ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE START THAT WAS CUT
I was running.
Breathe. Run. Two, three, four steps in a row. Breathe again. Five, six, seven. Breathe. Pump your elbows. Go farther. Go faster. I had to keep going. This was my escape. I had to go, as long as I could, as far as I could. I needed to go until I couldn’t breathe anymore.
Run.
Keep going.
Run more. Run faster.
Keep going.
That’s all I was thinking, over and over. It was on repeat in my mind as I sped down the wood-chipped paths behind Fallen Crest. It was beautiful. I was weaving through red pines, up a small hill that was more a mountain, and back down only to speed up another hill/mountain. To the right of me was a deep valley. I got glimpses of it as the trees thinned, but I kept going. I’d stop at the very top of the last hill and watch the sunset. Then, I’d start back home. I’d get there just as the last of the sunlight would fade.
This was my pattern and I loved it. I felt exhilarated. I’d been running this path for the last week since Mason and I returned to Fallen Crest. So much had changed. Logan wasn’t with us, which felt wrong. It was like an arm was missing, but he was staying with Taylor for the first half of the summer, remaining at Cain. Mason was home. He was working an internship at James’ company for the first half of the summer. The second half would be in Cain. He’d leave for early football training. He didn’t need to play. He could’ve gone pro after his sophomore year, but he wanted to finish out his years. He wanted to graduate with a degree. Being a football star at Cain University, and also one featured heavily on ESPN, he had to be ‘good and saintly’ off the field. I could tell it was hard on him, but he was home for the next month and a half and I knew he was more relaxed. There was less of a spotlight on him.
I did not hold the same sentiment.
Being home was not relaxing for me. Analise was back, had been for the last year and a half. We were fast approaching June. She moved back to Fallen Crest, leaving the group home where she’d been for almost two years. She returned the Christmas of our freshman year and I spent the next year and a half avoiding Fallen Crest as much as possible. I couldn’t any longer.
Mason was here. So was I.
That’s how we were. Where he went, I went. Where I went, so did he. We were together and everything had been ‘quiet’ since my freshman year, his sophomore year. No one tried breaking us up. No one tried hurting me, or hurting him. There’d been no ‘fights’ against an adversary. It’d been us, college, and stability. I loved it.
This summer was the end of peace. I could feel it in my bones, and it was part of the reason I’d been running two hours every night.
I was cresting to the top of the last hill now. My lungs were screaming, but I loved that feeling. They wanted a break. Too bad. I kept going, until every organ was yelling at me to stop. Once I got there, the last few steps until the entire town of Fallen Crest opened beneath me, I gave in and appeased my body. Stopping, my hands on my hips, I gulped in breaths.
It was beautiful. Nestled among trees and in a valley, this town had brought so much tragedy to my life, but it brought so much love as well.
Mason. Logan.
Heather.
Malinda and David.
Even Mark.
I was content. I had the family that I lost. Even a little sister, from my biological father who was now in my life again.
The only one missing was my actual mother, but she was waiting. I found the Kade mansion. It stuck out among all the other larger mansions in Fallen Crest. It was the largest. It was more a mausoleum. I remembered the first day Analise and I moved in. Things had been so different back then.
Things weren’t like that anymore.
I had family. My eyes trailed to the house down the street and across from the Kade Mansion. Malinda and David lived there, the man who raised me all my life. He wasn’t my birth father, but he was my father in every other way. And across from them was the house that Mason and Logan’s mother bought. She wasn’t there. She lived in Fallen Crest for Logan’s last year of high school, but since he went to university, she had resumed her traveling lifestyle. She’d been in Paris, a favorite of hers, and was staying there for the last six months. Malinda and David had a room for me. Their house had become my ‘home’, but I was staying at Helen’s house with Mason. It felt more like our house since it was just the two of us, and the last week had been glorious. It was like our own honeymoon. No Logan. No Nate. I loved both of them, but they lived with us at Cain University. Logan was Mason’s brother. He was family. Nate was family too, Mason’s best friend and Logan’s bar buddy, but it was still nice to have the house to ourselves. No stepmother. No dad. Mark wasn’t there. He was staying at his college for the summer as well. Just Mason and me, but even as I was thinking that, my eyes kept trailing back to the Kade Mansion.
She was there.
She being my mother. She hadn’t said much over the last year and a half. There were a few phone calls, requests to go for coffee, or dinner. Or the two times James came to Cain and all of us went for dinner. I’d been able to push her to the farthest region of my mind, but she was there. I felt her. I felt her silent begging like a plaque. She wouldn’t go away. I didn’t think she ever would go away.
Analise wanted a relationship with me.
But, feeling the old panic that always rose up in me as I let myself think about it, my hands turned into fists and I couldn’t let her in. My chest tightened. A wave of dizziness was threatening to crash over me.
I couldn’t.
There was no way.
And, still feeling her on my back, as if she were physically standing behind me, I turned and started the run back home. This time, I felt as if I were being chased. She was with me, right behind me, always watching me.
I ran harder, kicking off with more force, but the run back wasn’t as freeing as it had been before.