Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,73
pace until I was walking in front of Taryn. “He’s a family friend?”
“He lives next door to my grandmother.” She mumbled, “He’s Emma’s brother.”
This was all getting worse and worse by the minute. “I know. I had a little run-in with him at Emma’s funeral.” I pointed to my eye, which was turning yellow in places.
“He did that to you? I thought you said—”
“He wanted to kill me. Because of Emma,” I said. “He knows that I’m responsible.”
“You’re not responsible,” she said. “He’s a weak person, looking for someone to blame.”
“Weak? He sure didn’t feel that way when he was pressing my face into the grass.”
“I bet he’s drunk. I’ve heard he’s spent every night since he got back to town at the Sawmill.”
Even better. Likely he was getting drunk to numb the pain of Emma’s death. Not only had I killed her, I’d created an alcoholic.
The two men slowed down and then disappeared somewhere among the darkness and the dunes. It was worse, not being able to see them. We were in Seaside Park, and nobody was nearby. This could be incredibly bad. I’m putting Taryn in danger, I thought. We shouldn’t be here, together.
She said, “Maybe he’s not following you. Maybe he’s—”
“He told me he wanted me dead.” I grabbed Taryn’s shoulder a little rougher than I meant to. “Let’s go.”
She looked at me, eyes wide with surprise. All I wanted to do was bolt, away from this whole thing. Someplace safe. Home. My bedroom. Somewhere I couldn’t feel anything, because everything always ended up hurting. But Taryn was just standing there, this confused expression on her face, as if she was trying to figure Bryce out. But there was nothing to figure out. Bryce Reese hated me.
“Let’s go,” I muttered, turning. I didn’t want to see her expression. At that point, I didn’t care if she followed. I didn’t care about anything as I hurried down the street, toward home. Everything about me being there, in that moment, was wrong.
Taryn called after me, “Wait up! Wait up! You’re not mad, Nick, are you?”, but I only increased my speed. Finally she let out a small, strangled “Please!”
I had to stop. I turned. Waited for her to catch up. “What?”
She studied my face in the streetlight. “You are mad?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t. I was tired. Tired of trying for things that the universe didn’t want me to have. “I’ll walk you home.”
We walked the rest of the way in silence. I didn’t even stop when we reached her house, and I didn’t say goodbye, just left her alone in her front yard, where she probably stared after me until I was gone from sight. She was like that. Good. Too good for someone like me.
When I left her, I broke into a run. As I raced, breathless, toward home, I thought of my mom, staying in her room day after day, alone. Battering through the salty mist swirling in the streetlights, for a brief, flickering moment, I understood her. Some people have a knack for messing up everything and everyone they touch. Love. Happiness. Walking down the beach, feeling nothing but the wind on my face and the hand of someone I care about in mine. Those things would never be for us. Any momentary thought that they could be ours was just an illusion. That was the house of cards.
I spent the next two days in bed. The You Wills fought to get me out, but I ignored them and thought of the low, dull headache they caused as punishment for my stupidity. When I slept, I dreamt of Emma, floating to the surface of a black sea, but when I was awake, I found myself thinking mostly about Taryn. I tried to convince myself that she was in more danger near me than without me. I wondered if she’d performed the Touch yet. When I wasn’t thinking about Taryn, I felt guilty and disgusted with myself for the large portion of time I had spent thinking about her. I should have been thinking and caring about other things, things I could do something about. Nan with her broken arm. My last year of high school. Not turning into a recluse like my mother. Despite all that, the thing center stage in my brain was Taryn. I didn’t want to care about her. But I did. Too much. And I hated it.
Strangely, even though I vowed to myself I would never talk to her again,