Runaway: Love Across Canada Series, #3

By Cheryl Terra

"Guess I'm going to Vancouver now."

 

"What? Why?"

 

"'Cause if I don't, you're gonna get yourself in trouble. Then I'm gonna have to hear some sad news story about a pretty small-town girl named Lacey Stephens who ended up dead in a ditch somewhere."

 

After the boy she's crushed on for years plays a cruel prank, Lacey Stephens ends up stranded in Winnipeg with nothing but what's in her backpack. In a moment of recklessness she doesn't realize will change her life forever, Lacey boards a train headed west to find the brother she hasn't seen since their religious father kicked him out of their house ten years ago.

 

But when trouble finds her first and she's saved by a tall, stoic man with dark eyes, a tight smile, and a good heart, Lacey starts to realize the life she had in her small, northern town was anything but normal... or safe. Determined to break free, Lacey contends with her family, her surroundings, and feelings she didn't know were possible. 

 

Part coming-of-age story, part love letter to Canada, part steamy romance, Runaway follows the twists and turns of Lacey's journey, with plenty of steamy stops along the way. 

 

This feel-good romance deals with themes of religious trauma and toxic family relationships. Runaway is part of the Love Across Canada series, a four-book series of interconnected standalones about three different couples. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bang It Out Writing
• Release date: Jun 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393729051

Cheryl Terra

Cheryl Terra writes romantic and adult fiction with drama, sass, and a whole lot of... spice. Emotional and humorous, her books focus on contemporary relationships, inclusive characters, and happily ever afters. Living with her husband in northern Alberta, Canada, Cheryl relies on the heat between her quirky and memorable characters to help keep the gas bill down in the winter. For more information and to get free books, visit Cheryl’s website at cherylterra.com

Book preview

Chapter One

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The first red flag should have been that Roger said he would meet me in Winnipeg.

I have an interview the day before, so I’ll go down early and we can meet there.

The second was the tickets.

I’ll get them on the way to Montreal. You get them on the way back.

The third was that he wouldn’t pick up his phone when I tried calling him to say I was on the bus.

Four and five were the text messages he didn’t respond to.

Six was the unanswered call when I got to the train station.

The seventh was a photo message from Kristen of Roger.

With his friends.

At the Timmy’s back home.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news—that was a lie, she was probably giddy with glee about it—but they’re bragging about tricking you into thinking Roger was going to take you to Montreal.

I tried calling Roger again but got his voicemail. Seconds later, another message from Kristen.

Did you try calling him? They’re laughing. I’m so sorry, Lacey.

I didn’t respond, opting instead to text Roger.

Ha, ha. You got me. I bit my lip as I struggled to find the right words. Why?

He didn’t text back right away, and neither did Kristen. When he finally did, my heart settled somewhere in the area of my small intestine.

Srsly? Cant believe u fell for it. Just wanted to fuk u, but ur such a fukn goodie 2 shoes. Sry not sry LOL

A picture of him and his friends inside the Timmy’s accompanied it, all of them flipping off the camera.

I learned a lot about myself that summer. One being that I was entirely capable of sitting on a bench in a train station, frozen in indecision.

A lot of things kept me from moving. Embarrassment. The aforementioned indecisiveness. Betrayal. Take your pick. But there I was, the very picture of a trope. The naïve small-town girl, backpack clutched to her chest as she perched on the edge of the metal bench, staring at a brick wall as fear and anger and sadness paralyzed her.

The world passed around me. Screaming children scampered by with their families. Old men held their wives’ hands as they escorted them to the platform. College students, people my age, plotted how they would sneak alcohol and weed onto the train.

And still I sat.

Could I have been reasonable and bought a bus ticket, hanging my head in shame as I returned home? Yes, but something sinful wouldn’t let me. I had very little pride as it was, but what was left was gone. The entire thing was my fault. I had trusted Roger. Forgiven him. Turned the other cheek and, in doing so, had looked away from the obvious mistake I was making.

We grew up in the same nameless small town, the kind that’s nothing more than a blip on a map. There are plenty of them scattered across Canada, all the same, but all different. Ours was a few hours north of Winnipeg, Manitoba, far enough that going to the city was more than a day trip, but close enough that a bus ran regularly.

