Dear Cassie Part 29

"Scared," I said, the word coming out shaky.

His eyes flicked to mine. "That's not you," he said. Then he walked out of the gate and away from me.

I guess this really was the end.

I sat there and told myself I wouldn't do anything until someone else came to the gate. Made a weird game of staying put. It was a good excuse, but the truth was my body hurt too much to move. It was the ache I'd felt at the clinic, multiplied exponentially, and I knew it was because I'd lost something I wouldn't have the chance to care about-again.

After ten minutes, I finally got up and went into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face.

The bathroom was empty. Good news, considering I couldn't deny it was possible that I went in there to do more than splash cold water on my face. I felt like maybe I was going to cry.

I stared at myself in the mirror, trying to fight the sting. It had been a long time since I really looked at myself. Even at the hotel I scurried out of the bathroom after brus.h.i.+ng my hair, probably because I was afraid to. Afraid of seeing the girl I had become. I'd turned pale, thin, certainly not someone who had been in the wilderness for a month. Honestly, I looked more like someone who had been underground for thirty days.

I turned on the cold water and cupped it with my hands. So cold it hurt. I splashed it on my face, once, twice. I gulped handfuls of it. It dripped all over the front of my T-s.h.i.+rt. My wet chest burned in the air conditioning. This was the end. I might have been able to deal with that if I wasn't facing the beginning ahead of me alone.

Without Ben.

I was jolted by a male voice behind me. "What are you doing in here?"

I turned and found a policeman standing in the middle of the bathroom, hand on his holster.

My first thought: Oh s.h.i.+t, not again. My second thought: This is a women's restroom and he is a man.

My third thought: Maybe he will take me somewhere and I won't have to go home.

"Was.h.i.+ng my face," I said, indicating the running faucet, my wet skin and s.h.i.+rt.

"Didn't you hear the announcement over the loudspeakers?" he asked, glancing behind me at the still running water. I took that as a cue to turn it off.

"Announcement?" I asked.

He grimaced, which meant he wanted an answer, not a question.

"No," I said, looking up. There were no speakers in the bathroom that I could see.

"You can't be in here. The whole airport is being evacuated," he said, staring at me with cop eyes-anger with a touch of superiority.

"What?" I asked, still not understanding.

"Get moving," he said, not explaining, and waved his hand in a pushy scoot.

"Why are we being evacuated?" I asked. This was too weird. Too much like what I'd wanted so badly to come true that I couldn't even believe it.

"Less questions, more moving," he said, then added, "Don't make me tell you again," for emphasis, just like Rawe would have. I walked out into the terminal while he stayed behind in the bathroom looking for feet under stall doors.

The large hallways that lined the gates were filled with people streaming toward the exits. They weren't running but were definitely walking with purpose. It was organized chaos, people flowing out of the building, asking the same question I had with no answers. Policemen on megaphones and the overhead announcements were telling everyone to leave in an orderly fas.h.i.+on and that all their questions would be answered once they were safely outside.

Safely outside?

What was unsafe about being inside? I guess it wasn't an earthquake.

I couldn't help thinking about those alien movies my brother loved. This was what they did when the s.p.a.ce monsters came: rounded everyone up and forced them into pens like cattle. The thing was, unlike the scared and confused people around me, I didn't really care what had happened. I was glad to be doing anything other than waiting for my flight.

Other than thinking about Ben.

Aliens?

Sounds good to me.

Lab tests?

Sure thing, let me just bend over.

I followed everyone else out into the sunlight. The policemen had us line up in the parking lot like we were at school and had just had a fire drill.

Cops stood around the perimeter of the building along with TSA agents, their uniforms looking very navy and the emergency lights on their cars flas.h.i.+ng very red and blue. Two officers were stringing yellow crime scene tape over the entrances. Two more had German shepherds on leashes sniffing around the pa.s.senger drop off area. Whatever had happened, it was major.

Alien major.

