Faster We Burn

while I was sleeping, and they’d written it upside down so I could read it when I woke up. I only needed one guess to figure out who had done it, but the question was how she’d done it without waking me up. That took talent.
    I know you’re being a jerk because you’re pushing me away. You should have just been a jerk from the beginning and I might have believed you last night. That’s fine. I don’t want to force myself into someone’s life. I’m off to go find myself, or some such crap like that. Call me if you want to have sex. I’m always open for that with you.
    -Katherine.
    She’d signed it with a flourish, right at the top of my chest. How the hell that had not woken me up, or at least woken my dick up was a mystery I didn’t think I would ever solve.
    I got up and went to my bedroom, but my bed was made and her things were gone. She’d even carefully folded the clothes she’d worn last night. Before I could stop myself, I reached for the shirt and inhaled her scent. Katie always smelled sweet, like frosting, or cotton candy or a lollipop. I dropped the clothes in my hamper on my way to the shower. I’d have to wash those ASAP.
     
    Katie
     
    Since Stryker didn’t want me at his place, I had no choice but to go back home. I briefly considered asking Lottie if I could crash with her, but that would have been asking too much. Lottie had bailed me out of too many situations already.
    I made it to my house at ten the next morning. After Stryker had pushed me away, I’d spent the rest of the night-slash-morning figuring out what I was going to do. So far, I didn’t have any answers, but the first step was going home and trying to make things right with my mom. Stryker had told me it was time to get my shit together, and he was right. It pissed me off that it took him saying that to me to get me to believe it for the first time in my life.
    I thought back to that night in the hospital, when I’d begged them not to press charges against Zack. If he had walked into that room and told me it was all a mistake, I would have taken him back. Realizing that made me feel sick, but I couldn’t hide from it anymore.
    I opened the front door slowly, wondering what I would find.
    “Where have you been?” Mom was in the midst of putting away the Thanksgiving stuff. Once a holiday was over, she was onto the next. I’d always hated having Christmas decorations up in November. She put her hands on her hips, bracing for another fight. Well, I wasn’t going to give her one.
    “I stayed with a friend for the night.” She didn’t need to know it was Stryker.
    “You might be over eighteen, Katie, but you still live under this roof and you can’t go running off whenever you feel like it. We were worried sick.”
    I swallowed. Yes, I’d prepared for this reaction, but it still made me feel like a shitty daughter.
    “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left. I’m sorry about everything.”
    She almost seemed shocked at my willingness to apologize. I usually put up more of a fight.
    “Katiebug!” Kayla came up from downstairs, her hand in Adam’s. She rushed to hug me. “I knew you’d come back,” she whispered in my ear. I wasn’t going to tell her that it was because I had no place to go, and not just because I wanted to make things right.
    I hugged her back and said hi to Adam.
    “Where’s Dad?”
    “He wasn’t feeling that great, so I sent him to lie down,” Mom said, folding the blanket covered in a leaf pattern over her arm and then putting it in the Thanksgiving decoration tub.
    “Hey, you want to go to the movies or something? I was thinking about showing Adam our awesome town. He’s a city boy,” Kayla said.
    “Guilty,” he said, raising his hand. “I don’t trust any place that doesn’t have public transportation.”
    “You are so weird,” Kayla said.
    “Hey, you want to marry me. I’d say that makes you the weird one.”
    She beamed at him. “True.”
    “That sounds great,” I said to interrupt their couple’s banter. Mom just watched with a smile on her face. “I’m going to put my stuff in my room.”
    I threw my purse back on my bed and saw that my trash can was empty of all the pictures that had filled it the day before. My bare walls were still a shock. I was going to have to do something about that. After changing my clothes, I tiptoed down the stairs to my parents’ bedroom. Dad was watching golf and still had his PJs on.
    “Hey, Dad.” He smiled and turned the