Leaving Paradise Read Online Free PDF Page B

me. How I wish I could rewind the past year and start over. Life doesn’t let you do that. You can’t erase the past, but I’m going to try and make other people forget it.
    I reach the park and gaze at the familiar, old oak tree I climbed when I was a kid. Drew and I once had a contest who could climb the highest. I won, right before the branch I was on snapped and I fell to the ground. I had a cast on my arm for six weeks after that fall, but I didn’t care. I’d won.
    I look up, trying to locate that broken branch. Is it still here, evidence of that day long ago? Or has the tree gone through enough seasons to erase the past?
    An intake of breath takes me by surprise as I circle the tree. Right in front of me, sitting leaning against the trunk of the old oak, is Maggie Armstrong.

six
    Maggie
    Inotice movement beside me and realize I’m not alone.
    I snap my head up. There’s a guy standing in front of me, one I recognize from my nightmares. He isn’t a figment of my imagination, either. It’s really him—Caleb Becker in the flesh, looking up as if searching for something important. A big gasping sound automatically escapes from my mouth.
    He hears me and quickly focuses on me. He doesn’t move, not even when his icy blue eyes connect with mine.
    He’s grown in the past year. He acted tough back then, but now Caleb has a menacing look about him. His hair is cut short, his shirt is unbuttoned, showing off his muscled chest. That, combined with the tight-fitting pants he’s wearing, screams danger.
    I can’t breathe. I’m paralyzed. With anger. With anxiety. With fear.
    We’re at an impasse, neither of us speaking. Just staring. I don’t even think I’m able to blink. I’m frozen in time.
    I’ve been face to face with him many times, but now everything has changed. He doesn’t even look like himself, except for his straight nose and confident stance that has been, and I suppose always will be, Caleb Becker.
    “This is awkward,” he says, breaking the long silence. His voice is deeper and darker than I remember.
    This is not just seeing him out of my bedroom window.
    We’re alone.
    And it’s dark.
    And it’s oh, so different.
    Needing to go back to the safety of my bedroom, I try to stand. A hot, shooting pain races down the side of my leg and I wince.
    I watch in horror and shock as he steps forward and grabs my elbow.
    Oh. My. God. I automatically jerk away from his grip. Memories of being stuck in a hospital bed unable to move crash through my mind as I straighten.
    “Don’t touch me,” I say.
    He holds his hands up as if I just said “Stick ’em up.” “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Maggie.”
    “Yes . . . yes I do,” I say, panicking.
    I hear him let out a breath, then he steps back. But he doesn’t leave, he just stares at me strangely. “We used to be friends.”
    “That was a long time ago,” I say. “Before you hit me.”
    “It was an accident. And I paid my debt to society for it.”
    It’s a totally surreal moment, and one I don’t want to last longer than it has to. While my insides shake from nervousness, I say, “You may have paid your debt to society, but what about your debt to me?”
    After the words leave my lips, I can’t believe I’ve said them. I turn away and limp back home without a backward glance. I don’t stop until I open the front door of my house.
    When I reach my room, I sit inside my closet and close the door like I used to do when I wanted to block out my parents’ fights. All I had to do was close my eyes and put my hands over my ears . . . and hum.
    I close my eyes. The image of Caleb, standing in front of me with those intense blue eyes of his, is branded in my brain. Even though he’s nowhere near, I can still hear his dark voice. The night of the accident, the pain I’ve suffered, my whole life changing, it all races back to haunt me.
    I start to hum.

seven
    Caleb
    I’m being tested. Jail. Mom. Leah. Dad. And now Maggie. When I left