Page 149 of What You Wish For

“Yep.”

“I just… had a question.”

“What?”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “The usual. We found a missing kid. We sent the chairman of the board to the clink. We rescued a whale. Pretty ordinary night.”

“But are you… angry at me?”

“No!” I said. “No.” Then I added, “It’s fine. I get it. I really do.”

There was no point in talking about it now. It was what it was.

“What’s fine?”

I tried to keep my voice light, like it was all vaguely amusing. “You. You know. Leaving. Earlier. I get it. I mean, I warned you. You can’t say I didn’t warn you. But you were so busy arguing with me, you kind of missed your chance to escape. That’s on you.”

But Duncan was really frowning now. “What are you talking about?”

“Earlier,” I said, gesturing back toward town, “I had a seizure, and you finally saw what I’d been warning you about, and you freaked out, and you took off. And it’s fine. Told ya so.”

Duncan shook his head. “Is that what you think happened?”

I gave a little shrug. “Well, I woke up alone in my bed in the pitch-black in an empty place, so… yeah.”

“How do you think you got to your bed?”

So he’d dragged me over there before he left. “Thank you.”

I really was too tired for this. My whole body felt shaky. I felt a tightness in my throat like I might be about to cry and blow my cover.

“Sam,” Duncan said. “I didn’t run away. I stayed.”

“The me-waking-up-alone part contradicts you.”

He gave a frustrated head shake, then he said, “You did have a seizure—and it absolutely was a little scary to witness only because it was new, and it doesn’t look like the most relaxing thing a person could ever do, and it’s hard to watch someone you love go through something that looks like agony. But I did not freak out, and I did not leave you. What kind of an ass do you think I am? I stayed—of courseI stayed. I looked after you and did everything you said to do. And when you came to after, I helped you to your bed, and tucked you in, and curled up next to you on your bed. And I would still be right there right now if I hadn’t gotten a call at midnight that Clay had gone missing.”

“You only left because of Clay?”

“I only left because of Clay.”

I tried to take that in.

“I told you I was going,” Duncan went on. “But you were so out of it. And you’d said that seizures make it hard to remember things. So that’s why I sent Alice—Babette texted her for me because I was in a meeting with the cops.”

I let all of those pieces settle into place in my head. “You didn’t… leave?”

He stepped a little closer.

“You stayed?” I asked. “Voluntarily?”

He nodded and stepped closer. “And now I’m back again. Trying to continue not leaving.”

I couldn’t look at him.

Somehow, knowing that he hadn’t left seemed to hurt worse than thinking that he had.

---