Page 47 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
Maybe that’s why I say the next thing. “I was jealous of you.” My words emerge softly. “When we were kids. Because you had a dad.”
I let it go plainly. No spin. Just the truth cast into the dark.
She doesn’t pull away. “I was jealous of you because you had my dad’s attention.”
And there it is. The knot. Two kids circling the same man, each terrified of losing him, each blaming the other. I needed her father because mine was dead. She needed her father because hers was leaving.
“We were kids who needed the same person,” she says, “and there wasn’t enough of him to go around.”
“There might have been. If we’d let there be.”
Her fingertips brush mine.
I go still. My fingers twitch. I don’t pull away, but I don’t close my hand around hers either. “Everly?—”
A sound cuts through the dark.
And it’s not friendly.
Nine
Everly
I bolt upright, my heart leaping to my throat. “What was that?”
Beckett is sitting up beside me as it sounds again—from somewhere deep inside the building. It’s not the wind. And it’s not settling. I can hear it clearly now—metallic—a bang, then a scrape and another bang.
Weirdly, all I can think is Jurassic Park, and I want to say It’s in the building.
But I don’t, because that would be weird. And confusing.
Thankfully, Beckett isn’t as movie obsessed and is already on his feet, grabbing the flashlight. “I don’t know. You stay here.”
“As if.” I scramble across the bed, shoving my feet into my boots as fast as possible. “Like I’d really stay here while you go out looking for trouble. No way.”
I don’t need the flashlight to see Beckett rolling his eyes at me. I can feel it.
Let him scowl. I pop to my feet, grab my camera bag, and square up in front of him. “Let’s go.”
He eyes me for a second, then shakes his head and says, “Stay behind me.”
That command, I’ll obey. For now.
It’s strange, being back in the halls with the flashlight cutting through the amber glow. For one, it’s a lot colder. But also, it feels…vulnerable. Wide open. I’d finally managed to put my defenses down, let myself feel safe knowing he was there beside me.
I don’t know what I was thinking, reaching for his hand like that.
It wasn’t premeditated. There was no tactical calculation, no romantic plot structure guiding my fingers over his hand in the dark. It just happened. The way a sentence appears on the page before your brain can approve it. By the time you realize what you’ve written, it’s already true.
Luckily, it seems Beckett is adopting a “what happened in the furniture store stays in the furniture store” mentality. If I’m really lucky, the sun will rise in the morning, we’ll go our separate ways, and we’ll never speak again about the things we said in the dark.
The banging at the main entrance is getting louder. See, it’s a T. rex, trying to get in. I knew it.
“Maybe it’s someone coming to help us,” Beckett says.
Oh, yes. That’s a much better option. Too bad he sounds like he was trying for optimistic and just…missed.
I try too. “Maybe…” Also a miss.
