Wounded; A Brallie Fan Fiction *EDITING*

Chapter Three: Escape

Callie's POV
Brandon and I had made it out of the house without any confrontations or any siblings smuggling food from the kitchen. Now, we walked down a quiet street blocks from the house. I wasn't sure where we were going, or why we were going anywhere, but we both knew we couldn't stay in the house.

The air was crispy and the wind was blowing in slight. I was breathing nothing but fresh air into my corrupted lungs, replenishing my shattered heart with the newness of tonight, being with Brandon.

"You know I love you too, right?" Brandon asked suddenly, his voice questionable and apathetic with meaning behind his words.

I slowed my footsteps to a stop and Brandon did the same. We stood beneath a street light, so there was a fragile yellow glow around us. When I looked into the blue of Brandon's eyes, I saw brilliancy and depth and character behind them. I took my time taking that in, packing my brain with every single part of Brandon, because I didn't want to forget.

"I know," I told him reassuringly, my voice a touch higher than usual.

Brandon nodded and took my hands into his. They fit together like two long lost pieces of a complicated puzzle, just like they always did. He looked as though he was bracing himself for something. I felt as his hands began to twitch and I watched as his lips began to quiver around the O-shape of his mouth.

He was preparing himself to tell me something, and I wanted to laugh at his nervousness. I knew Brandon loved me, and I knew he wasn't the most demonstrative of teenage boys, which meant he wasn't one to go on for hours, or even seconds about his feelings. I loved that about him; I loved how he hid in his comfort zone and turned bright red every time he dared to come out. But the point was that, right now, he was trying. He was trying for me.

But he could do it. If he could serenade me with a song that came from nobody but him, he could do this.

"I have always . . . loved you," he began nervously. His grip tightened around my hands and I stroked the backs with my thumb as I listened to his voice under the golden light. "I know that nothing about us is normal. I know our family isn't normal and the fact that we have the same family is what keeps us from being normal. But I don't care. Because, Callie, I've never . . . . I've never loved anybody like this. I've never loved somebody so much that it aches inside, even when I have every reason to be happy. I mean, I look at you, and it hurts, and still everything comes into focus, everything falls into place. But then I start to look around you, a-and I see our brothers and our sister and our parents. And then I look at you and I see how happy you are to have them. I know how long you've waited to have a family, and I'm not taking that away from you. Not now, not ever. But I miss you. So if you wanna spend the night together, then let's do it. We can make all hell break loose, we can do something stupid, we can go back to Mexico and skydive if that's what you want. We can do anything tonight. But after tonight . . . "

Brandon seemed to have said it all in one breath, he was so nervous, but he trailed off at the end. He detached himself and looked at his feet. His breathing pattern grew heavier and uneven. And then he looked up at me, and his eyes were glossy with his lips pressed into a flat line.

"After tonight, we have to move on." He finally said, and with that, the broken pieces of my heart smashed into each other and broke into little bits of what my happiness used to be. I felt myself deflate inside, something gave away, another something snapped and another something made my stomach sink with a thousand dying butterflies.

He was right. He was so right, and I knew that. I knew that before he said it, but hearing the words out loud, seeing them fall from his lips, it made it worse. Reality washed over me and didn't leave me dry, but I bit my tongue and accepted it.

I nodded, and looked into his eyes. We stood like that for a second, and then his lips crashed into mine so fast I didn't even see it coming. He put his left hand on the small of my back and pulled me so close to him we almost morphed into the same being. His right hand cupped my jawline and traveled back until his fingers were tangled in my hair. My right arm was thrown around his neck and my left hand was wrapped around the side of his face. I could feel the distance between us being eliminated by the passion burning around us.

Brandon etched his name into my lips and left traces of him on my tongue and the insides of my cheeks. This kiss had far more meaning than any of the others. It's power was collecting the pieces of my heart, and as soon as I felt his tongue slip into my mouth, the pieces smacked together and became a whole again.

Once our lips separated, we connected them back together followed by a few more shorter, softer, simpler kisses.

A smile broke across Brandon's face at the same time one did on mine, and instead of continuing down the street, we embraced each other in a well-needed hug. Nothing else. We just stood, and held ourselves so tight to each other that I almost began to cry.

"I love you," Brandon whispered.

***

Brandon texted one of his friends from Idyllwild and he gave him an address to an empty house in the neighborhood, simply because we couldn't kiss on the streets all night.

The house was a lower middle-class foundation with a picket fence around the tiny lawn and only one level. When we got inside, I found that the house was so neat I wondered if it was a model home to be photographed for a magazine.

Brandon and I shamelessly popped open a bottle of wine that we found in the back of the fridge, and cozied up on a velvet sofa in the living room.

In hours, I found myself enjoying my time with Brandon more than I ever have. We talked about simple things, with real opinions; we discussed the potential of music and old films and our favorite novels, our favorite coffee and our favorite spot on the couch at home. We talked about our past, our present, and we revealed the way we saw ourselves in the future. I told him about Liam and the way I felt about him before he raped me, and I told him about the things I used to love about Wyatt. In turn, he told me about Talya's little corks and fetishes and how that's what drew him in to her, and he talked about how he loved making music with Lou.

We were able to open ourselves up freely without any paranoia of judgement. I think it was because we knew tonight was our last chance, and, truthfully, because we had downed enough wine to get our whole family drunk.

"Do you think Moms are gonna separate?" I asked in a groggy motion, following the subject of whose Thanksgiving dinner was better, Stef's or Lena's.

Brandon then threw his head back and swallowed the last of his wine. "I think they're having problems, but everybody does. You don't think Wilma and Fred Flinstone never fought? Or Yogi Bear and Poo-Poo?"

I let out a cackled laughter as the objects in the room blurred together. My head began to spin in a blissful daze, and for a split second I forgot why I was laughing.

"Ish Boo-Boo," I slurred as I rested my head on his shoulder, laughter still trapped in the back of my throat.

Brandon laughed. "Oh, yeah!"

For a couple more minutes we laughed, until we really couldn't remember why, and then we found ourselves struggling to maintain the laughter once the drunken hiccups came crashing in.

I turned my head around on his shoulder so that I could see into his eyes, and he kissed me. A first it was just a soft peck on the lips, but then it transitioned into something much more.

We began to kiss the way we did on the street four hours ago, and we both knew where this was headed. As our lips carpeted, I pulled off my denim jacket and leaned back so that I was lying on the couch. Brandon followed, and began to pull down the strap of my tank top.

He pulled away for a second, breathing heavily and looked me in the eyes. Suddenly we were both more sober than ever.

"Let's go to the bedroom," he whispered.