Finding Never (4 page)

I
stand at the end of the driveway and my heart starts to pound like
crazy. I'm glad Ty is holding my suitcase because my hands are
shaking violently and my lungs are tight. I'm drowning. I'm
drowning in memories and fear and anticipation. I turn around
suddenly and stare Ty straight in the face. He looks nervous, too,
but I don't know if it's because he feels bad for me or if it's just
because he's in a new town, in a new state, with a bunch of people he
doesn't know.

“
I
can't go in there,” I whisper and my voice breaks. In that
living room, my father took his last breath while the life was
strangled out of him. In that very same living room, my family stood
against me, protected a murderer with disbelief and lies, told me
they hated me, wished with all their hearts that I was gone. I made
their fucking dreams come true. I did exactly what they wanted, and
I left. Why am I standing here? What am I doing? “Let's
leave,” I whisper to Ty as tears start to pour down my face. I
can't move. I'm paralyzed.

“
Never,”
he says as he puts our bags down and takes my chin in his hand. I
move towards him like it's the most natural thing in the world, curl
myself around his broad chest and breathe in the scent of cigarettes
and some sort of spicy deodorant that smells like cinnamon. This
scent becomes burned in my brain, forever there to remind me of Ty
McCabe and the feel of his warm, muscular arms as they come around me
and pull me close. “You can do this. You have to do this.
This is your family. They're here, and you can't keep running.
Memories are tricky mother fuckers, and they're fast, too. You can't
escape them, baby. They'll always be there. You have to look 'em in
the eye and be brave.”

“
What
about you?” I snap, pulling back slightly. “I don't see
you looking your demons in the face. All you do is fuck them.”
I stop myself before I can say anything else that I'll regret, and
immediately try to apologize. Ty holds up a hand and stops me from
speaking. His bracelets jingle in the quiet air, blend with the
sound of crickets, a sound I've missed like crazy without even
realizing it.

“
Stop,”
he says and takes a deep breath. I can tell he's pissed at me, but I
keep my mouth shut. “You're stressed out, okay, I get it.
Relax.” Ty McCabe looks up and over my shoulder at the white
house with the gray shutters and the empty flower boxes, at the big
front porch with the swing that hasn't changed a bit since I've left.
The garden is a little sparser, a little less cared for, and there
are different curtains in the windows, but otherwise, the house looks
the same. I turn back around and study it with Ty in silence. None
of the upstairs lights are on, but all of the downstairs ones are.
People are home. My people. My family.

Headlights
swing off the road and start towards us. I pray that they're headed
down the road, to the Murphy's house, or what used to be the Murphy's
house. It's the only other house down this way, or it was. I close
my eyes, and I wait. Ty grabs our bags and starts to move out of the
way, but when he sees that I'm frozen, he stops and stands there
while tires roll across the dirt towards us and pause. Right behind
me. They pause and I know without a doubt that there is someone in
that car that I know. I think about running, about taking Ty's
butterfly inked hand and disappearing through the fields, dancing
away the night naked in a prairie, feeling his warm body caressing
mine, diving into me, filling that aching hole of emptiness.

The
car stops, the door opens, footsteps sound across the ground.

“
Excuse
me?” says the voice and then it stops, just cuts off like an
engine. Silence reigns king for several moments. I know whose voice
that is, but does she know me? Is that why she's stopped talking?
Or maybe she's just seen Ty and gotten caught on how beautiful he is.
“N-” Jade begins and then pauses, like she can't bear to
say my name. “Never?” I don't answer; I can't. My
hands are hanging by my sides, curled into tight fists while I
struggle to breathe, to keep my head from cracking open and spilling
my thoughts onto the ground in a tangled, bloody mess. “Never,
is that you?” Jade's voice breaks a little, and I think I hear
tears in it.

“
I
hate you, Never,” Jade hisses at me. “From the bottom of
my heart, I hate every last inch of you.”

