Page 49 of You Can Run

Something shifted in his expression. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means for three months after I arrived, things were good. You were there. You were present. I thought we were building something real.” Her fingers tightened in his. “And then you disappeared. Not physically. You were still in the house, still next to me in bed. But you stopped sleeping. You started checking the windows, the doors, the street. You'd go quiet in the middle of a sentence like you were listening for something I couldn't hear.”

He looked away, and the fact that he couldn't hold her gaze told her more than any answer would have.

“I wasn't asking you to be someone else,” she said, quieter now. “I just needed you to stay. To be in the room with me. And you couldn't.”

His jaw tightened. “I was there.”

“No. You were waiting for something to come through the door. Every day. And I couldn't build a life next to someone who was already halfway out of it.”

He was quiet for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was rougher, stripped of the control he'd been holding onto.

“You think that was easy? Watching you pack?”

“You didn't stop me.”

A short, humorless breath. “You were already gone, Jessica.”

“I wasn't.” She shook her head. “I was waiting for you to give me a reason to stay. One reason. And you just stood there.”

He didn't answer. His thumb moved against the ring—the same motion she'd felt in the dark at the motel—and she watched his gaze drop to her mouth for a fraction of a second before pulling back to her eyes.

“If we survive this,” she said, “if we actually get across that water, you don’t get to vanish again. You stay. Or you leave for good right now.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised.

“Careful,” she whispered.

“Why?”

“Because that doesn't sound like pretending.”

The air between them compressed. She could feel the heat of him, could feel the distance they'd been maintaining all day thinning. It didn’t feel like they could survive much more of this honesty.

“And that's a problem,” she went on. “Because if this stops being pretend, I don't know how to survive it when it ends again.”

Dante leaned back against the cracked vinyl of the booth, stretching along the top. To anyone watching, he hoped the gesture would make him feel relaxed. In reality, nothing in him was relaxed.

“Hold up. Someone's looking at us,” Jessica murmured.

Dante didn't turn his head. He let his gaze shift just enough to catch the warped reflection in the chrome napkin holder.

“The guy in the flowered shirt?” he said quietly. “He's watching the game. You're the one who looks like she doesn't belong.”

“I'm not doing anything.”

“You are,” he said, softer now, leaning closer. “You keep scanning the room like you're waiting for something to happen.”

A pause.

“Well, I am.”

He exhaled through his nose. “Look at me.”

She did.

“Just stay here,” he said. “Not out there. Here.”