Because You Loved Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

driveway. “Hysterical” during the two-hour ride home, she said later.
    “I couldn’t stop crying the whole way home. I didn’t know what to do with myself.”
    From that day on, because Billy didn’t have a license or a car then, Nicole and Billy rarely saw each other. But now he had his own vehicle. When he arrived the previous Friday, it was a surprise to Nicole. As far as Jeanne and Chris knew, Billy hadn’t told Nicole he had gotten his license or a car. Now, though, the surprise was over. Billy was leaving. There was nothing they could do about it. Rules were rules. Nicole was a minor. “I knew the cops would be at my door in two days,” Billy said later, “if I just took off with Nicole and brought her to Connecticut…. The way we saw it is, we could be married on the side of the street in a cardboard box with no clothes and no food and we’d be happy.”
    As they sat at the 7-Eleven and talked over their options, Billy said at one point, “If I have to drive back home to Connecticut without you, I will steer my car into an oncoming truck.”
    “He was saying,” Nicole speculated later, “that there’d be tears in his eyes and his vision would be blurry and he didn’t think he’d be able to see straight.”
    “You’ll be OK, Billy,” Nicole assured him. “I’m so sorry you have to leave without me.”
    “They say you’re never supposed to drive when you’re angry or upset,” answered Billy, “because you’re more likely to drive faster, recklessly. If you’re not with me, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
    Peer pressure. Nicole seemed addicted to it lately.
    Nicole stared out the window and cried. She couldn’t “fathom the thought” of ever losing Billy like that. Billy started the car and took off, out from the parking lot. He drove down Amherst Street for about a mile, turned around and headed back to 7-Eleven. The night, like their lives, was going round in circles.
    “Vermont, Billy. What about our plan to take off to Vermont?” They had discussed running away. At one point, they even went to one of Nashua’s libraries, looked up directions to upstate Vermont and Niagara Falls, “or,” as Billy put it, “somewhere to get the hell out of there.”
    Billy looked at Nicole. “Vermont, huh?”
    “I hate that house,” said Nicole. “Hate it with a passion. Park over there,” Nicole added, pointing to a space on the side of the 7-Eleven building near Deerwood Drive. From the parking lot of 7-Eleven, they had a clear view of the back of Jeanne’s house.
    As Billy and Nicole sat and talked, a Nashua police officer pulled in. There were plenty of No Loitering signs up around the outside of the store. Nicole had grown up in the neighborhood. She knew how oppressive and protective cops were of the store because of the problems with kids in the neighborhood.
    The officer got out of his car and walked toward the 7-Eleven.
    “Shit,” said Billy. “He’s staring at us.”
    So, Billy and Nicole got out of Billy’s car and walked into the store.
    “That’s a sign,” Billy whispered to Nicole. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
    Nicole continued crying. “A sign. Huh!”
    “Maybe we should leave?” said Billy.
    “Yeah.”
    As Billy pulled out of the parking lot after they left the store, the officer got into his cruiser.
    When Billy left, the officer followed him.
    Billy took a right into the parking lot of Bruster’s just down the road. As he did, either the cop got a call or just gave up on the fact that they hadn’t done anything illegal, because he drove by.
    “Let’s go back to 7-Eleven,” Billy suggested, making a U-turn in the parking lot of Bruster’s.
    “OK,” said Nicole. “Go.”

C HAPTER 8
     
    As Chris McGowan pulled into Jeanne’s driveway after leaving 7-Eleven, he noticed the family Shih Tzu, Buster, out in the backyard on his leash. Jeanne probably tied Buster outside as soon as she got home from work so he could “do his thing.” Buster was