Page 63 of Holding Out

He was silent on the other end of the phone.She imagined he’d nodded.

“I’ll be over there in fifteen minutes if I can.I’ll text Griff either way.”

“’Kay,” he said, and hung up.

She texted Sibby, who said she could easily make the phone calls she was making from the reception desk.Ten minutes later, Becca pulled up in front of the KidsUp office, and a minute after that she stood, heart pounding absurdly, in the big room that housed the study booths.

Griff looked up from where he was working with a thickset, towheaded boy to smile at her.The smile did nothing to slow her heart rate down, but it did steady her a little.

She spotted Jed, unruly carrot hair and wall-to-wall freckles.Giving Griff a small wave, she slid into the booth across from her student and said, “All right.What’s the assignment?”

Without looking at her, he muttered, “We have to write about something that scares us.”

Typical high school composition idiocy.What high school student wanted to talk about what scared him?“What did you choose?”

“Nothing scares me.”He shrugged.

“Yeah?Really?What about spiders?Snakes?Guns?”

He shook his head.“Nope.”

“Girls?”

He smirked, and she could see a hint of the man he’d grow up to be.“Nope, nope, and nope.”

“Come on, Jed, something’s gotta freak you out.At least a little.How about stupid English assignments?”

Jed’s eyes flicked up to Becca’s face.“I’m notscaredof them.I just think they’re a waste of time.”

She didn’t try to argue with him.Maybe the pit-of-her-stomach dread she’d felt when she’d been faced with a high school composition assignment wasn’t the same for him.But she doubted it, somehow.

Across the booth from her, he took a deep breath.

“I don’t like being home by myself in the afternoons,” he said.

It was just a sentence, but she felt such a rush of adrenaline that she got dizzy.

“Write that down.”

“Write what down?”

“Write down what you just said.‘I don’t like being home by myself in the afternoons.’”

“That’s not how you write a paper.You write it fancier than that.”

“No.”She remembered thinking the same thing, especially when she’d sat down to write letters to Nate.“The words in your head are good.And they’re way better than no words at all.If we put them down on the page, we can make them better, after.We can polish them.But if they stay in your head, you don’t have anything.”

She could see how hard he was thinking about that.The stillness in his face, the far-off look in his eyes.

She held her breath.She could feel it, the thread between them.She could see him thinking about it, a small wrinkle forming between his eyebrows.Her own heart felt like it was in her throat, she wanted this so bad.

“That’s probably why you couldn’t write worth shit in high school, either,” he said darkly.

Then he rolled his eyes, pushed his chair back, rose to his feet, and grabbed for his backpack.

“Wait!”Hecouldn’tleave.

He gave her a hard look.“You know what?You were right.You can’t help me.Because no one is gonna be able to help me.This is fucking stupid.I’m outta here.”He turned and fled.

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