I
whirl around in a cloud of dust, highlighted by Jade's headlights so
that it looks like a cloud floating around my calves. I find my
sister's hazel eyes in a strikingly familiar face, one that looks so
much like mine that I draw a quick breath of surprise. There's so
much hurt in Jade's eyes that they're nearly identical to my own. My
pain mirrors her pain. How? Why? I wonder. What happened to her?
Was it me? I take a step forward.

“
Never,”
Jade whispers my name like it's the first word to a ballad, one that
doesn't end well. “Never.” And then we're both moving
and our arms are going around one another and tears just fall, fall,
fall. They hit the dirty ground and our sadness soaks into the
Mississippi earth. For a long, long while neither of us speaks.
There are no words for this moment, nothing in the English language
that can encompass the emotions that I'm feeling. I think in colors
for a second, in bright blues and hazy lavenders, grays that mimic
the blue of the sky above the sea. And then I pull back and I look
at a face that is too like mine for a half-sister. It's incredible.
Jade and I are practically twins now. I touch her tears, wipe them
away, cup her chin in my hand.

“
I
always knew you'd be prettier than me,” I tell her and she
laughs. It's a nervous laugh, but a laugh nonetheless, and I'm
pleased with it. Her cheeks are covered with rouge and her lipstick
is too dark, but I guess that nobody taught her how to put in on, so
how can she be blamed? The only things my mother passed down to us
were her looks and her love for men. I wonder how I'm going to react
when I see her. I try to keep a smile on my face for Jade and touch
her copper hair, wonder if I should stop dying mine, and drop my hand
to my side.

“
What
are you doing here?” she asks me as she shoots a glance over at
Ty. Her eyes travel his body, rate him, find something they like and
flick back to my face. “Beth said you called, but I … I
didn't really believe it.”

“
I'm
on winter break,” I tell her, as if that explains everything.
Oh yeah, after five
years I'm just home for break. Like that's gonna fly.
I
don't know what else to say and neither does Jade.

“
Um,
let me get my car,” she says, glancing over her shoulder at a
beat-up old Toyota. “And I'll meet you on the porch?” I
nod and step out of the way, wanting so much to talk to her but not
knowing how. Jade glances over at Ty once more and smiles a
coquettish smile that tells me that I'm in trouble. My whole family
will want him, but not because he's Ty, not because he's a piece of
tortured fucking art, but because he's mine.
Oh,
fuck,
I think as I
look at Ty, at the man who knows so much about me yet knows nothing
at all.
I shouldn't
have brought you, but I'm glad I did. I'm glad you chased me down
and took my face between your beautiful hands.

“
Are
you okay?” he whispers as Jade starts the car and inches it
past us like we're made of glass. I nod, but I step into his arms
again, let him hold me. He doesn't seem to have any problem doing
that. I wonder how many freebies I'll get before he starts getting
annoyed.

“
I
am now,” I tell him honestly. “But I have a feeling this
trip is going to kill me.”

7

Ty
picks up our bags and follows close behind me as we walk down the
rest of the driveway and pause on the porch. Jade is standing there
jingling her keys and biting her lip.

“
Mom
isn't home,” she says and I cringe involuntarily. Jade sees
this and stops shaking her keys around. Silence descends. “India's
here, I think. Probably Lettie and Lorri. You haven't met Darla or
Maple.” My throat closes up, and I have to take several
soothing breaths to open it back up. Ty's hand in mine doesn't hurt
either.

“
Who?”

“
Darla
is … ” Jade doesn't know how to phrase this which is a
bad sign. “Darla is my little sister. Um, our little sister,
I guess. She's only three, but … ” Jade glances over
her shoulder. I can hear the TV blasting and India's perfect voice
shouting. She sounds good even when she yells. She could've been
something with that voice. Her songs could work their way into your
heart and take over you and you'd never even know it. “Um,
Maple is Beth's daughter.” I swallow hard.

