Page 42 of Fire in You

“What?” I so did not see how that made sense.

“There’s no point for both of us to drive to work and then to the restaurant. Parking in town is terrible. So I can pick you up.”

My thoughts raced to catch up with what he was saying. “But you’d have to drive past the Academy, come clear out here to pick me up.”

“It’s not clear out there. It doesn’t take that long and I like driving,” he replied. “I’ll be there at eight-thirty. Be ready.”

“But—”

“See you in the morning, Jillian,”

And then he hung up and I was left staring at my phone like an idiot. I could call him back, but once Brock had his mind made up about something, there was no talking him out of it.

“Why?” I said out loud.

Rhage meowed in response.

I looked over at the striped cat. He was sitting in front of his empty bowl, staring up at me like he actually thought he was going to get more food. “Not happening,” I told the little devil.

Glancing at the time left on the pizza, I then saved Brock’s number in my phone. I stood in the center of the small kitchen for several moments, unsure of what I was supposed to do now. Call him back and tell him no? And would that be me making too big of a deal out of him giving me a ride? Should I just leave before he got here and pretend I forgot? That would probably make me an ass. Or should I just go with the flow and stop stressing over it, because stressing led to reading between the lines?

And the last thing I needed to do was read between the lines.

I was extremely skilled at taking a simple statement and creating an entire paragraph of unspoken words out of it.

That was the last thing I needed to do right now.

“I need more than pizza,” I decided, pivoting around and walking toward the fridge.

I opened the freezer and pulled out a carton of Reese’s peanut-butter ice cream. I didn’t even grab a bowl. Just a spoon. It was going to be that kind of night.

* * *

Hours later, I jerked up in the middle of the bed, gasping for air. The sudden movement had sent Rhage scurrying from the bed and racing out of the bedroom.

Several minutes passed as I sat in the dark room, confused and struggling to make sense of why I was awake and feeling like I’d just run up a flight of stairs.

Then slowly, painfully, it came back in pieces. Shattered images of the night . . . It had been a nightmare, but the emotions that nightmare awakened in me lingered like the bitter smell of gunfire. The feeling of helplessness as I stared up—stared up at the skinny, dirty man, not fully believing what was happening. The terror had been stark and all-consuming, obliterating my ability to understand that every breath I’d been sucking in erratically was counting down to the last one.

Hand shaking, I lifted my arm and ran the tips of my fingers over the deep indent in my left cheek. I squeezed my eyes shut, hearing the deafening popping sound. The flash of pain had been so quick, intense and fiery, and there had been nothing . . . nothing except this.

I ran my tongue along the inside of my mouth as I dragged my fingers to the other side of my face. Sometimes I thought if I pressed hard enough I could feel the implant, but that could’ve been my imagination.

Lowering my hand, I opened my eyes, and as my vision adjusted to the darkness, I could make out the shapes around me. Back in my parents’ house, there were wall-to-wall bookshelves. They’d been my collection, a source of wonderful memories and new worlds.

I only had one bookcase here.

Most of the books I read were now on my Kindle, as they had been back then, many Kindle generations ago, but I’d still collected print books. I’d liked being surrounded by them, being able to reach out and touch them.

I didn’t know why I hadn’t done the same here, converting the guest bedroom into a library of sorts.

Drawing my knees up under the covers, I wrapped my arms around my legs. A question plagued me as I sat in the darkness with only the sound of a nearby fan running.

What would I’ve done if I hadn’t gone to Mona’s that night?

The question picked at me for years, because I . . . I couldn’t answer that question. I mean, I’d wanted to work at the Academy. I’d wanted to finish college. But those were surface things, and I didn’t have . . . a deep sense of self, of who I truly was before the shooting and who I became afterwards because of it.

I’d only been twenty when everything had changed for me. My life was paused before I got the chance to really discover what I wanted or who I was outside of being Andrew Lima’s daughter or the girl who was Brock “the Beast” Mitchell’s shadow. The remote control of life had slowly lifted its pause button, but . . .

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