Page 150 of Between the Lines

“You know I have to ask, Nate. Are you involved with her? She’s an employee.”

“Was an employee. And no. She wants nothing to do with me.”

I leave him there, steam billowing in my wake. I can’t even hang my head high after that, my victory lying at the feet of the truth that Claire is no longer mine to defend.

“Harding,bro. You’re not letting me win, are you?”

I blink the chess board back into focus. For a moment, my eyes had gone cross, shifting the black and white tiles into a three-dimensional pattern that lifted off the paperback board, making me dizzy.

“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head as my gaze meets Rocco Thatcher’s smirk.

We started chess club last week.

Right now, it’s the only activity keeping me from going insane.

I left her in my bed with a note of goodbye, and that was that.

She didn’t come find me, like I had half-expected and half-hoped for. Didn’t seek me out like she had the first time I’d tried to push her away. She simply finished out her time in eighth grade, and turned in her badge and key in the office without so much as a goodbye.

I’ve been hollow ever since.

I tried to convince myself that pushing her away was for the best, but in her absence, I’ve been letting my subconscious bully me.

You’re pushing her away because you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t deserve love, Nathan. You let her go because you’re afraid of life tearing her away. The only person you’re punishing is yourself.

For once in my life, I let those thoughts out of the cage I’ve trapped them in. For so long, I let myself believe that it was one’s present that defined them, when all along, I’ve been puppeteered by my past without even recognizing it.

Claire was right. Iamafraid. I’m petrified of letting somethingbad happen to someone I love and then letting guilt anchor me once again to the ocean floor.

I do love her.

Claire.

I think I fell for her the moment she saw my scars and held onto me instead of pushing me away.

And what did I do in return?

Well. She isn’t here with me now, is she? She’s not waiting for me to get off work so that I can repaint her chipped manicure and make her herbal tea while we can wind down from our days together. I have no idea when she’s starting classes, or where her internship is. She won’t be bringing her textbooks over to study in front of my fireplace, wrapped in her blanket cocoon. I don’t have the privilege of her life inside or outside of River Valley anymore and there is a gaping hole in my chest to prove it.

The visions I’d once had of us sharing morning tea on my front porch during the summer have been swept away by the loneliness I’ve caged myself in, and my heart aches every time I remind myself that I’m the one who did this.

I didn’t kill my parents. But I did kill whatever I had with Claire.

“I seem to be off my game today, Mr. Thatcher,” I say as he comes out victorious for the first time. “Congratulations.”

His fist-pump is more reserved than the agitated, defiant boy whom I’d met at the beginning of the year.

“What’s her name?” he asks, pumping his brows beneath the backwards brim of his snapback hat. It is the same question that my brother had asked me several weeks ago, and my chest tightens.

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re clearly distracted, bro. It’s gotta be a lady—being a principal ain’t that hard.”

I scoff, lifting a brow at him as my head dips. His cheeks redden, and I chuckle.

“If you’re having lady troubles, I can give you advice.”

“Oh really?” I ask, tilting back in my chair and spreading my thighs beneath the table.

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