Roger Swift was a king in that town. He was a hockey boy, of course, like all desirable males are in any small Canadian town. Tall, with broad shoulders and shaggy blond hair, his nose only a little crooked from an errant puck, he played center for the junior hockey team three towns over. Roger’s chief claim to fame was that he had nearly been drafted into the NHL.

He hadn’t made the cut, but he came closer than most and that meant he was the kind of hometown hero who could do no wrong.

Somewhere, in a perfect universe that only exists in wholesomely sweet romantic comedies, Roger and I would have been high school sweethearts. At twenty, we would have gotten married, and by twenty—the age we were that summer—we would have had one or two tiny blessings bouncing on our hips. Life would consist of social gatherings at the church, charity events and potlucks and hockey tournaments on the weekends while we worked on a third or fourth tiny little blessing every night.

The preacher’s daughter and the handsome jock are supposed to end up together. At least, they do in hockey towns where cheerleaders aren’t a thing.

It only works if the preacher’s daughter meets certain expected standards, though. You know, the preacher’s daughter you pictured when I said I was a preacher’s daughter. Perfectly beautiful, with glowing skin and bouncy curls. Chastely innocent in the eyes of the community, her father, and her Father, but willing to exploit God’s Loophole since it would mean she’s technically still a virgin.

I was not that kind of preacher’s daughter, because my father was not that kind of preacher. When people asked what religion I was, I simply said Christian. There was no point in explaining the way the denomination had split off into branches that formed into sects that became the little church my family was a part of. Like my town, it didn’t matter. It was better to be nameless.

I was not the preacher’s daughter that smiled innocently as she stood beside her family at church but flashed her panties at the boys when her father wasn’t looking. No, I was the preacher’s daughter who was still living in her childhood bedroom at twenty-two, at least during holidays away from her private all-girls college. The one who unironically wore a golden cross around her neck at all times and who didn’t wear anything more than lip gloss for makeup.

The one who had never so much as held hands with a boy.

I was the type of preacher’s daughter who argued the Loophole was void, since sodomy was a sin as well. Or, well, it was supposed to be. Despite what my father taught in his church, I wasn’t sure why sodomy was that sinful, at least in comparison to the other multitudes of sins there were. And even though I argued the Loophole wasn’t actually a loophole, I didn’t think anyone was going to Hell for having sex before marriage. It’s just that most people believe you’re the type of preacher’s daughter who’s saving herself for marriage when you argue theology with them… even if you’re not.

Not intentionally.

Not that I’d ever admit that to my father, but it didn’t matter. No one aims to corrupt the sweet, naïve virgin when that virgin looks as plain as I did. Sweet, naïve virgins are supposed to have rosy cheeks and thick lips that are just a little too sultry. They have breasts that make those modest blouses pull just a little too much. They’re not supposed to be gangly, freckled girls with eyes like a frog, a stutter she’d never quite fully gotten over, and hair straighter than a church pew.

All of that meant that even with my willingness to push the book a little on the whole sex before marriage thing, no one was asking me to do so.

It wasn’t the first time I’d pushed the book when it came to my father’s religion. Growing up, I was friends with a young girl named Delilah, who lived down the street. Delilah’s family was religious, but they didn’t go to our church. Mom said they were Catholics, which apparently meant they were the wrong type of Christians.

I was fascinated with Delilah and Catholics. She would tell me about their services, which seemed to feature a lot less yelling and condemning than my father’s did, and about things like the saints.

I’d made the mistake of telling my father about Delilah one day. She had taught me about the saints—well, about some of them, since there were so many saints—and I’d been excited to tell him what I’d learned. I thought he would be proud of me for discovering something so interesting about God’s ways all by myself.

Instead, he forbade me from seeing Delilah, cursing her family for corrupting my innocent mind with talk of prophets of evil, which is when I learned that saints were apparently false idols.

I never told him, but I asked Delilah to teach me about the saints at school. My father wouldn’t know, I reasoned, and I couldn’t understand why her version of church was evil, but my version of church wasn’t. Delilah was happy to bring books and stories to me each day. I learned the prayer of Saint Francis. And that Saint Valentine was the patron saint of love but also of beekeepers. I memorized trivial details about even the most obscure of saints, like Saint Blaise, whom I prayed to whenever we had to take our cat to the vet.

I didn’t understand why saints were bad. What could be wrong with asking a particularly holy person for their support in asking God for help? My father said no, but I thought God would understand why I wanted to learn more about them.