I heard two businessmen talking in line behind me, b.i.t.c.hing about how they better not miss their flight because of this, something about a very important meeting with a very important client that would f.u.c.k up their very important life if they missed it. I could almost hear them sweating through their suits.

"I'm going to a.s.s rape whoever is responsible for this. I cannot miss this flight," one of them said.

The other one just said, Mmm hmmm. About as sad an agreement to someone's statement as I'd ever heard.

I was probably the only person in this whole airport who wasn't thinking what the guy behind me was thinking. Who was instead thinking the exact opposite-well, minus the a.s.s rape part.

It was possible Ben was thinking it, too, or he could have finally decided he was so done with me that he wanted to get as far away as possible. I deserved it. He'd done everything he could to make things work and all I did was push him away.

"We meet again," he said, walking up next to me.

I almost jumped, so freaked out that I had just been thinking about him and he appeared. Though I had really been thinking about him since he'd left me at the gate.

"I already said good-bye." I was trying very hard to be the old Ca.s.sie, but he'd seen the new me, the girl whose layers had been stripped away like onion skin, who kissed back, who smiled, who slept next to him under oceans of stars. Who couldn't really say good-bye.

"Not properly," he said, tapping his thumb ring against my hand. "I really didn't like the way that went down."

"So does that mean we're saying good-bye again?" I asked, not telling him to move his hand. Liking the way the metal of his ring still felt cold from the air conditioning while his skin felt hot.

"Well, maybe not," he said, still tapping his thumb ring but not taking my hand, like he was testing me. Maybe he was. There was something about the way he kept trying. There weren't many boys who could deal with my bulls.h.i.+t and still want more.

"So what are we doing?" I asked.

"Good question," he said. "I guess we'll find out." His eyes moved to the front of the airport, scanning the nodding cops and the TSA agents standing like columns on a building.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

He whispered in my ear, his breath like the heat of an oven, "This might be my doing."

"This?" I asked, looking around me: the cops, the crime scene tape, the cars with siren lights blaring, every person in the airport lined up like they were giving away free donuts.

He nodded, so imperceptibly that if it were a sports game, they would have needed a slo-mo replay to see it.

"What the f.u.c.k did you do?" I whispered. If Ben really did do this, the guy behind me was going to turn him into a drummer who might never sit down again-not comfortably, anyway.

"What I had to," he said.

I stared at him, at his brown, brown eyes, liked iced tea in the sunlight. "You didn't do this," I said, shaking my head.

"Well, not for real." He moved his lips so close to my ear I s.h.i.+vered. "But I might have kind of called in a bomb threat."

I pushed him hard, hard enough that he almost fell. "Are you f.u.c.king crazy?"

"Hey," the businessman behind me said, "the last thing we need is a riot."

His friend agreed with a more emphatic, Mmm hmmm.

I pulled Ben to the back of the line, away from everyone else. "You are," I said. "You're f.u.c.king crazy." I pushed him again.

"Yes," he said, rubbing his chest where I'd hit him. "I told you, Ca.s.sie, I'm as f.u.c.ked up as you are."

"This is beyond f.u.c.ked up," I said, my words feeling like deflating balloons coming out of my mouth, shooting and flying around his head. "Why? Why would you do this?"

"For you," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"For you," he said again, t.i.tling his head to the side like he couldn't understand why I was confused.

"That makes no sense. I don't want this." I indicated the chaos around me, the contents of a whole airport spilled out onto the parking lot and held like prisoners.

"No," he said, "but I knew I'd regret it if I let you get on that plane. And I know you're more stubborn than anyone I've ever met." He paused. "So I got creative."

"Letting a skunk into the airport wouldn't have worked this time, huh?" I asked, not breaking his gaze.

"No." He smiled. "I needed something a little more dramatic."

"You could go to jail for this for a long, long time. Longer than for whatever you didn't do to get sent to Turning Pines." I was still talking so fast, as fast as the lights seemed to be spinning on the cop cars. I tried not to stare at them, tried not to think that everything good in my life ended with the color red.

