Split by Swati Avasthi Read Free Book Online Page B

get you. JW
    I read it over and over again. I hadn’t known I was going to write that I’d get her. I wonder if Christian would come with me. We’re older now. We could protect her together. We could get her out.
    I don’t send the e-mail. How can I drive back if I don’t have any money for gas? How do I know what Christian wants? Hell, I don’t even know if he wants me here.
    I lean back in his office chair and realize that it swivels. I press my toes into the carpet and push off. Three-quarters of the way around. Push and whirl. The screen saver appears, and I watch a line zooming around in unpredictable patterns.
    Why didn’t I drag her into the car? Why didn’t I grab her wrist and yank her through the damn window? Why didn’t she get in on her own? She could have.
    I push and whirl, thinking about that. I spin and spin until my stomach rises, and I flush hot. Too dizzy. I push away from the computer and put my head in my hands until the floor stops spinning.
    I thought she stayed because we had nowhere to go, but the night I left I was sitting in my car, my speedometer’s needle pointing to zero. While I was wondering who would take me in, she came out and handed me an envelope. Christian’s address.
    In the missing letter, had he begged her to come? Had he told her she couldn’t, that he wouldn’t help her? No, when I arrived, he looked down the hall for her. Has he been waiting for her, year after year?
    I look at my e-mail again.
When?
    If I send it, she might refuse to come. She might admit that she’ll never leave him. I delete my threat to come get her, replace it with:
I need to hear from you ASAP, or I’ll send the police over to the house, report you missing, whatever it takes.
    That ought to do it.

chapter 6
    i ’m practicing why-Christian-should-let-me-stay arguments. The “I’m so desperate” plea seems less than persuasive. I’m going to have to rely on familial affection. There’s got to be some of that, right? Christian taught me how to ride my bike when I was four, how to read when I was six, how to throw a punch when I was seven. It can’t just vanish. It hasn’t for me. I’m still hoping for that reception where he’s as happy to see me as I was to see him.
    When Christian walks in, he looks me over and chuckles. I remember my too-big clothes and say, “I had to borrow some clothes, okay?”
    “I can see that,” he says, and tosses a brown paper bag at me.
    It has a bagel with cream cheese, that is marred by long green stringy things.
    “So finish eating, and we’ll go shopping.”
    I take a breath and then fess up straight and fast. “I don’t have any money.”
    “Right.”
    His eyes glaze over while his brain goes into problem-solving mode. I bite into the bagel and wish I could extract the spinach from the cream cheese while I watch him thinking. He inhales sharply. Ding! Solution found.
    He walks to his desk and takes out a green American Express card from a drawer. He peels the sticker off the back of the card, gets a pen, and signs his name on the white strip. He doesn’t hesitate. Christian Marshall.
    Jace Marshall. That’s going to be weird. Whether I stay or not, I’m now Jace Marshall. Leave all that Witherspoon crap behind.
    “Well, clothes first, job next, okay?”
    “Sure, okay,” I say, but I don’t move, not even as he gets his jacket and his keys.
    Listen , I want to say, I’ve just been killing myself in this desert, sweating out every drop of liquid in my body, trying not to think about this conversation. Can we just get it over with? But I can’t demand more. That’s the problem of living off charity. Or rather, driving the charitable into debt.
    “What?” he asks.
    “Nothing.”
    He snaps the card down on the coffee table, sits on the couch, and lifts an eyebrow.
    “I just want to know if I’m staying here,” I say. “You know, so I know what to buy.”
    “You can stay if you’d like—”
    “If I’d like?”
    “As long as we