Page 73 of Save Me

Instead of walking out, I spun around. I met Knox’s eyes. He was standing behind his desk, his hands in his pockets. “You said to me once that you only apologize to people you care about. You never came to me. You didn’t try to make things right with me. Or was avoiding me your way of telling me you didn’t want to?”

He looked away and I felt my heart crack.

“Did the other morning mean anything to you?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “It did.”

“Then why? Is it because I refused to sit back and let you dictate what’s best for me?”

“No.”

“Damn it, Knox!” I exploded, moving closer to him, leaving only the desk between us. “Use your fucking words and tell me why you don’t want me!”

Anger etched his features. “I want you. I want you so bad it’s driving me insane!”

I held my arms out at my sides. “Then what’s holding you back?”

He pointed to the door behind me. “Them.”

“What about them?”

“If your relationship with them doesn’t work or if it causes a rift between them, they’re going to need someone who wasn’t involved to bring them back together,” he finally admitted.

There went the rest of my heart. Shattered. I wasn’t worth the risk to him and what was really messed up was that I couldn’t be mad at him for it. He was ensuring his family wasn’t going to fall apart. “Thank you for telling me,” I forced out and numbly walked out the door.

Creed and Keelan were standing in the hall. By their somber expressions, they had overheard. Keelan was holding my shoes.

I held my hand out for them and without a word, Keelan handed them over. “Can someone take me home?” I asked.

Keelan looked at Creed. “You take her home.” He tilted his head slightly toward Knox’s office door. “I need to be here a little longer.”

Creed nodded. The two of them were quiet as I put my shoes on and grabbed my gym bag from Keelan’s office. Once I was all set to leave, Keelan kissed my head goodbye and went into Knox’s office. Creed laced his fingers with mine and the two of us went home.

* * *

The next morning, I was getting my school bag packed when there was a knock on my bedroom door. “Come in,” I said.

Logan walked in about a step. “I was wondering if I could ride with you to your school. I have a meeting with your principal and then I have a few errands to run after.”

“Errands?” I said. “And what are you meeting my principal for?”

“I want to speak to him. There’s got to be a better way to keep you safe at school, and I also want to see if he ever looked at their security footage of when your tires were slashed at school.”

“I forgot about that,” I mumbled.

“You had a lot going on,” he said. “I reviewed the footage of when the sheriff attacked you. Unfortunately, he spoke too low for the camera to pick up his threats.”

“Great,” I said caustically.

“But we do have it recorded of him shoving his way into the house. I sent a copy of that footage to Ian and I made a copy for the lawyer I have a meeting with this afternoon.”

“You found a lawyer?”

He nodded. “We need to get ahead of this sheriff and we need to do it quickly, because it won't be long before he comes after you again.”

Fighting back my worry, all I could do was nod.

“Because you refused to talk to me, I spent most of yesterday evening watching the footage from the cameras outside,” he said.