Page 99 of Crossfire

I could see his smile in my mind, his hand outstretched toward mine as my little fingers clasped his.

“He was a firefighter, and I just remember feeling so proud that I was a daughter of someone who saved lives for a living. He even came to my school one time when I was in third grade to give a presentation on fire safety. But I think he just did it as an excuse to get to see me in school.”

Dad always looked for every opportunity to spend time with me.

“He’d always been my hero, but one day, when I was in middle school, something happened…” I swallowed over the lump in my throat. “If my dad hadn’t been there, I don’t think I’d be alive right now to tell you about it.”

Grayson’s features darkened, and he gripped his fork so tightly, his knuckles turned white.

“What happened?” His voice was a low growl.

I stared at my spaghetti, my stomach churning.

Lord, this was hard.

When I paused, Grayson set his silverware down and leaned back in his seat. Evidently, this event in my life was more important to him than his own hunger.

His eyes narrowed as they roamed over my face, searching for something, while his jaw clenched and unclenched—the muscles tensing beneath his skin. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but then pressed his lips together, furrowing his brows and looking down at the table for a few seconds.

After a deep breath, he kept his voice steely as he said, “Ivy, I need to know what happened to you.”

I need to know.What an interesting choice of words.

I blinked. “Why?”

My childhood had nothing to do with this situation we found ourselves in now.

“If you don’t tell me,” he began slowly, “I’m going to…” He paused and scrubbed his face with his hand. “The unknown will torment me worse than the known.”

Torment.

The word lingered between us, a haunting echo of the feelings we had shared.

It was in this moment that I realized I wanted to know something about Grayson, too. I wanted to know what happened in Grayson’s life that took this seemingly protective person and made him into a trained killer.

“When I was thirteen,” I started, the words coming out slow like even they wanted to stay buried inside of me, “I was fiercely independent. I was at that age where I thought I knew everything, that I was a grown-up and not a child anymore.”

Grayson hung on my every word.

“For over a year,” I continued, “I had been having a battle with my parents over loosening my leash. All the other kids had more freedom than I did. To me, one of the symbols of that freedom, I guess you could say, was being allowed to walk home from school.”

Grayson’s breathing became shallower.

“My school was only a mile away from our home at the time. My parents kept pushing back on me, saying that even if we didn’t live on the outskirts of a major city with a corresponding crime rate, kids in even the safest towns would go missing. I thought they were being ridiculous. Overprotective, stifling my life.”

“I think it’s fair to say most kids think the same thing,” he assured.

I shifted. “Anyway, one day, finally, my dad agreed that I could walk home from school. Provided I took a preapproved path, and I walked home with a friend who lived a block from my house.”

I fidgeted with my fork, turning it over.

“I knew if I showed my parents that I could get home alone, they would give me more and more freedom. Maybe start extending my curfew and start letting me do more things.”

Grayson tilted his head to the side slightly, waiting for me to continue.

“Anyway, so there I am, waiting for my friend, and I’m beyond excited. Until I get a call from her.” Back then, less than half the kids in my school had a phone, and the only reason I had one was because of how safety conscious my parents were,wanting to make sure I could always call 911. Ironic, when you think about it. “It turns out that during the last period of the day, she came down with a stomach flu and threw up and went home. By this point, the buses had left.”

I shut my eyes momentarily. Even to this day, I still struggled to forgive myself for what I did next.

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