CHAPTER 23:
BEN
Really…I wanted to kill Quinton. I wanted to wrap my hands around his neck, taking a page out of his own playbook, and I wanted to squeeze the fucking life out of him. He’d kidnapped Juniper. He’d threatened my little sister. He didn’t deserve prison. Prison was too good for this man. There were red marks around Juniper wrists—like he’d bound her hands somehow. Her makeup was smeared down her cheeks—liked she’d been crying. Who knows what sort of awful things he’d been saying to her for the past thirty minutes? Who knows the things he would have done to her had she not escaped him?
So, I left the car, and I moved with swiftness and stealth. I didn’t wait for Noah to keep up. Instead I charged Quinton, like a linebacker on a football field, and sacked him to the ground. I had at least twenty pounds of muscle on the guy, so getting him on the ground wasn’t a hard feat. A second later I had his face pushed into the grass, my knee pressing hard into his back, and his arm twisted around behind his body.
Now that I had him subdued and on the ground, I didn’t know exactly what to say to him. Don’t come near us again. You piece of shit. If I ever see your face again, I will destroy you. I didn’t know. None of it felt like enough. Only a couple hours ago, I’d been completely sure in my ability to protect Juniper. Instead this man had taken her from me, right under my nose, so easily and that left me feeling like all my promises (or threats) might be hollow.
The sound of sirens grew closer and closer, and I remained silent.
Maybe there wasn’t anything I could say. The press of my knee in his back—maybe it said everything for me. When I still couldn’t come up with the right words for Quinton, it was Noah I spoke to instead.
He hovered, in his usual quiet, watchful way.
“Thanks, Noah,” I said to him. “And I’m sorry I judged you before I ever knew you.”
“Most people do initially,” he replied.
“Well, I respect the hell out of you now.”
“Thanks. It’s appreciated.”
“You two want a room?” Quinton mumbled sarcastically into the grass.
I dug my knee a little harder into his back. He yelped but said nothing else.
“You want to say something to him?” Noah nodded off in the direction of the sirens. “Now’s your last chance.”
“I have nothing to say. I got the girl. He didn’t.”
Quinton grunted below me but didn’t comment.
A minute later the cops arrived. They arrested Quinton. He’d likely be charged with abduction, something the officer said might result in a sentence of twenty years in prison. Which was a relief, to say the least. Our statements were taken, the rest of my family showed up on the scene, even my parents, and the night dragged on well past midnight.
Overall, Juniper didn’t seem too shaken up. Surprisingly. Even if she was feeling otherwise, on the outside she remained calm. Me, on the other hand—I felt jittery and agitated. I couldn’t shake off the adrenaline feeling. When it was all said and done, when we were finally safe in our home, I realized at least an hour had passed since I’d said a word to Juniper.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“Yes. Just exhausted,” she whispered before she slipped off her shoes. Not bothering to change out of her clothes, she crawled into our bed and snuggled under the covers.
I followed her lead, removing my own shoes and socks, followed by my layers of clothing. Once down to just my t-shirt and boxer briefs, I pulled back the covers and joined her.
She snuggled against my side.
“You okay?” I asked again.
“Yes,” she repeated, stressing the word.
“Juniper, really?”
“Ben, yes, really.”
I guess I didn't fully believe her. I was shaken up. Shouldn't she be, too? “Truce?” I asked. The whole ‘truce’ thing meant many different things for us. Sometimes it was an excuse to make out. Sometimes it was an ‘I love you.’ Right now, as I called it, it meant utter honesty.
“Ben—why are you with me?” she asked.
What. The. Fuck. Her question blindsided me. I swallowed hard and sat up. The light in the bedroom was still on, and from the look on her face I could tell she was dead serious.
“I'm pregnant—” she started.
“Yes, I'm fucking aware. We're back to this?” I didn't want to fight with her, not tonight. But how could she doubt me?
“Hear me out. Okay?” she pleaded. She sat up too, swirling a strand of her hair through two of her fingers. “It's just, I saw you wrestle Quinton to the ground like he was nothing. You build furniture like you're Jesus the Carpenter. You have a family that loves you and would do anything for you. You're smart and handsome and young. You could go to college. You could start over. You could do anything with your life. That compass on your chest points west. Last I checked this isn't west.”
