Page 78 of Always Yours

That doesn’t help me at all. “Why aren’t you with her?”

Tears well in her eyes, and I feel like a fucking jackass. “Because she allowed me to be sexually and physically abused,” she says as matter-of-factly as she can while tears well in her eyes and spill over. “So, my peepaw took me in.”

I close my eyes. I’m not a jackass. I am the slushy part of the ice that gets shoved off at the end of each period. The ice full of blood, spit, and boogers. I’m fucking trash. “Fuck, Austen.”

When I open my eyes, her lips are quivering.

“He saved me when I ran from them.”

It makes sense why Elli and my parents are worried. Her grandfather is protecting her because she’s already been through enough shit. And I definitely don’t want to add to the shit she already has been through. I don’t think I will; I think I’ll make her life brighter. But what if I do? I can’t breathe as my gaze stays locked in hers. I don’t know what to do.

In a small voice that nearly does me in, Austen whispers, “Did I do something wrong?”

I shake my head vehemently. “Never!” I cover my face once more, feeling like I don’t even know myself. Like I don’t even know what I want. “Fuck, I’m so confused, Austen. Fuck!” I roar, and she jumps. Great, now I fucking scared her. I move past her, hitting the button and not chancing another glance at her as the door shuts.

I can’t.

I know if I do, I won’t go.

twenty-five

Austen

I couldn’t stay in the apartment without Dimitri.

I felt so alone without him there.

I didn’t even make it past the doorway before I turned around and left for my peepaw’s house. I didn’t sleep when I got here. I just sat in my room, trying to figure out what happened but coming up with nothing.

I look out at the endless tobacco fields that surround my peepaw’s house. This farm has been in the family for centuries and is part of why my peepaw is such a success. My mom worked these fields with him, and that was the reason she left with my father. She said she wanted a different life than picking tobacco, and my father had told her that New Beginnings was an awakening, something that changes lives.

Load of shit, yet I wonder if she really knew what she was getting herself into. I wonder if she regrets it, wishing like hell she would have stayed picking the tobacco, rather than getting her ass beaten constantly by men who claimed to love her. Not that I’d ever speak to her to find out, but I do wonder. I know I don’t regret leaving the life I was told I was supposed to have.

The sun is barely breaking the horizon, the orange glow kissing the fields of crops as the summer breeze drifts across my face. Birds chirp and bugs buzz, and it should be soothing. This was my safe space for so long, but then I experienced the apartment. I experienced Dimitri. And now…now, I don’t want to be anywhere but where he is.

I bring my legs up to my chest, pressing my face into my knees as I slide my fingers along the back of my phone. Since coming back to my family home, I have been fighting the urge to text him. I don’t know if it’s fear or pride, but I won’t allow myself to do it. Something felt off with the way he left. He had a backpack, and I didn’t understand the look on his face. Tormented, confused, and sad, almost like he was two seconds from breaking down, and it made absolutely no sense to me. I don’t know what changed from the time we left the wedding to when we got home, but something did. I don’t know why he asked me the questions he did, but I wonder if Peepaw said something to him.

It’s all so confusing. I want to know if Dimitri’s okay. If I did something wrong. But I can’t think of a thing. Our kisses were everything I’ve dreamed of and more. Books can’t hold a candle to the way his lips made me feel or how desperately I want to do it again. I want to do more. Damn it, I miss him.

I slide my phone between my legs and reach for my book out of my bag. I run my fingers down the spine and the front, knowing Dimitri touched this book. I almost smell it, just to see if it smells like his woodsy smell, but I know that would be pathetic. I open it to the chapter I’m on, and soon, I’m lost in the world of Claudius and Lizza—their love and their need for each other. I ignore my own life, my own struggles, and the ache I have in my chest about the unknown with Dimitri. It’s hard when the passion Lizza feels for Claudius is how I feel when I’m with Dimitri. That all-consuming need, that rush of excitement, that tingling feeling deep in my gut.

When the front door opens, the screen door slamming against the frame, I look up to find my peepaw looking at me. “What are you doing?”

I raise a brow. “Reading?”

He comes out in a pair of jeans and collared shirt, his boots clacking against the wood of the porch. He holds a cup of coffee, his cowboy hat low on his head. “I hadn’t expected you here. I thought you’d stay the night with the girls back in Nashville.”

I close my book. I could have, but I didn’t want to deal with their prying. I want to ask why Peepaw didn’t come home until late last night, but I don’t see the point. “I was tired after the wedding, came here to an empty house.” I don’t miss that I don’t call this place my home.

Peepaw doesn’t say anything to that, just drops down into the rocking chair beside me. “I stayed at a hotel for the weekend. Didn’t want to come home to an empty house.” When I don’t comment on that, he looks over at me. “I thought you would have been with Titov all weekend.”

“I was, but then I came here.”

He takes a long sip of his coffee and leans back. He lifts one leg to the porch rail, pressing his heel into it. “So, what are you doing? Are you two serious about each other, or is this just a little game to pass time?”

I want to tell him to mind his business, but what good would that do? “I’m not sure.”

“You know he’ll make the Assassins. He won’t play for us.”

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