I Can't Help but Want You

Chapter 18

As I drove down the highway to god knows where, a tear streamed down my cheek. "Rose?" The man next to me said. I turned to Jasper, he somehow looked different now. He wasn't the little boy I knew so well anymore, he was a grown man. For some reason I felt relieved, maybe it was because leaving I thought I was going to have to be the adult and take on the responsibilities of running away. And I knew I wasn't strong enough to do that all by myself. But looking at Jasper now made me feel safe, It was like a huge load was just lifted off my shoulders. "Rose..?" He said again. I pulled over to the side of the road, my vision had become too blurry to continue driving. I kept looking at the road ahead, looking for some kind of sign anything to help ease my mind, although I knew the only thing that could was sitting right beside me. My hands that were gripping the steering wheel tightly were shaking and trembling.

Jasper wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against his chest. "Shhh," he said in almost a whisper. "Rose..." He choked on my name, like he was afraid to say what came next. "If you don't want to do this you don't have to, we could go back right now. I'm sure no one noticed that you're gone-"

"No!" I interrupted. If there was one thing I knew for sure it was that I was not going to lose Jasper again. I wrapped my arms around him. "I won't leave you! I don't care if it's hard, or if I'm scared. I will not leave you alone again!"

He let out a small chuckle, I looked up at him curiously. How could he be laughing? "How do you always know what I want to hear? How do you always make me smile without even trying?" I just continued to looked up at him. "Look at you," he wiped my tears away. "Just look at you..." He trailed off. I knew know he wasn't directly talking to me, but to himself. "I love you," he pulled me back into his chest and held me so tight it was hard for me to breath.

"I love you too," I held him just as tight. This was another moment I never wanted to let go of.

"Here I'll drive I know where we can go." We switched seats and he started to drive.

"Where are we gonna go?"

"Chicago," he said suddenly as if he had already decided this from the second we walked out the door.

"Chicago? That's so far away," I looked at him as he stared out the front window.

"Yeah but they won't find us, and it's so big that even if they did pinpoint the area we're in it'll be hard for them to find exactly where we are. Plus people there know better than to ask questions." He glanced over at me and flashed me a small smile. It made me feel easy to know he had a plan. Suddenly my eyelids started to become heavy. Jasper reached over and placed his hand over mine, our fingers intertwining. I started to smile and my vision began to fade off. The last thing I saw before sleep took over was the road ahead.

I woke up in a different car, in the parking lot of a walmart. I looked around but there was no Jasper, I started to panic. The inside of the car was old and rugged, It looked like something that popped straight out of the 80's. I looked in the back seat, there were burn holes, likely from cigarette, burnt into the seat. The only thing I could smell was the pine car freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. On the floor boards in the back were two backpacks, one mine and the others Jaspers. I let out a sigh of relief, at least I wasn't kidnapped.

I stepped out of the car to get a breath of fresh air away from the intoxicating smell of the car. The air was hot and humid outside. I hadn't even realized the excruciating heat, the car was on and the A.C. cranked all the way up. I looked around the dark parking lot, the car was parked in the very back away from all the other cars. Across the lot I saw someone walking towards me, I could scarcely see their face in the midst of the night. the only way I was even able to identify them as a person was from the street lights in the parking lot. They were caring many plastic bags that looked like they would overflow and fall apart any second.