Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center Page 0,84
to Boston.”
“I’m trying to help you!”
“I don’t need your help!”
“You of all people know I’m not right for this job,” he said, like there was some kind of logical argument to be made.
“That’s not a reason to quit. Is that who you want to be? A quitter? I’ve spent months trying to help you. I’ve got veins like Swiss cheese from all those sticks. I’ve taught you everything I know. But here’s something else I know. You can’t make people stay if they don’t want to. People leave all the time. They look around one day and say, ‘You know what? Never mind. I’m out.’ I certainly can’t stop you, and I’m sure as hell not going to try.”
“Hey,” Owen said, trying to grab my arm to turn me around.
I yanked my arm out of his grasp.
“Hey!” he said, trying again. “I’m not finished!”
I yanked away again. “I am.”
And then I took off running, ankle and all. He wanted to leave? Fine. I would leave harder.
But he took off running, too—right behind me. His feet smacked the pavement right behind mine. I sped up—or tried to, though I could tell my ankle wasn’t going to put up with it much longer. Was getting away worth reinjuring myself? Who cared? Good. Fine. Whatever.
That’s when Owen caught me. Reached out and grabbed the back of my T-shirt and broke my momentum—and as soon as he did, it was like snapping a rubber band. I stopped running altogether and turned to face him, right there in the middle of the road, panting.
“What?” I said, more like a yell.
“Cut it out! You’re going to sprain the other one.”
“I don’t care.”
He was panting, too. “Can I just talk to you?”
Here’s what I was doing: shutting down. When I watch that moment in my memory, knowing everything I know now, it seems so crazy to me how angry I was. He was trying to help me. He was making sure I could keep my job. He was giving me the thing I wanted most in the world.
Except the thing I really wanted most was him.
All I can say is, I wasn’t good at feelings. I’d spent my life carefully avoiding them. And now, since moving to Rockport, it had been one tidal wave of them after another—the crush, the kiss, the stalker, my mother … It’s easy to heckle the screen of my memory and say, Just let the man talk! But in the moment, I truly felt like I might drown in emotion—as all the feelings of loss and abandonment unleashed—and so I did the only thing I could think of to rescue myself, the thing I’d always done for all these years to stay safe …
I shut it down.
“No,” I said. “I have to go.”
“I just—”
“Nope,” I said, turning and striding back toward Diana’s front door. “I can’t.”
I expected him to follow me.
But he didn’t.
He let me go.
When I got to the door and pressed against it, gripping the handle, I turned halfway back, ready to tell him to leave again, and I was surprised to find myself all alone.
A second of relief—and then disappointment.
I turned farther, and I saw him walking away.
My shoulders sank.
I watched him unlock his truck and get in. I heard the ignition come on. And then he started driving off.
Good. Great.
But it didn’t feel better to be rid of him. It felt worse.
“Wait,” I whispered, staring after him, watching his taillights.
And then it was almost like he heard me.
His brake lights came on. And just stayed on.
I stepped away from the door to get a better look.
Then he was hooking a U-turn and driving back up the street toward me.
He stopped a few houses away and flipped off his lights, and before he’d even opened his door, I was moving through the garden and down the road to meet him. Ankle be damned.
I stopped when I got close.
He shut the truck door behind him, turned to face me, and then leaned back against it.
We faced off like that for a minute.
Finally, he said, “Did somebody hurt you, Cassie?”
I felt a flash of alarm, as if I’d been found out. “What?”
“The way you push me away,” he said, “it’s like you think other people are dangerous.”
“Other people are dangerous,” I said.
He waited for more, and when it didn’t come, he said, “So. Did somebody hurt you?”
My first idea was to say some tough-guy thing, like, “Please.” But that wasn’t going to work, because there were already tears on my face.