I hoped He would forgive me for disobeying.

Because I was. Going against my father’s word was a sin. One must honour their mother and father, it’s in the Bible.

The Bible doesn’t tell you what to do when your father tells his son he’s doomed for eternity, though, and that if you so much as say Sean’s name after he’s left home forever, you cause a fight that would be right at home in Revelation. Your father will say it says to stone sinners, but it also says to love each other and that murder is a sin.

It also doesn’t tell you what to do when you start to question what you’ve been taught. There’s no guideline for finding out the other girls at your religious college think your beliefs are fanatical, even for Christians. It doesn’t tell you what to do when you’re too scared to stand up to your parents. It doesn’t tell you what to do when you miss your brother every day.

It just tells you to honour thy father and thy mother.

I’m getting ahead of myself. I was talking about Roger, who was the catalyst in this whole God-forsaken situation.

The point is this: the hockey heartthrob does not end up with the preacher’s daughter who has average-sized breasts, a turned-up nose, and freckles covering every inch of skin. I was stupid to believe, at any time in my life, that Roger Swift had any interest in me. I was stupid to have a huge, dumb, ridiculous crush on a boy who was as mean to me as Roger was.

He’d been horrible to me as we grew up. More than once, he’d stolen my notebooks or dumped my backpack into a snowbank. More than once, I’d turned the other cheek and forgiven him. More than once, I believed him when he said he had changed.

The most recent time had been a month earlier.

It was just after I’d graduated from university and returned home. Kristen was back, too—a girl I’d gone to elementary, junior high, high school, and college with. I suppose we were friends, but it was a friendship of convenience. Aside from living in the same town and having religious families, we weren’t all that similar.

Still, we were going to lunch that day. Convenience is a powerful motivator.

Shortly after we ordered, Roger walked into Tim Horton’s with two of his friends. I wasn’t paying attention, so Kristen nudged me in the ribs.

Look who it is.

Roger and his friends seemed to be having a similar conversation. Our eyes met across the coffee shop as he glanced back over.

Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t for his face to light up.

Lacey Stephens! he exclaimed, bounding over to us. Oh, and Kristen, how are you?

Fine, she said coldly.

Before I knew what was happening, Roger had wrapped his muscled arms around me. As quickly as the hug had started, it ended, and he stepped back with a hand still resting on my arm.

Shit, Lacey, look at you. It’s been ages. You look great.

Kristen scoffed, but I was flattered. Thanks, Roger. It’s good to see you.

You... wow. A lopsided grin spread across his face. You girls having lunch? Mind if me and the boys join ya?

Kristen minded, but the Bible says to love thy neighbour.

After lunch, she went home, but I stayed at the Timmy’s with Roger and his friends for another couple of hours.

Then the next day, we’d met for lunch, but without his friends.

It was the fifth or sixth time that we’d met for lunch when he planted the idea in my head.

If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?

Oh, I couldn’t go anywhere right now.

If nothing was standing in your way. Not money or commitments or anything. What would you do?

I thought about it for a moment. I don’t know. I’ve never been any further than Winnipeg.

Roger raised his eyebrows. Never?

A blush was creeping up my cheeks. Nope.

Never even to, I dunno, like... like Saskatchewan?

I shook my head, embarrassed.

Roger studied me, intense blue eyes focused on my face before reaching across the table and putting his hand on top of mine. My heart stuttered at the sudden warmth of his fingers.

Let’s go on a trip. You and me.

You...

Uh huh.

...and me?

Roger grinned. Yeah. Let’s go to... I dunno, Montreal.

I stared at his hand, resting on mine in the most distracting way. How would we even get there?

We could take the train.

We decided to spend the Canada Day long weekend in Montreal. With all the stops and train switches, it would take about three days to get there, so we planned to leave on the twenty-sixth of June. That left me with a few short weeks to figure out how I was going to tell my parents I was not only travelling out of the province for the first time, but would be travelling with a boy.

And that the boy was Roger Swift.

I was not nervous without reason. The last time one of his children had done something he deemed a sin, my father had disowned them.

It had been a Sunday like any other, mid-winter and bitterly cold. Dad always went to the parish separately to get ready for the morning service, so Mom brought Sean and I later. I played the piano for the church choir, so when we arrived, Sean and Mom headed to the pews while I made my way to the front.

