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“It isn’t.”
“I hated him,” I whisper.
His eyes stay on mine. He doesn’t look confused. “I know.”
“I hated him,” I say again, because I need him to understand this properly. “And then he slumped over and I—” My voice breaks. “I didn’t want him to die.”
“You don’t have to explain that.”
I look at him. “Yes, I do.”
“No.” He leans forward slightly, forearms on his knees. “You don’t.”
That should be enough.
It isn’t.
Because the guilt is already there, spreading. Not just that I was afraid. That part is human. It’s the rest of it. The fact that I went with him at all. The fact that part of me thought I was doing something noble by protecting Dalton. The fact that if I had looked away for one second longer, if I had frozen instead of grabbing the wheel—
I press my hand to my eyes.
Dalton is beside me a second later. I don’t even see him move.
He doesn’t ask this time. He just gathers me carefully against him, one hand at the back of my head, the other around my shoulders, and I go because I’m too tired not to.
The second he holds me, I start crying properly.
Ugly crying. Shoulder-shaking, breath-catching, no-dignity-at-all crying.
He lets me. Just holds me tighter and says nothing for a while, his cheek resting against my hair, his hand moving slowly over my back.
When I finally pull in enough air to speak, it comes out wrecked. “I thought he was going to die.”
“I know.”
“No, I really thought—”
“I know.”
I pull back just enough to look at him, furious with how wet my face feels. “You keep saying that.”
A broken almost-smile touches his mouth. “Because I do.”
That’s when I notice his eyes. They’re wet.
I blink. Then stare.
“Are you crying?”
He lets out one short breath that might have been a laugh in another life. “Don’t start.”
“You’re crying.”
“Yes.” He says it like there’s no point denying it.
That nearly undoes me again.
I touch his face before I think better of it, my thumb brushing the corner of his eye, and he closes his eyes for a second as if that tiny touch costs him more than it should.