“Do you have a point here, Juniper, baby?” I groaned. “Because I don't like where this is heading at all.”
“You're too good for me.”
“That's bullshit.”
“You are. Who am I? The pregnant runaway with the psycho kidnapping ex, that's me. I don't want you to wake up in a year, or two, or three, and regret everything. Maybe right now it doesn't feel like it, but one day you might come to resent me. I know you. I know you always do the right thing. Is that what you're doing with me? The right thing.”
Wow, damn. Way to slice me right open. There was accuracy in some of her words. “When I was seventeen, I got Sonya pregnant,” I confessed. “I thought, at the time, that it was the worst thing in the world that could have happened to me. I was going to be my school's valedictorian. Assuming Katie Baker—this really brainy girl, who was second in the class, always waiting for me to screw up just one test, one grade, so she could pull ahead of me—assuming she didn't get it over me. I was going to play college football, hopefully at Luke University like I'd always planned. I was going to do big things with my life. I was king of my high school, and I had a world of possibilities in front of me. Not so unlike the version of me you're describing now. That baby growing inside Sonya was not going to hold me back.
“So, I pushed her toward having an abortion. She was on the fence about what to do. She needed me to step up and decide, and I easily made the decision to terminate the pregnancy. That same day she got the abortion, this feeling in the pit of my stomach settled. Regret. Anger. Loss. I couldn't shake it. I tried to tell myself I'd done the right thing, made the right decision for myself and my future, but I'd made the wrong decision. Once I realized that, everything that once mattered to me didn't anymore. My popularity, my friends, my grades—all fucking bullshit. I ended my own child's life because I wanted my world to stay the same and then suddenly I hated that very world I lived in. Sonya and I started fighting. When I no longer wanted to go to the same parties and hang out with the same people—she couldn't understand. She didn't feel the same loss as me, she didn't see how it was all bullshit the way I did, and so we broke up. Probably something that would have happened eventually either way.
“I joined the Coast Guard the summer after that year, before my senior year, and I got the fuck out of Kill Devil Hills. You know the rest from there. Life forced me back here. And when I first met you, the fact that you were pregnant, felt a little like my second chance. It still feels like that. But don't think for a second that I love you because of that, or in spite of that. I love you because you're my best friend.”
She breathed in and exhaled deeply. Juniper had tears running down her cheeks. Her big blue eyes were watching me intently. I sure as hell hoped that meant she understood how much I only wanted the life we had. Not some ‘bigger/better’ imaginary thing.
“Really, you're my best friend. I wake up and dread going to work, only because I'd rather spend my entire day just hanging out with you. That feeling of loss in the pit of my stomach—it's not so bad when I'm with you. In fact, it feels a lot like hope these days. I don't want to go to college, not at this point. I want to be with you. I want this—” I reached out and rested my hand on her stomach for a second. “You already feel like my family. You have since the night I met you. I can’t wait to add to our family. I’ll never regret any of this.”
She nodded silently. A couple seconds ticked by. I could tell I’d won her over. I could tell she believed me and wasn’t going anywhere. She had a way of going shy on me whenever we shared any sort of emotional moment, and this was one hell of one, so I knew she needed a moment.
“I’ve never had a family before,” she uttered, her voice raw. “Well, my parents are both still living. But I mean the real sort—where everyone sticks around and no one drinks away dinner—that sort.”
“I’m your family,” I urged.
She nodded once more.
I couldn’t take the distance between us. It wasn’t much distance, a few inches, but I couldn’t bear it. “Truce,” I said. This was a whole different kind of truce, my favorite kind, the get over here kind.
A smile touched her lips, which told me she knew exactly what I meant, before she closed the distance and pressed her lips to my lips. I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her in close.
This was it. Right here. In some ways, even after I’d made it the beach on the night I’d almost drowned, in some ways it still felt like a part of me was still lost at sea, treading water, fight for my life. But this right here, this woman, was my shore.