My mouth tastes like ash. My skin feels tight, stretched too thin over all the places I can’t protect.
Beck hasn’t said anything since the paramedic gave me the all-clear. Not that I need him to or anything. He’s towering over me with that heavy, steady kind of focus he’s always had, as if he’s waiting for me to fall apart and trying to figure out how to catch me before I hit the ground.
I hate it.
And I want it.
And I hate that I want it.
“I’m fine,” I say, not really to him, mostly to myself. It comes out rough and dry and so obviously a lie that even I wince.
Beck shifts a little to place me back down onto my feet. He doesn’t shift much, just enough that I can feel the gravity of his attention tilt toward me even more as I regain my balance on unsteady legs. He doesn’t move closer, though. He knows better. Instead, he takes a couple of steps backward.
Like that helps or something.
“You’re not,” he says eventually.
God, I want to scream. I want to grab something and throw it just to feel the weight leave my hands. But mostly, I want to curl into him and pretend that this didn’t happen, that I’m not back in this cursed town, that someone didn’t just try to burn me out of it.
Instead, I swallow hard and square my shoulders under the stupid scratchy blanket, trying to act like I’m fine. Like I’m unbothered. Like I wasn’t two seconds away from dying in the same house I used to dream about escaping.
“I don’t need your help,” I say, sharp and defensive.
Too sharp.
I know it the second the words leave my mouth, but I can’t stop them. Not now. Not with everything scraping raw under my skin.
Beck doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink.
“Didn’t say you did.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Then why are you still here?”
He doesn’t answer. Not right away. And I hate that, too. Because I know exactly what he’s doing. Letting me get the poison out. Letting me burn myself down next.
“Because someone just lit a match in your house,” he says eventually. “And I’m not leaving you alone with that.”
There’s a beat of silence so heavy that I could choke on it.
I turn away and face the house, digging my fingers deeper into the blanket. My nails scrape against my palms as the heady scent of his sweat wafts up from the damp collar against my throat.
I want to nuzzle against it.
What I don’t want to do is cry.
Not in front of him, and not in front of anyone.
I already look pathetic enough, barefoot in the dead grass, smelling of smoke and panic, my voice shaking every time I try to pretend I’ve got it all under control.
But something tightens in my chest when he saysalone. Because the truth is… I’ve been alone for so long I almost forgot what it felt like to have someone show up.
And now that he has, it’s messing with all my carefully placed defenses.
I hate that he still knows how to stand there and not say the thing I need him to say until I’m the one that breaks first.
God.
I don’t cry. I don’t break. I don’t let anyone see the cracked pieces.