It wasn’t a large church. The building was old, made from wood and prayers, and had just enough space at the front for a small choir and an upright piano alongside the altar. A single step led up to a platform so my father could look over the crowd, and no sound system: a room that small had no need for it.

From where I sat at the piano, I saw everything.

I saw a boy I didn’t know very well give Sean a hymn book.

I saw Sean grip the book through most of the service, only to tuck it behind another book when he had to get up for communion.

Mom returned from communion first. Whether she took his book on purpose or grabbed one without checking, I would never know.

She had already started singing when Sean returned to the pew, so when she saw whatever she saw in that book, a high-pitched note squeaked sharply from her throat. Sean’s face fell, turning as pale as I’d ever seen someone turn, before flushing red from the base of his neck to the tips of his ears.

Why my father came to check on her, I would never know either. In my memories, Mom tried to close the book and hide it, but he caught her wrist before she could. I didn’t know if that was what happened, or if she handed the book to my father willingly.

What I do know is that his face turned the same shade as Sean’s, but his eyes were filled with a rage that I’d never thought possible.

We left the service with Mom after it finished, forgoing our usual receiving line aside my father. She drove recklessly across town, tires skidding along the ice before parking haphazardly on the driveway. Sean’s eyes were swollen and red, tears trickling down his face, and no one spoke a word.

He was home just long enough to throw some necessities into a bag.

What’s going on? I asked desperately, but neither he nor Mom would answer. Sean, what happened? Why are you crying? Mom, why is he packing?

He’s packing because he’s a sinner.

I hadn’t heard my father come home and jumped as his voice floated up the stairs.

Lacey, go to your room.

But—

Go to your room and stay there until I say you can come out.

I should have defended my brother. Instead, I cowered in my room as they shouted at each other, hurling disgusting words back and forth. I prayed, begging God for help, begging Him to make the shouting stop. The whole time, I flipped frantically through my Bible, trying to find the part that said Sean couldn’t live with us if he was gay. The pages tore as I read, teardrops staining the delicate paper as my father and my brother screamed at each other.

The house grew suddenly quiet, broken only by the loud slam of a door. I rushed to my window and watched Sean stalk down the snowy street with a backpack on his shoulder. He slipped on a patch of ice and nearly fell before catching himself on a parked car, straightened back up, and disappeared.

My father didn’t say I could come out of my room, so I sat there for the rest of the day. I watched out the window, hoping that Sean would come sliding back up the street, but he never did.

When Mom came to my room, her eyes were rimmed with red. She brought a sandwich on a plate, handing it to me.

Why? I asked.

She shook her head.

Sean was the person I looked up to more than anyone else in the world. He was my own personal hero. When Roger used to steal my backpack and dump my books into snowbanks, Sean would grab him and push him away. When the other boys jumped on him and started kicking him, he’d yell at me to run.

As kids, I didn’t understand why he was different. He would come home from school covered in bruises and scrapes, and I knew the hockey boys didn’t like him, but I thought it was because Sean always did the right thing. I didn’t know what the words they called my brother meant. When they called him fag, I didn’t understand. When they called him queer, I thought they meant he was weird.

It was only when I heard my father shout those words at him that I understood. He left that day, and I hadn’t seen him since. Left wasn’t the right word, but no one ever told me if he ran away or if they forced him to go.

I was only thirteen, still young, but old enough to know what gay was. Young enough that my parents still shaped my thinking. Old enough to question what I was being taught.

No matter what age I was, I was not brave enough to help my brother when he needed me. Instead of defending him, instead of demanding they let him come back, I ate the sandwich, stayed with my parents, and let ten years pass without trying to find my brother. Too scared to rebel, too cowardly to stand up to them, too complacent to change.

So I had a reason to be nervous. A week before I was set to leave with Roger, I mustered the courage to talk to my parents about it.

It was Sunday, and that meant my father was tired and Mom was serving roast beef for dinner. Aside from the sounds of forks scraping our plates, it was quiet, and it was only when I couldn’t stand the silence anymore that I spoke.

Mom? Dad? I’d like your blessing on something.

My father looked up. Yes, Lacey?

I squirmed a bit in my chair, staring down at the plate of beef and peas in front of me. Well, I... I wanted to go on a trip.

To where?

M-Montreal.

When?

For the long weekend.

With who?

I tried to answer quickly, but made the mistake of glancing up at my father. The