Page 100 of Across His Line

“It’s just Dylan being Dylan.” I shrug. It hurts my ribs. “That’s just him.”

He doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me with that dark, steady look, like he’s waiting for me to hear what I just said.

I look at my socks.

“I don’t know why I texted you,” I say. And I don’t. I really don’t. I’ve been trying to figure it out since I understood I was with him. Kylie. Payton. Elsie. Nine-one-one. I had a whole phone full of people, and my thumb went to his name like it was the only one in there.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s Thanksgiving, and I dragged you into all of that, and your face, and your hand, and your mom’s going to—”

He stands up.

So fast the couch shifts under me.

“Don’t be fucking sorry, Tess.”

He’s standing over me, but it isn’t like the stairwell. It isn’t like anything. He’s not looming. He’s just up, all at once, like he couldn’t stay sitting down with that word in the room.

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t tell me that you’re sorry.”

“I only meant—”

“If I’d known,” he says, “I never would’ve taken you there.”

I look up at him.

“I knew something was wrong.” He turns away from me. Toward the window. Toward the dark yard and the trees lit gold from underneath. “I saw your face when you saw that car. I knew. I sat in that driveway, and I watched you not want to get out, and I knew.”

“I told you I was fine, and I was.”

“I left you there.”

“Rafe.”

He isn’t listening. He’s got his good hand on the back of his neck and his head down, and he’s standing at the window with his back to me, and his shoulders are going up and down too fast.

And I sit there with my knees pulled up and watch him.

I know angry Rafe. Every shade of it. Every color of his eyes. I know how he stands when he’s about to say something to hurt me. I know how he stands when he’s bored. I know how he stands on the ice.

I don’t know this.

He’s upset. That’s what it is. Not angry. Upset. His jaw is working. His good hand is opening and closing at his side. When he turns his head a little toward the lamp, his eyes are too bright, glassy, not crying, nowhere near crying, but not right either.

And it hits me so hard I have to hold onto my own knees.

He was scared.

For me.

Rafferty Waleska drove across town and walked into that house, and he saw me on that couch, and he was scared. Not angry. Scared. And he still is. He’s standing at his window in a black T-shirt, shaking, because somebody hurt me.

Nobody’s ever cared enough to be scared for me before. I’ve always been the only one keeping track.

He stands there for a long time. Then he takes a breath, a big one, and lets it out, and turns around.

“Do you want food?”

It’s so out of nowhere that I blink at him. “No.”