“Sean overheard some things out of context. He thought you’d hurt me.”
“I did hurt you.”
I didn’t correct him. “He thought you did something that deserved being hit over. You didn’t. You never have.”
Daniel shook his head slightly, but didn’t refute me.
A loud banging from the garage distracted us both. What was I doing? Dad could walk out any second and see us, and there was nothing casual about the way we were looking at each other.
“Can we go somewhere then? We need to talk without—” He gestured toward the garage. “Take a ride with me?”
CHAPTER 33
Daniel was waiting outside when I returned after telling Dad I was grabbing my own lunch with a friend—a friend I let him assume was Sean.
He waited until we pulled out of the parking lot before saying, “So you met my mom.”
That sick feeling of shame slobbered over me. “If by met you mean backed into her car while she was parking, yeah. Did she tell you I offered to fix the damage?”
“Kind of.” Daniel pulled out the card I’d given his mom. It was creased all over, like it had been crumpled up into a fist and smoothed out again. When I saw the words scribbled on the back, I understood why:
Your whore backed into my car
There was a nagging thought somewhere in the back of my mind that prompted me to be embarrassed that she classified me that way, but it didn’t seem worth it. And ultimately it didn’t matter what she called me, considering it was hardly worse than the things she called her son.
“I can only imagine what she said to you,” he said.
“Pretty much the unabridged version of this.” I shredded the card up as small as possible and let the pieces blow out the window, hoping Daniel would let it go too.
He didn’t. His hands were tightening on the steering wheel before the wind could carry away the last piece.
“She doesn’t think right anymore. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “Not about that anyway.”
There was a very pregnant pause after that.
“I’ve been apologizing to you since the day we met. You’d think I’d be better at it by now.”
I still felt sick, but not because of hitting his mom’s car or what she’d said. I felt sick about Daniel. I didn’t want another apology; I wanted not to need one. I wanted to be back on my roof where we could hide from the world and the things we’d done. I wanted the dream back instead of the reality.
Daniel muttered something under his breath. “Do you know what I thought that first night I saw you?”
I had a few unpleasant ideas.
Daniel rubbed the fist he had bloodied on his shed that night, and then again on Sean’s face. “I forgot I was angry, just by looking at you.” Disbelief must have been written all over my face when he finally turned to me. “You think I’m lying?”
I remembered him angry that night, and that first day at the shop, and when I saw his scars, when he got drunk, when he hit Sean… Even understanding what was behind all his anger, it was harder for me to forget as easily as he claimed he could.
“You have no idea what you looked like sitting in the moonlight. You glowed, and I wanted to be close to you, before I even knew your name. That’s why I didn’t go back inside right away.”
“That sounds like a bit of revisionist history to me. I’m pretty sure you stayed outside to yell at me.”
Daniel smiled at my attempted humor. “I’m serious. I walked out of a nightmare and there you were. It was because of you that I walked out. I don’t remember if I yelled or not, I just remember not wanting to blink. And then you offered to fix my Jeep.” The sides of his mouth kicked up higher.
“After which more yelling ensued.”
“That wasn’t yelling, that was shock and something I needed way too much.” His smile grew until his whole face was happy. “I almost kissed you in my Jeep that first day.”
