Page 49

She looks up then, her eyes directly on mine.

“I didn’t start the fire,” she says. “I didn’t hurt anyone.”

“I know that,” I snap. “What are you running from?”

She hesitates.

“What are you running from?” I ask again, more slowly this time.

“My family.”

The answer is so quiet I almost miss it.

“What about them?”

“I just wanted my own life.”

I stare at her, waiting for more. She doesn’t give it. That’s such a bullshit answer. She hasn’t told me a goddamned thing.

“You don’t get to play vague and wounded right now,” I blurt out. “You put my family at risk. You put Mae at risk.”

She shakes her head and starts stuttering nonsense, but I cut her off. She stands up as if she’s getting ready to escape.

“You’re hiding something, and I’m done pretending not to see it.”

“I’m not hiding?—”

“You are.”

I take a step forward.

“I’m going to ask one more time—what the hell did you bring into my town?” I move toward her.

“I don’t?—”

“Bullshit!”

Her eyes go wide. Panic flashes across her face. She steps back fast, like I’ve struck her. She doesn’t look defiant or manipulative or smug or calculating. She looks small. Terrified.

She blinks fast, like she’s trying to hide how close she is to breaking.

Shame surges up in my chest.

Fuck.

I step back and rake a hand through my hair. “I didn’t mean?—”

Chapter 15

Ani

Ihear the apology. I see the regret flash across his face. But none of it matters, because my body is already in motion. My pulse roars in my ears, loud enough to drown everything else out. Boone’s voice, the creak of the floorboards—it all becomes background noise to the panic screaming through my veins.

My feet carry me down the hall before I even know what I’m doing. I don’t remember pulling the door shut behind me or collapsing onto my knees at the base of the bed. I only remember the way my hands shake as I unzip the duffel and start quickly folding clothes to put into it. I’m not thinking. I’m reacting. There’s no plan. No destination. No car. No money. No identification. But that doesn’t stop me.

I can’t stay.

There is no universe in which I can stay here.They’ve found me.