“
Beth
has a daughter?” Jade nods, but she doesn't speak. She's
staring over my head at the glitter of lights in the distance, a
small, sparkling reminder of the town I left behind. “A
husband?” Jade shakes her head no. Of course not. Why did I even
ask? I look over at Ty. He's playing with his lip ring, spinning it
back and forth, sticking his tongue through the hole. My blood
heats, and I have to look away. I'm in a stressful situation, and
I'm thinking about sex. Figures. Or maybe it's just Ty. Maybe it's
just him. I hope so. I touch my fingers to my chip earring and try
to figure out how to ask my next question because I
have
to
ask it. If I don't, and I see him, I'm done for. “Is –
”

“
No.”
Jade's response is sharp and rude. Her eyes darken and she turns
around, reaches for the screen door and pulls it open with a creak.
“He left a long time ago.” Her voice softens and I see
that her anger is not for me but for her biological dad, my mother's
fiancee turned second husband, my daddy's killer. “Come in.
I'm sure Lettie and Lorri will be happy to see you.” She
doesn't mention India.

Ty
and I ascend the steps, and I realize that if he wasn't by my side
that I'd have bolted as soon as I'd seen Jade, run right back to the
bus station and gone home. I would've crawled between the covers in
my dorm room and cried myself to sleep, waiting until I could go out
and find a new guy to bury my sorrow in. I shake my head and know I
can't go back to that.

“
Jade!”
India shouts from the direction of the living room. I'm standing
with my back to the doorway, Ty's hand a captive in my hand, my heart
pounding so loudly that I'm sure he can hear it. When he leans over
and whispers in my ear, I jump.

“
It's
okay, Never,” Ty says and presses a hot kiss to my earlobe.
Shivers run up and down my spine and I feel my belly clench in
anticipation of having Ty again because God help me, I want him so
bad it hurts. Even now, even standing in this doorway to hell, I
feel my body clench tightly, beg me to get to know Ty real good.
It's never acted like this with another boy;
I've
never acted
like this with another boy. Except for Noah Scott. Oh God and fuck
and holy fuck, except for him.

“
I
need you to watch the girls until Beth gets home. I … ”
India comes around the corner and sees Ty and me standing still as
statues.

“
Never
is home,” Jade says and bites her bottom lip. Tears prick her
eyes again, and she turns away suddenly, flying up the staircase like
she can't take the pain of seeing me. I hear her footsteps upstairs
and the sound of a slamming door.

India
is so fucking beautiful that I can't stand it. Last I saw her, she
was only eleven years old, still just a kid, but now she's a woman
with long, copper hair and a smile that will get her into too much
trouble. She stares at me for a second and then she throws her head
back and laughs. I laugh, too, but I don't know why and then she's
running forward and throwing her arms around my neck like she used to
do before I left. She squeezes me with real warmth, not an ounce of
animosity or resentment in her touch. When she pulls away, she turns
to Ty and smiles.

“
Who's
this?” she asks as tears roll down her cheeks and she sniffles,
making her look just a tad younger than her sixteen years. “Your
boyfriend?” The question catches me off guard and I freeze
with my eyes on Ty's face. He stops biting at his lip ring and
smiles that heartbreakingly beautiful smile of his with the dimples
and all.

“
My
name is Ty McCabe,” he tells my sister as he takes her hand
with his ringed one and shakes it. Her eyes travel from his jewelry
to his butterfly tattoos to his broad shoulders and smiling face.
She thinks he's pretty, that much I can tell, but she doesn't scope
him out like Jade did.
India was always one of my favorites,
I
think as she turns back to me and hugs me again.

“
I
feel like I'm dreaming,” India says as she tilts her head to
the side and touches the red streak in my hair. “This is
beautiful. I love it.” Before I can respond, my little sister
Lettie walks in with a book in one hand, a notebook in the other.
She'
s looking down at her notes
and doesn't see me at first.