Page 23 of Sac-rifice (RBMC: Cleveland, Ohio Chapter #7)
I don’t know what I expected him to be like now that he was older, but I figured he would be vastly different than when we were kids. Yet, here we were, and he was still him—bossier and with a shorter fuse but still him. He was still my Shane, but the adult version, I guess.
Lightly resting his hand on my shoulder, he said, “Hey, I’m trying okay? Even after all these years, you still drive me crazy. I don’t censor myself; I’m used to being around my brothers. We say fuck a lot, and somebody threatens to kill somebody else at least daily.”
“You shouldn’t be anything other than unapologetically you. If someone doesn’t like you…Oh well.” I shrugged, finally deciding I agreed with Auntie Rach. I didn’t want to be anyone but me.
“This is me.” He breathed deeply. “Why in the fuck did you hide your phone, Cor?” He squeezed my shoulder to add emphasis. Actually, I don’t know why he did it, but he did. His fingers thrummed impatiently on my back.
“Erm. I got another sketchy text.”
“Give me your phone,” he demanded as soon as the words had left my mouth. Opening his hand, he held it out in front of me.
There was no use fighting this. It wasn’t like running away from him was an option.
Wanting to be near him while still hanging onto my grudge made me a hypocrite.
I wasn’t blind to that fact. I understood what I was, but I was owning it.
I didn’t have any other choice. I wasn’t remotely close to being ready to walk down the aisle in a puffy white dress for him or anything, but I didn’t want him to die either.
That was where I was with Shane. I’d spent a lot of time on my own, and it wasn’t always easy, not that being with someone was either.
“Fine.” I pulled my phone out and smacked it into his palm.
He didn’t need me to get to the text this time. Apparently, I was in such a hurry to hide the message, worrying that Shane would see it, that I didn’t take the time to close it. When he looked at my phone, the message was front and center for him to see.
“’You can run off in the sunset with that asshole, but he can’t save you.
’ I always have, why would I stop now?” He was serious, but his tone was harsh as he repeated the words he’d read from the text.
The message didn’t frighten him like it did me.
It made him something beyond livid. “Fuck this. I’m not all about these pussyfooting passive-aggressive scare tactics,” he fumed, looking at the phone.
“Let’s just get back on the road.”
“No. I’m handling this.”
“Huh?” I questioned him, more than a little confused. I didn’t know who the sender was, and I highly doubted he did, either.
His finger clicked the number, and he hit call. Why hadn’t I thought to do that? I felt a little dumb for not dialing the number myself. Then again, I was so sure it was Shane…I never considered calling the culprit; I went straight to what I believed was the source.
Shane put the call on speaker, and it rang a few times, before the ringing was replaced with the sound of something rustling around in the background. Someone connected the call on the other end but didn’t say anything.
“I know you can hear me, you fucking coward,” Shane spoke in an eerily calm voice into the phone which he held about a foot away from his mouth.
“If you are smart, which I highly doubt that you are, you’ll take my friendly advice.
” He sucked on his lips and released them with a popping sound.
“Leave her alone. She’s mine.” He ended the call, slowly placed my phone on my lap, and then hauled off and punched the steering wheel as he said a string of cuss words.
My eyes must have been the size of saucers. I clamped my mouth closed, not sure what to do or say exactly. My first instinct was to correct him. I didn’t belong to him, but I didn’t not belong to him either.
“Want to talk about it?” I finally broke the silence a few minutes after we were back on the road.
“Not even a little bit,” he said honestly.
There were a lot of things I had called him in our lives—a big number of them were horrible—but liar never came out of my mouth when describing him.
That was me. The funny thing, though, I didn’t typically lie to anyone else.
But most people didn’t care enough to ask the hard questions.
Shane did. The first impression got of Shane was that he was a people pleaser, and to an extent that might have been true, but more than that, he was so authentically himself.
He had a firm grip on the wheel, holding onto it so tightly that his knuckles were white from the death grip he was using.
“Are you imagining my steering wheel is someone’s neck?” I asked him, feeling the need to make small talk in the uncomfortable silence.
“Huh?” His eyes flicked to his hands, and he laughed. “I wasn’t, but now I am.”
“Great,” I half-heartedly joked, reaching for one of his hands and linking our fingers together.
I wasn’t completely heartless. We both needed a friend right now, and I owed him this much.
At this moment, I chose to remember all the times when he had been strong enough for the both of us.
Images of the countless times I climbed over his windowsill filled my mind, and I was thankful for the way he protectively held me in his arms. I wasn’t sure if he realized how incredibly close I was to giving up and ending it all during some of those times.
The only thing that kept me hanging on to a thread of hope in the darkest times in my life was him.
“Thank you for protecting me.” I said quietly, afraid that if I gave the statement the volume it deserved, it would shed light on where my mind had been.
“Thank you for letting me,” he replied, making small circles on the back of my hand with his thumb. More than likely, he thought I was talking about right now, which I was, but even more than that, I was thanking him for all of the times he had been my safe haven.