Page 189 of Across His Line

“No.”

She flinches just a little at the edge of her shoulders.

I make myself stop. I make my voice go softer.

“No,” I say again. “It’s not any of that.”

She’s still standing there with her hand on the doorframe, looking at me like she’s waiting for the other half of it. Like the second somebody looks at her wrong, the first place she goes is what did I do and the second place is where do I go now.

And that pisses me off more than anything has all day. Not at her. At every person who ever taught her to think like that.

Including me.

“Last night,” I say.

Her face goes careful. “Did I do something?”

“Why do you keep asking me that?”

She blinks.

“Because you’re acting weird,” she says.

Which is fair. I came in from the lake and walked past her like she wasn’t there, and now I’m standing in my room with my hoodie half off, saying one-word sentences that don’t mean anything.

I rub my hand over my face.

“I don’t know, Tess,” I say.

She nods slowly. And she takes a step back from the doorframe out into the hall.

“Don’t go,” I say.

She stops.

“I thought you—” she says.

“I don’t want you to leave.”

It’s the first thing all afternoon that comes out the way I meant it. Clean. All the way true.

She stands there in the hall, looking at me.

“Come in and close the door,” I say.

And she goes red.

This time I know exactly which one it is. I don’t have to wonder.

She steps into the room and closes the door behind her until it clicks. And she stands there with her back against it and her hand still on the knob.

“Tell me what you figured out,” I say kindly, or at least, I try.

And she does. Shorter this time. Calmer. My mom sat at the kitchen table with her the whole time I was gone. They went through every number and every option. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do yet. But she knows Woodbury isn’t the only road. She knows she could do something else, somewhere else, and build something that’s hers.

“I don’t think I’ll be at Woodbury next year,” she says.

It goes into me like a puck I didn’t see coming.