Steele put a hand on my shoulder.
He…touched me. Tenderly.
“You did that.”
We looked into each other’s eyes. The gaze we shared…
It was…
Too intense.
This was a gaze Brock and Tara shared. I couldn’t…not with…I wasn’t….
I smiled, laughed, and took a step back.Why? You idiot.
“I just didn’t want anything worse to happen,” I said.
I may have still been laughing, but I was shaking. Where had that courage to step in come from? Where had Steele’s touch come from? Was being around these guys suddenly making me act like one of them?
Was I…was I acting like an adult now? Someone who could stand up for herself? For others?
I told myself to not be ridiculous. I’d just stopped Steele from punching a cop. I hadn’t saved humanity or stopped the darker side of it. I’d only prevented a horrible crime from happening in one single moment.
But that touch…the way the hairs stood up on my body…the way that he looked at me…
The way he reacted when he said the name Stan…
“Steele,” I said, gulping. “Who was the guy the sheriff referred to? Who’s Stan?”
The spark in Steele’s eye faded. In fact, it almost looked like it was watering. He opened his mouth, said nothing, and quickly headed toward the entrance to the garage door. It opened right before he got there, with Tara and Brock walking out, but he brushed right past them, and moments later, the garage door shut between us.
And just like that, Steele was gone.
“We were watching what happened, just in case we needed to step in,” Brock said.
“Are you OK?” Tara asked.
I have no idea.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Is he going to be OK?”
Brock looked back, grumbled something about, “I gave him the wrong role,” and sighed.
“He gets emotional, you know how he is.”
“I do,” I said.
I do much more than I did before. And I think I’m starting to figure out why more every day.
“Listen, we can head back if you want,” Tara said. “I should have just asked us to come in separate cars, but we can leave now if you want.”
Strangely, even though I would have had an immediate agreement to that offer even twenty minutes ago, I now wanted to at least see Steele and make sure he was OK. If I couldn’t know who Stan was, I at least wanted to know why he affected him so much.
But there was no chance Steele would see me again and tell me anything more. At most, he’d nod to me, and that was at most.
“Yeah, let’s get out of here,” I said. “I’ll see you at the car.”
I let Tara and Brock have a moment of privacy as I walked toward our car, which was parked just down the street. I needed the quiet and solitude for just a couple of minutes, anyway.
I felt like I’d lost a part of myself tonight. By getting to know Steele better, by injecting myself in the middle of his confrontation with the sheriff, I felt like I had shed some of my sheltered self, some of my naive self.
It was too early to say, though, if that would be a good thing in the long run.
