Craving Redemption by Nicole Jacquelyn

felt like an idiot for climbing in with Asa, but when I’d woken up in the dark my instinct had been to find him. I lay next to Gram, trying to force myself to stay put, but I couldn’t. My anxiety had built and built until I’d finally crawled out of bed and went to find him.
    Now I couldn’t see him anywhere. The house was really quiet, a big change from how crowded and noisy it had been the night before. When I sat up and started to fold the blanket I was using, I noticed two men out of the corner of my eye. They were sitting casually at the table, turned toward me, and the dark haired one I’d kicked in the face gave me a little smile.
    “Your Grandma went with Poet to get your brother from the airport,” he informed me, watching closely. Knowing that I must have looked like a basket case the day before, I met his eyes calmly and nodded nonchalantly, as if to prove that I wasn’t going to start screaming and running around the house like a lunatic.
    I’d caught some kind of second wind, and the weak little girl I’d been the day before was pushed to the back of my mind as I stood up slowly and turned my back to him. I was afraid, that feeling wasn’t going away, but somehow in my sleep I’d formed some sort of a barrier between my emotions and my actions. I wasn’t panicking. The fear was a throbbing mass in my belly, constant but controllable.
    I focused on cleaning up my sleeping area and quickly walked to Gram’s room to get dressed before I asked where Asa was. I was trying to act relaxed, but it felt like I was going to jump out of my skin. I knew Gram wouldn’t have left me alone with those guys if she didn’t trust them, but I was still uncomfortable that they’d been in the room while I slept. The longer I was awake, the more aware I was that I hadn’t seen Asa, and by the time I was dressed, I was almost in a full-blown panic. I guess I wasn’t as calm as I’d thought. I knew it wasn’t rational. I knew that I was acting like a freak, clinging to him when I barely knew him. He was probably irritated as hell that I wouldn’t leave him alone. But I couldn’t stop myself; it felt like he alone could protect me from the outside world.
    I stayed in Gram’s room for as long as I could, straightening her bedding and going through the bag I’d brought with me. Asa hadn’t packed much, but at least he’d remembered the essentials. I found my iPod at the bottom of my bag and held it to my chest, thankful that he’d thought to pack that small piece of technology. It was silly, but it felt like one piece of normalcy in my suddenly upside-down life.
    When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I took a deep breath and made my way out into the living room. The men were still sitting at the table, and I stepped as close to them as I could make myself, stopping six feet away. I battled with myself whether or not to ask where Asa was when he suddenly walked into the kitchen from the small hallway leading from the bathroom. He was fully dressed, his hair wet, and he held a towel up to his beard, rubbing it from side to side.
    I stood in silence until he noticed me, running my tongue over the cuts in my mouth to keep me from speaking. I catalogued where my braces had rubbed against my cheeks and tried to focus on remembering if I had wax in my purse or not, acting as though I wasn’t waiting for him to acknowledge me. I refused to be the one who spoke first or to run to him like I wanted to; I needed him to come to me.
    “Hey, sleeping beauty. These boys wake you up?” he asked me with a small smile, walking slowly toward where I was standing. The men at the table hadn’t noticed that I’d come out of the bedroom, and both their heads swiveled around quickly in surprise.
    “No, they didn’t wake me,” I replied, begging him silently to come closer.
    He seemed to understand what I needed, or maybe he needed it too, because he came right to me, wrapping his arms around my waist and lifting me up in a bear