Page 44 of Love Bound

I have to think of something else.

The truck fishtails for a second and she grabs the door, her leg coming down, but it's over before it starts and she glances at me and bites her lip. Her face is pale, the few freckles across her nose stand out and I want to kiss her right here, now, and crush her to me. Feel her press her face to me with her small strength and then melt into me. I want to hold her and make all that pain ebb away, all that loss, all those have-to-do’s, and just let me take her somewhere she doesn't have to worry about anything. Where she can't think, and can only feel.

Feel me.

What the fuck.

I keep my hand on the steering wheel. We're coming to the last few miles and this is where she decides to come clean.

"You should've filled that prescription for pain meds," she says.

"Is that what's got you so miffed?" I ask.

"'Miffed?’ Did you grow up with your grandma?"

"Miffed is a great word. So is 'snit.'"

"Equally disturbing as this is past the twentieth century," she says. Her silence after that makes me press on.

"As in, she is in a ‘snit’ because the dog ate her stethoscope." I manage another glance and see her smile.

Turning to me, she tilts her chin high at an angle. "Well, thank God it wasn't a pie. I revoke traditional gender roles. Though," she pauses, "I do love romcoms. And perfume." And she laughs.

Her laugh is high, silvery, and makes a tingle run down my spine. To see her happy leaves a lightness in my chest I haven’t felt in a really long time.

I have to shift my glance back to the road as it narrows, carrying us to the tip of the little peninsula and Echo Bay.

When I flip the windshield wipers on, the glass streaks, fogs with mist; streaks, fogs with mist.

"It happened right back there," she says.

I stiffen and grip the wheel.

"It was a head-on collision. I never learned the exact spot. I don’t want to know." She turns to me, her blue eyes wide with tears and grief. She wipes them. "Sorry. Sometimes I just get weepy. I think it's my fault."

I grip even harder. "Why? Why would you think that?"

"Because I’m the one who started the fight with Devon and Laurel. I’m the one who ruined that afternoon. I'm the reason they wanted to go out to the movies, to get away and be by themselves. We were fighting over who was going to be the grandma in the play we were doing. It was stupid."

"You were a kid," I offer.

"Still."

"No. The judge caused the accident. He's an asshole who never paid for what he did."

Claire looks startled. "You heard about the—him?"

"That piece of shit who got off? Yeah."

"He doesn't deserve the same," she says. "But he should have been disbarred and imprisoned, or something. He painted the picture that it was partially their fault because a headlight was burned out." She sighs. "And then, suddenly, he was the victim. Poor him and the guilt he'd have to live with for the rest of his life."

The whole story left me clenching my jaw. “How did you cope with all that?”

"I didn’t really know about it until later." Her knee comes up and she wraps an arm around it. "Much later, actually. It was bad."

"But you got through school."

"Because of Geo. Because of him. He made me go back to finish and then he helped me get into vet school," she says.