Part Nine

Caleb stood in the corner watching as Bradley slept and sighing. Maybe he should take her somewhere else, keep on moving – he knew just as well as anyone that to be "dead", you couldn't set up any roots.

Being dead was the same as having a warrant – you shouldn't set your feet down for long, couldn't rest for longer than it took you to find enough money to move to the next place. It had been a lonely life for Caleb, one he had lived since he had been in his 20's. It would be lonelier for a teenage girl, no doubt.

There were things that men like Caleb could do to get by, a lot of things. Not all of them pleasant, of course – he tried not to think of the man in the truck, tried not to remember the blood and the yelling.

For Bradley, the options must have been less… and less pleasant, still.

He needed to protect her, no matter what it took. She was small and thin and fragile and everything that Caleb didn't want broken (not now, not this time). But what could he do? He was, after all, utterly broken himself, and probably not someone who should be spending a lot of time with a teenager considering the past.

Yet, here he was.

He listened as she stirred in her sleep, curling around herself and letting out a long sigh. This was creepy, definitely – but oddly comforting; to make sure that she wasn't going to try to leave again and that she was safe.

He wondered if Norma were safe back home. If Dylan was safe. Maybe he shouldn't have rushed off, not with Chick ready to come back angrier than ever any day now.

But he had never been one to sit and think about consequences; had only ever been one to act.

And now he was here, doing it all over again. Maybe some people never really learned.


"How'd you sleep?"

"I slept… I mean… Not well. I was taking sleeping pills for a while, but I ran out. Now I can barely get an hour or two."

Caleb's lips pursed.

"You shouldn't be on sleeping pills…" he began.

He shut his eyes for just a moment, remembered his back pressing against a wooden door as he doubled over and tried not to cry.

He had loved her, even though he had tried not to. He had loved her and she had never loved him, he was sure of it, not for a second.

And he had had to live with that.

That was just the way that Frannie had been, the way she was made. He had reached out, and she had always shut him down. He hadn't understood. She was so closed up inside herself that there hadn't been any room for Caleb or Norma.

Maybe it had been his fault. A lot of things had been. Maybe she had looked inside him and seen that there was nothing really there; nothing worthy of love, at least.

Nothing worthy of love from anyone.

Norma had loved him, though – that had been her mistake, her misstep. And he had shot it all to hell. Maybe he should just tell the girl to turn around and go home, even if neither of them knew where "home" actually was.

Before he was bad for her, too. Before he hurt her, somehow, the way that he hurt everyone. The way that he drew bad things in wherever he went. He hurt people, and then he ran, leaving dust and pain in his wake. It was a wonder anyone let him come back at all.

"What are you thinking about?" Bradley asked him, and he found words difficult to come by. What should he tell her – all about his past? Maybe she deserved to know who her travel companion really was.

"A lot of things," he replied. "None of which I'm going to lay on you, though. You're just a kid… Bradley. Or whatever your name is."

She smirked.

"Bradley's dead. I don't know who I am."

"You've got a while to find out."

She snorted.

"Maybe. Or the rest of my life is just going to be more boring, horrible shit, one right after the other. I really thought Norman might come with me, too. Maybe that's where I was wrong. I let myself think that... maybe he would want to come with me."

"Norman has a lot of things to worry about," Caleb told her, trying to be as gentle as possible. "He's not entirely… right."

"And I am?" Bradley fluttered her eyelashes at him and let out a manic little giggle.

She wasn't wrong; Caleb knew that much. But what could he do?

"You don't need to be around Norman. That kid… he's a ticking time bomb. You don't want to be around once the countdown starts."

She snorted.

"I shot a man in the head once. I'm a countdown, too."

Caleb rolled his eyes.

"I am, too. Trust me. You don't even know. But let's deal with one issue at a time. Does that work for you?"

"Do you like me?"

Caleb gaped at her for a long while; it was such an odd question that he wasn't sure he had heard her properly at first. But there she was. Sitting there asking him did he like her. What was the right answer to that question?

Caleb wasn't used to the idea of liking people, whatever that entailed exactly. There were the two people in the world he loved – Norma and Dylan. And then there were those he would protect because they were in one of their orbits – Emma, of course, Gunnar and even, to his chagrin, Norman. But like? Had he liked anyone in a long, long time?

Or did he just tolerate or protect, depending on what he needed at any given time?

He wasn't answering, and it was making Bradley visibly nervous.

Caleb rocked back on his heels and sighed.

"Yeah… I guess… I guess I like you."