Page 60 of Bring me Back

She lifted a shoulder. “I know. But I let them.” I could see her lost in thought, trying to explain something I wasn’t getting. I wouldn’t have gotten it, anyway. I would not have sat there and agreed that what happened to her was partially her fault.

“One day I’ll know how to act,” she was saying.

“How do you want to act with the people who did it? If you ever saw them again?”

My questions were somewhat innocent. I wanted to know where her head was, but I also wanted to know if she saw any of them in town yet. She was very careful not giving me any names, and I suspected it was because she knew how violent I’d feel. I couldn’t protect someone from their own past, but I felt like trying.

Maybe if I wasn’t watching her reaction so carefully, I would’ve missed the signs. The unsure way she licked her lips while twisting her hands over her lap. The tiniest way her breath caught and the flicker of her gaze from me to the bus driver.

The fucking bus driver.

My body realized what it meant before my brain was completely on board. My fist closed, my spine erected. Hallie’s hand covered mine before I said anything.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

Her eyes pinned me, a fierce expression on her face as someone who just gave an order.

“Hallie…” my voice wavered, even I couldn’t trust what I was going to do.

“You asked me how I wanted to deal. It’s my choice, isn’t it?”

“And you told him it was nice to see him?” I growled.

Hallie’s mouth closed in a line. “The way I deal with my ghosts is not of your concern.”

She was angry. Good. I was furious too.

“How about asking him to stop on the side of the road and leave him there? How about you give me two minutes alone with him? I just need two minutes.”

She rolled her eyes, not taking me seriously. “Stop. And what? Walk to the camp?”

“I can drive.” I tipped my nose high.

“Can you?” she arched an eyebrow.

“No.” I didn’t have a fucking license to drive a bus, but technicalities were the last thing I had in mind.

She kept watching me, and the realization I couldn’t do anything washed over me. I hated it.

Hated it.

“Did he see your pictures?” I strangled out because I wanted to torture myself.

She took a second to reply. Watching me with those intense dark eyes like I couldn’t be trusted. Good, I couldn’t. I was a second away from ripping another man's throat. That couldn’t be normal.

“He was there,” she whispered.

That…That destroyed me.

He was there.

He laughed while she was what? Being assaulted. Yes. He stood there and laughed while she was being humiliated and assaulted. He pointed and laughed and he probably shared her pictures with his friends. My eyes were frozen on Hallie as my whole body shook with rage. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move.

I wanted to do something.

Yes, I wanted to take this Ryan guy and teach him a lesson, but more than that, I wanted to go back to the past and punish them all. I wanted to be there when she needed me the most. I wanted a time machine to bring me to that moment so I could run the halls and save her. She proved again and again she was strong enough to deal with it. But I sure wasn’t.

“Dan. Dan. Come back to me,” her voice called.

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