Page 133 of Ewan

He climbs in and starts the car. The engine rumbles, awakening from its slumber.

“You called them?” I ask.

“Yes.”

He looks to his left as he veers the car away.

Soon, we leave the parking lot and head down the road.

“Did you follow me here this evening?”

“Uh-huh,” he says, smiling and turning on the radio.

He lets the station play some old Christmas song but turns down the volume.

“My neighbor said she’d seen your truck this morning. Was that really you?”

“Yes, it was,” he says, not looking at me.

I don’t peel my stare away from him. Eventually, he faces my scrutinizing eyes.

“Why did you do that?”

He moves his eyes away.

I continue.

“Why did you come?”

He glances at me.

“I didn’t know you’d be home.”

“Regardless. Why did you do it?”

He breathes a low, smokey chuckle.

“Because I was a fool,” he admits.

And my eyebrows go up.

“Why were you a fool?”

The car slows down before we stop at an intersection, waiting for the lights to turn green, and he shifts his eyes to me.

Holding my eyes, he speaks.

“Because I thought it would be better if we took things slowly and didn’t fuck…” he says, his voice still vibrating with that last word in my head.

“Better for who?”

The lights turn green, and his focus moves away from me.

“Better for you.”

“I have a hard time believing that. You couldn’t just think only about me.”

“It wasn’t thinking only about you. A lot of things went through my mind. And one of them was… I wanted to do it the right way.”

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