Chasing Impossible (Pushing the Limits, #5)(101)

I turn the knob and begin to wonder about things I should have thought of before stuffing myself with several servings of turkey and potatoes and pie. For instance, clothes. I need clothes and personal products and maybe a few things to make me feel like this place might be a...

...a home.

The light is already on in the room and staring right back at me are easily a hundred different stuffed animals. The ones my Grams gave me. The ones Denny gave me. The ones my father brought home to me. My eyes burn and my throat swells as I cross the room and lift the worn white stuffed bunny my father gave to me when I was smaller.

After Grams had washed me up, blow-dried my hair, and tucked me into bed, my father entered, crouching down so that we were eye to eye. “Mom says you’re scared of the dark.”

I had gripped the edge of the covers. “Not of the dark.” Never the dark. “She comes in my dreams and she takes me away from you.” A woman in black. A woman who looked a lot like the woman who gave birth to me.

The stuffed bunny magically appeared from behind his back. “This bunny, he’ll keep you safe when I’m not around. He’ll scare away anything in your dreams and me, I can scare away anything in the waking world.”

Like I did that night, I hug the white bunny to me and my lower lip trembles. “I love you, Daddy.” And then my heart breaks a little more when I realize I’ll never see Grams again, that I’ll never return to my small tucked-away bedroom at the end of the hall. That I’ll never stand in her doorway and count her breaths. That she’ll never brush my hair again, that I’ll never read aloud to her at three.

I realize my Grams is dead and that my father will never return home.

I sink to the floor, lower my head into the bunny and I cry.

*

All cried out and trying to find a way to leave without admitting I cried, I jump when there’s a knock on the door. It’s weird to say, “Come in,” because it’s weird to think I have permission to say this as if I live here, but I guess I do live here now and it’s time to own it.

Rachel pokes her head in and she reminds me a bit of her mom with the hesitant grin. How many times has Mrs. Young stuck her head into Rachel’s room to gauge what the two of us were doing behind closed doors?

“Are you okay?” Rachel asks.

A glance in the oversize mirror over the dresser confirms the answer is no. My eyes are red and swollen and it’s even stranger that I don’t care that Rachel knows I have the ability to cry. She already saw it once, at Grams’s funeral.

I wave the stuffed bunny at her. “I found these and...” Just and.

Rachel enters and closes the door behind her. “You can thank West for that. The moment we walked in your room and saw those, he was a madman putting them in boxes.”

My friends packed the house for me before Grams died. Sold most everything so we would have money to put her in a decent nursing home and kept only a few things of Grams’s for me. It’s strange I never thought about my room. After I was arrested, that all seemed lost.

I move over on the bed, a nonverbal cue for Rachel to join me and she does. She picks up a pink sheep and messes with the ears. “Are you okay living here? I was so excited to think of you being here with me that I never thought that maybe you wouldn’t want to be here.”

“I want to,” I rush out. “Are you kidding? Who wouldn’t want to live here? And I’m here with you and Ethan. West and Isaiah will be around a ton and you have food. I’m freaking Orphan Annie and I love it here.”

Rachel watches me as she waits for the “but” to my statement and it’s an intense stare.

I suck in a breath and say, “But I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“Messing it up. What if I try and I fail? What if I go down this legit route and find out I suck at it?” What if all I am good at is being a drug dealer?

“We all suck at it, Abby. We just lean a little bit more on each other on the bad days and laugh together on the good ones. Today—I hope—is a good day.”

My heart beats hard at the thought of failing, but then lifts at the idea of having people who will catch me on the days I fall. I will fall and they will catch me. I have faith in that.

Logan was right, faith is believing in what you can’t always see and I don’t have to be constantly looking at the people in this house to know I’m in good hands. “Today is definitely a good day.”

A rattle of a cage and my head whips to the other side of the room. Adrenaline races through my veins and I shoot off the bed. “You brought my bunny here?”

“Logan did,” Rachel says I lift the massive fur ball into my arms. “This morning. He wanted Thumper to be here to greet you.”

Another knock on the door, and in slips Mrs. Young. “You have many nice-looking young men wondering where you two are at.”

I clear my throat and stroke Thumper. “Thank you for this. For all of this.”

“I hope you don’t mind,” Mrs. Young says. “I went ahead and bought you a few new things and then I thought we could go shopping for more next week. You, me and Rachel. It will be fun.”

I can’t help but smile when Rachel groans.

“That sounds great.” Because even though that sounds like hell for Rachel, shopping with my best friend and her mom really might be fun. Malls—I think I can do malls, without being there to complete a deal.