Page 60 of You are the Reason

Kinsley

Waking up to Lou-loo slobbering all over my face and Tanner standing in my bedroom is not at all how I thought my morning would go. I rub my eyes, half thinking this is all a dream.Why would Tanner be here with Lou-loo anyway?

Opening my eyes I look down into big brown ones, Lou has made herself comfortable in my lap. I count to five before lifting my eyes to the man standing at the end of my bed, could I have imagined it to be Tanner rather than Jesse?

“Pip?”

“Tanner?” The look in his eyes causes my heart rate to increase,something’s wrong.I move Lou out of my lap and I crawl towards the end of my bed. “Where is Jesse? Why –”

Tanner’s face turns hard and he runs his hand through his hair. “Jesse is in trouble, we need to go.”

‘Jesse is in trouble’the words repeat over and over in my head as I stare ahead of me. Tanner clears his throat. “I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

I watch as he pulls a pair of blue skinny jeans and a hoodie out of my drawers and tosses them onto the bed. “Throw these on and meet me downstairs. Come, Lou.”

I shimmy into my jeans, giving a little jump before doing up the zip and fastening the button. I have no idea where Jesse is, or what kind of trouble he is in, but you can bet your bottom dollar I am freaking out. I pull the hoodie over my head and throw my hair up into a messy bun.

Tanner asked me to trust him and even after everything I said and did, I do. He has never shown me any reason not to, yet I can’t help but feel nauseous at the unknown. My stomach flips as I rush down the stairs to where Tanner is waiting. He jerks his chin towards the door and without a word I follow him out and into the car.

The silence begins to eat away at me. “Tanner –” I try to gently coax something out of him, but he is too quick; he opens his eyes and straightens in his seat, putting the car into gear and pressing his foot flat to the floor. The speed gives me a hit of adrenaline, which almost makes me giggle.Time and place, Kinsley. It’s not the right time to be laughing.

“I’m trying here, Kinsley, just let me get my head on straight. Please.”

Seeing Tanner this way, so out of control and openly emotional, only heightens my feelings of anxiety. Little voices in my head are screaming at me, coming at me from different angles, all saying different things.Apologise to him. Ask him why he walked away. Tell him you regret it. Has he been in communication with Jesse this whole time? Silly silly girl.

“I’m going to need you to listen to me. You’re going to feel every emotion under the sun when you hear what I have to say, and I will give you a chance to feel them all and express them in whatever way you need to, but right now I need you to just listen and not interrupt me.” He looks across at me and I try to force a smile to acknowledge him, but it’s more a twitch of my lips if anything.

He sighs, looking back at the road ahead of us, speeding through a red light and exiting onto the freeway. “Jesse went after Lance,” he blurts out.

Hesitantly, I speak even though he told me not to. “I feel like you might need to backtrack a little, Tanner. Can you start from the beginning?”

“The day before you found me in your spare room, Jesse had told me everything.” He pauses, glancing my way. “He told me about your brother, your dad and your mum. He told me what he and Kyle found when they were kids and what happened the night Kyle passed away. I decided that if you weren’t going to tell me yourself, I would put myself in a position where you had to.” Tanner’s knuckles turn white as he tightens his grip on the steering wheel.

My body reacts on instinct to the sight of his discomfort, my hand reaches for him, longing to ease the pain he’s holding on to. As quickly as I reach out, my mind catches up to my body and I pull away again. Tanner’s fingers flex, even though he would have seen me reach for him, he doesn’t let his eyes linger from the road ahead of us.

“After that night, Jesse and I began working together. Alongside Stanley and some contacts of my own we put together a plan to take down Lance and seek out the answers Kyle went looking for originally.”

“M-My dad?” The words tumble out. I don’t care anymore. He can jam the ‘just listen and don’t talk’rule where the sun doesn’t shine.

This time Tanner reaches for me, intertwining his fingers with mine; a rush of electricity flows through our palms. He allows his thumb to caress the top of my hand and I stare up at him, pleading with my eyes for him to speak.

“Tanner, did Kyle find our dad?”

“He did.”

Those two words dismantle everything I had known to be true, whilst at the same time they confirm all that I had hoped for.My dad was alive. If hewasalive then, could he be alive now?My body begins to shake uncontrollably, the sound of my teeth chattering is all I can hear as I feel myself beginning to spiral. I need to pull myself out before I end up somewhere else. Lately these panic attacks have been turning into dissociations and right now, in a moving car, I can’t let that happen. Closing my eyes, I turn my focus to my left hand, squeezing tightly the pressure of my nails burn before finally the splitting of skin is what brings my hearing back. Opening my palm I see four little crescent shaped imprints; a night sky, each moon sparkling with shooting crimson stars.

Tanner continues to hold my other hand tight and we sit in our own thoughts for the remainder of the drive. After roughly half an hour, we are driving into bush land, the bitumen disappears behind us and dust from the dirt road stirs underneath the tyres.

At the sight of Jesse’s ute, I un-click my belt and scramble out of the car before Tanner can even put it into park. The passenger side door is open and the first aid kit is thrown all over the place. My heart threatens to launch out of my rib cage but the intense tightening of my chest holds it all in place. Blood is smeared on numerous wrappers of bandages and gauzes and a trail of blood has been left in the dirt. I spot Jesse’s hoodie which has been left hanging on the side view mirror of the driver’s door and I pull it against my chest. The warm damp crimson colour leeches into my clothes, I breathe in his familiar scent and panic overwhelms me. I drop to my knees.Where is he?I dart my eyes around, searching for any sign of him as my fingers intertwine in the hair at the base of my neck; fisting my hands I pull, the sting of hairs ripping from my head keeps me here in the present. I can’t afford to lose myself right now.Jesse needs you, Kinsley.

Looking at Tanner, my eyes plead for him to find Jesse, he holds my eye contact briefly before he continues to pace up and down. He’s talking into an earpiece, from what I understand it allows him to contact Jesse. My stomach sinks with each frustrated grunt he makes. The only assumption is that he isn’t having any luck.

Chapter Forty-One

Jesse

I wince as Warren’s left hand reaches across, pressing down firmly on my chest.

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