"I just didn't get caught for any of the things I've done," he said, "and today won't change that. I had my brother call it in-he owes me."

There was so much noise around us. So much happening around us, but I could only hear him, only see him.

"I want to be with you," Ben said, grabbing my forearm. "Even if it's only for another couple of hours."

I let the words fill my ears, fill my chest. Let the warmth of his hand travel from my arm to my belly. It didn't seem real.

"What are you going to do, keep calling in bomb threats so I never can fly out of here?" I asked. It was totally crazy, but it was also totally, insanely romantic. I usually hated romantic, but maybe that was because romantic was perfumey flowers and sappy love songs and lame-a.s.s teddy bears. It was never enough to put someone away for ten years.

It was never someone who was willing to put himself on the line to prove he was "unworthy" of me.

"If I have to," he said. "Or maybe I'll use the time I have left to convince you . . . or kiss you."

"You're wasting time, then," I said, my lips on his before the words were even out of my mouth. I kissed him once, gently on the lips, and pulled back like I needed to see him again to believe he was still there. There-like he always had been, and if I knew Ben, like he always would be.

He held his hand out, stretching his fingers in a way that let me know he was asking for so much more than just my hand, than just a kiss.

I knew I had to forgive myself. This was how to start. There was no better way than to do the one thing in this world that had the potential to make me happy.

I wasn't sure what choosing Ben would mean. I wasn't sure how long it would last. I wasn't sure if I would get hurt again, but for him I could try.

For me, I could try.

I took his hand. He tapped his thumb ring against the top of mine with a beat that was in his head. We walked away from the airport, away from the parking lot. I didn't know where we were going. I didn't know how long we had, but I followed him.

He is the kind of boy who makes me feel, but he can also help me forget.

The forgiveness will come.

Acknowledgments.

F irst, I want to thank the publis.h.i.+ng G.o.ds who found their way to giving me their blessing on a second book.

Then of course there are all the people who made this possible: My tireless, genius editor, Stacy Cantor Abrams, who takes my words, my vision, and gives me the tools to turn them into something amazing. She makes me look far more talented than I am.

My agent, Susan Finesman, who stands by me book after book, and who gave me some of the best advice I've ever gotten by reminding me that I can never know what the next day will bring, in life or in publis.h.i.+ng.

My publicist, Heather Riccio, who is as much friend, psychologist, drill sergeant, and ninja as publicist. Her enthusiasm for my work is infectious.

Kari Bradley and Alycia Tornetta, whose editorial notes were spot on and who were the best extra sets of eyes I could have hoped for, for Ca.s.sie.

Liz Pelletier for her editorial wisdom, unwavering leaders.h.i.+p, and the fact she admits that my work makes her cry.

My publisher-sisters at Entangled and in the Entangled Teen Mafia, some of the best women and writers I've ever met. I can't imagine this journey without you.

My Twitter and Facebook followers, who are always there to help me with a line or an idea, with a special shout-out to Jennifer Iacopelli who provided one of the main plot points in Dear Ca.s.sie.

The readers and bloggers who loved Ca.s.sie enough to think she deserved her own book and who have become my friends. Your support means everything.

Finally, to my family, for listening, letting me write, allowing me to be crazy, and keeping me sane.

Experience where Ca.s.sie's story began with PRETTY AMY Amy is fine living in the shadows of beautiful Lila and uber-cool Ca.s.sie, because at least she's somewhat beautiful and uber-cool by a.s.sociation. But when their dates stand them up for prom, and the girls take matters into their own hands-earning them a night in jail outfitted in satin, stilettos, and Spanx-Amy discovers even a prom spent in handcuffs might be better than the humiliating "rehabilitation techniques" now filling up her summer. Worse, with Lila and Ca.s.sie parentally banned, Amy feels like she has nothing-like she is nothing.