to sneak around. I don’t want to hide. I don’t want you even pretending to belong to another man.”
“I don’t belong to anybody, buddy,” I said, grabbing my backpack. “Least of all, you.”
“Buddy?” he jumped up from the couch as I walked to the door. He took my arm carefully. “Please don’t leave like this, Ty. I don’t want you walking out there on your own. Not with Augustus out there somewhere.”
“Don’t start that again!” I cried. “I think we’re done here. I haven’t felt right about us for a while now. You’ve been weird ever since we found about Augustus.”
“You mean the night when you said you would much rather get injured than have your family find out about me?” he asked. “Is it really that important? Being their good agreeable girl? Are you willing to die for them?”
I shook my head. “I’ll have the UERT guys follow me home. I know you had them park out by the end of your driveway to monitor your house while I’m here. You’re constantly underestimating me. Don’t call me. I don’t want to talk to you in the near future. I hope that clears up your uncertainty.”
“Tylene, please!” he called after me while I stomped down the driveway.
I made it home to the compound in record time, even with stopping at the end of the road and spraying on perfume. The UERT guys had to drive at top speeds to keep up with me, flicking their headlights at me when I turned off the main road towards our land.
It was quiet, and my parents were in their usual seats. Mama was working her puzzle book and Daddy was in his recliner. Always the same.
Mama eyed me suspiciously as I walked into the living room. “Jolene and her husband make an early night of it?”
“Mmhmm,” I said.
“Did you eat?” she asked. “I made meatloaf.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said, backing toward my room.
“Are you all right, Ty?” my father asked, his voice softer, worried. It was more concern than he had shown for me in a long time. “I’ve never known you to turn down your mama’s meatloaf. And your eyes look a little red.”
“Oh, sure, I’m fine,” I said, sniffing. “Just allergies.”
“All right. Your Uncle Hank needs you tomorrow at the butcher shop. And Donnie Ansen’s daddy just called to say he can’t go out this week, something about an intestinal fungus. Poor boy.”
So Donnie had followed through with his offer. And he’d given himself a pretend fungus to get out of it. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I went to my bedroom and flopped down on my mattress. I’d lost something significant, something real. How had it gone so wrong, so quickly? No warning, just a huge explosion of wrong and suddenly it felt like everything was over. It was like a death.
I wasn’t wrong. I knew that. He was asking too much of me and he was holding himself apart from me. And I—I couldn’t even think. I was just too heartbroken. This was the drawback of missing that stupid teenage romance phase. I was completely unprepared for just how awful this felt.
To make it worse, I’d probably just lost the friends I’d made at Specialty Books. Jane and Dick might like me, but Alex was their kind, not mine. And Gabriel would follow Jane. Cal and Nik were Alex’s friends, and I wasn’t close enough to Gigi or Iris for them to cross their partners for me. They would choose him over me. It was instinct. With one stupid argument, I’d swept all of those friendships I’d built off of the map like a tidal wave.
In a way, I thought this might be better. I didn’t want to see that. I didn’t want to watch them make polite, squirming conversation as they tried to gently shoo me away from the bookstore as quickly as possible. All of the places I’d carved out as mine, I would lose. Except for the library, as long as Mrs. Stubblefield didn’t have security video of me stripping down in the garden. I couldn’t imagine she’d let me back after that.
And it wasn’t just the personal that I’d lost. I’d just blown a hole in my business as well. All of the contracts I’d just signed? I doubted my new clients would honor them once I was the undead’s persona non grata. Dick would withdraw the apartment offer. It wasn’t official until he handed over the keys. I would be lucky if