Page 9 of Running from Drac

Amber

Shit! Shit! Shit!

Eddie’s at my house.

Not like waiting for me outside the door, but he’s definitely gotten inside somehow, even though he doesn’t even live with me. Did he break in? I moved the spare key from the last place we hid it because he was always letting himself in. I didn’t particularly mind, but Poppy hated the fact he just let himself in our duplex without warning. But that’s just Eddie for you. Because we’re together, he thinks this duplex is part his or something.

Right now, he lives with his dad, but every chance he gets, he’s over at my duplex, stinking up the place with his fresh oil slick stench.

His old, beat-up, Chevy pickup truck is taking up half the driveway, and already creating an oil spot on our pristine concrete.

Damn it, there goes our deposit.

We’ve only been living in the duplex for a few months, but our landlord isn’t always the nicest. She’s a crotchety old woman who only cares about money. I’ll have to work double shifts at the store next week to pay for someone to clean the spot up.

Poppy and Pippa both roll their eyes when we enter.

Eddie’s sprawled across the couch, one leg hanging over the back, the other is propped up on one of Poppy’s favorite throw pillows, a gross, once white sock with holes, greets us as we move further in. The coffee table’s cluttered with empty beer cans and open bags of food—our food. Like always, there’s a stupid football game playing silently on our television. Anytime he’s here, we never have control of the TV.

How long has he been here?

One of his hands is resting on his belly, while the other absentmindedly scratches at his crotch. There’s a Wolfpack baseball cap covering his face, backwards of course, because I’ve never seen him wear any hat straight, and he’s wearing his signature greasy overalls, which I’m sure is already staining the fabric of our couch.

Not that he cares. When you date a mechanic, you’re bound to get grease somewhere—or everywhere.

I’m not ready to face him. Not yet anyway.

I wanted some time to figure out what I was going to tell him before accepting my fate. Luckily, you can hear his snoring from underneath the hat, and not even closing the door seems to wake the bear from his noisy hibernation.

“How’d he get in here?” Pippa whispers.

“I guess he found the spare key,” I whisper back, remembering to hide it in a different place next time I decide to go out of town.

“What are you going to do?” Poppy asks quietly.

“Hide.”

They both give me a sympathetic look as I quietly retreat to my bedroom, desperate to put some distance between us before he wakes up.

I’m almost to the door, when I hear a raspy hello and feel his warm arms wrap around my waist. He spins me around and mashes his lips against mine, pinning me to his body, practically taking out a few of my teeth with his ferocious kisses.

“I missed you.” His smile is so genuine. You can tell he missed me just by the way his eyes seem to glimmer in the faint overhead light.

There’s no hiding from this now…

Like a gentleman, he opens the door for me and waits until I’m through the door, before he closes it and pushes me towards the bed—ready to make up for the last two days of us being apart.

The guilt is overwhelming. The more I look at him, the more I want to flee and run away from all of this. Unfortunately, he has me trapped between my bed and a fucked-up guilty conscience.

“I missed you too.”

I gulp as he takes my hands and presses his chapped lips against the flesh just past my knuckles. Immediately, he notices the missing silver jewelry that’s supposed to be on my finger.

“Hey, where’s your ring?”

Crap! This is really going to happen, isn’t it?

“I lost it.” At least I was being semi-honest. “I—I’m sorry. I—I looked for it everywhere.” It’s a total lie. I know exactly where I left it and there was no way I was going back for it.