looking over my shoulder, hoping that I’ll find him there. But I’m alone. I can’t breathe. Cash killed Winstone, and I killed my stepdad. We don’t need each other anymore.
But I know the truth. Cash never needed me. I’m the one who needed him.
Exhaustion fills me. The walk to the front door seems like a trek through the mountains, and I consider sleeping in my car. But if someone finds me in the morning, I’ll have to explain or lie about what happened, and I don’t want to deal with that.
Once I’m inside the house, I plug in the security camera to my computer. I need to erase the footage, but as I scan through the recordings, I watch the night I killed my stepdad. I should be mystified by seeing myself do something so horrific, but in those frames, I fixate on Cash. He looks at me with glowing eyes, like he’s truly proud of me.
I wish we still had that.
I collapse on my bed, then find a dark spot on the wall above me. It’s got a hole in it—small, like the width of a pen cap, maybe bigger—and it’s always been there. It makes me think of Cash.
I zone out on that little hole. As I shift into murky dreams, I imagine Cash on the other side of the wall, peering into my life, seeing everything I kept hidden. It’s infuriating, but somehow, it’s comforting too.
“Please come back,” I whisper. I lift a hand in the air, swatting at the hole. I sniff deeply, searching for his piney scent, but I can’t smell anything. My nose is stuffed, but even if it wasn’t, I know he’s not there. “Stay with me.”
Soon, sleep finds me, swallowing me whole.
***
