Chapter 20
EMMA
He holds out his hand like an olive branch, the first peaceful gesture between us in years. “I swear I won’t leave your sight.”
His voice doesn’t waver, and his gaze is strong. He isn’t lying.
I stare at his palm, outstretched like a promise. I’m queasy, unsure of how to handle his acceptance. I should be overjoyed he believes me, but I’m scared because it reminds me of the boy who trusted me without question. It makes me not want to hate him.
It makes me want to believe that somehow my memory is wrong.
I gingerly put my hand in his, and his fingers wrap around mine. The warmth sends a spark up my arm. A touch so foreign and familiar at the same time, and I don’t know how to feel about it.
I swallow, not knowing what to do. I didn’t bring him here because I wanted him to find past me. I just wanted him as far from Mallory as possible, and this was an easy choice. But maybe subconsciously I needed him to believe me.
He lets go of my hand, stuffing his into his pocket in a quick motion. His face is white, drained of any color, and his curly hair is plastered against his forehead from all the sweat on his brow.
Did he really run all this way? Because of me?
We stare at each other for way too long. I know I should pull my eyes away, but I can’t. This is the first time in years that he’s wanted to be near me. I don’t know how to process that.
I know the anger inside of me shouldn’t lessen. It should be as strong as the moment he pushed Mallory over the bridge. Even if he swears he won’t do it, I know he’s capable of it.
And yet the way he looks like he’s about to be sick is making it really hard to hate him.
Maybe it’s because there’s a part of me that has wanted to be wrong this whole time.
I want nothing more than for him to be as harmless as the boy who came to my tree house searching for Duke, but I know better.
I grab the bottom of my shirt, rubbing the fabric to distract myself from the strange feelings swirling inside of me. I want to believe that saving Mallory is this simple, but I can’t be sure.
He takes a breath and bites his lip, looking around. “We can’t just stand here.”
He walks back to the car, but I can’t move. I don’t know what to do now, and a new wave of anxiety rushes over me. He hates me, but he said he won’t leave me. What am I supposed to do for the rest of the day?
It’s not even six o’clock yet.
It shouldn’t matter as long as he’s away from Mallory, but something about how he’s now cooperating has me nervous.
Will it be awkward? Will he treat me like a person or will he act like he’s miserable the entire time?
If the last few days have been any indication of how he feels, I have a hard time believing he’ll be civil.
He takes the little gas can to the back of the car and puts it in the tank. Then he opens his door and looks up. His eyes fall on me, dark and soft. “Emma?”
“Yeah?”
“Get in the car,” he says.
I swallow and step forward. My legs are heavy as I drag myself to the passenger seat and sit down next to him.
He holds on to the steering wheel, but he doesn’t drive off. He tucks his lips in, thinking and staring off ahead, lost in his thoughts. He’s always been the quiet one, thinking about every detail in the world around him.
“How is this possible?” he whispers.
“I don’t know.”
He tilts his head, peering at me. His eyes roam over me from my head to my feet.
“How far—I mean, are you—I don’t understand.
” There’s a nervous edge in his voice as I can tell his brain is spiraling.
He’s always had a need to understand how things work.
He’d take apart his toys just to put them back together again.
“I went back in time a year,” I say, fiddling with my hands. “I don’t understand it either.”
“A whole year?”
I nod. “Exactly one year.”
He rests his head back against the seat and takes in a slow, deep breath before letting it go. “How did you end up here?”
I think back to what I can remember but it seems so far-fetched and foggy. “I don’t know if I can explain it.”
He turns his head to me again. “Could you try?”
His gaze is too heavy for me to keep eye contact.
I chew on my lip, gaze darting away because I’m afraid to talk about it out loud.
As if telling him what happened could somehow ruin things.
Where do I start? What is the beginning?
I don’t even know how to explain the last year without my eyes watering and my lungs burning.
“I have this habit of going to the bridge where . . .” My words catch in my throat because I can’t say it out loud without reliving it in my mind.
“Where she died,” he whispers, finishing my sentence.
“I was sitting on the wall, staring down at the rocks—”
“You what?” His eyes widen, and he might as well have slapped my wrist with his expression. It’s the same concern he showed every time I’d had a bad idea and needed redirecting when we were younger.
I roll my eyes. “Be glad I did, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking right now.”
His chin dips as if he’s a scolded puppy and he gestures for me to continue.
“It was raining and I slipped and fell.” My eyebrows furrow and I scratch my cheek. “But I shouldn’t have lived. When I looked down there were so many jagged rocks and the water was shallow, but when I fell, it’s like the rocks disappeared and I sank deep into the water.”
“It changed?” he asks.
“Like I said, I don't understand it either. I figured it had to do with Mallory somehow since it happened at the same bridge, but I chose not to overthink it. I saw it as a second chance to save Mallory.”
“How are you going to get back? You’re not going to jump off the bridge?” There’s a trembling in his voice like he’s afraid.
Should he be afraid? He hates me, right? Why would he care about what I do?
“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” I say.
He rubs the bridge of his nose. “Okay, well, we’ll figure this out. Just don’t . . . don’t do that.”
For the boy who said he was done saving me, he hasn’t kept his word. Here he is again, trying to protect me.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I say. My stomach twists, uneasy from not knowing how to hate him.
“Good,” he whispers.
Then it’s quiet again. Neither one of us knows what to say.
“So . . . what now?” he asks. “I mean, we’re almost to Lancaster. Didn’t you want to see your mom?”
I shake my head. “I just wanted to get you away from Mallory.”
Past Emma wanted to go so badly, I stepped in and used it as the perfect excuse. Mallory had just told Myles it was the reason I was acting weird. It made sense. I knew he wouldn’t question it.
He nods, staring out the window. “So this was just an excuse to get me to drive four hours in the opposite direction?”
“Yeah.” The word is thick and hard to push out because I don’t know how to talk to him anymore.
“Okay,” he says, tapping the steering wheel. “Well, maybe we should head home then.”
I want to believe that he’s telling me the truth, but there’s a tiny voice of doubt in the back of my mind. I have him hundreds of miles away right now, and even with how awkward it is, I’d like to keep him that way.
“Or not,” he says.
“I didn’t say anything.”
He raises an eyebrow as if he’s saying, “Really?”
“What?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing.”
“Tell me.” I cross my arms and scowl.
He sighs, putting the car into drive. “I haven’t totally forgotten how to read you.”
What did that mean? Did I make a silly face or is he pretending he can read my mind?
He shakes his head, looking out the window, still gathering his thoughts and sorting them like it’s his full-time job. Then his eyes widen and he looks back over at me.
“What about the other you? What is she doing over here?” He says it slowly, emphasizing every word.
My eyes dart out the window because I know he won’t like what I’m about to say. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does.”
“I ran away from home.”
“Why?”
I shrug. I don’t think I can tell him the truth because it still feels so raw. I can’t tell him about feeling so lonely and unwanted that I ran away to find my mom, hoping I would find some sense of belonging.
His brow knits together. “You can’t just run away like that. Do you realize how dangerous that is?”
“It was fine.”
His mouth hangs down and he looks at me like I’m losing it. “Nothing’s fine about that. What if you get hurt?”
“I didn’t.”
The truth is I knew exactly how unsafe it all was, but I didn’t care.
“Tell me where you—the other you—is going and we’ll take her home.”
“No,” I say. I know I’m falling apart somewhere, lonely, but I need to keep Myles away from Mallory more. “I’ll be fine. I get back home fine on my own.”
“You can’t be serious. Where is the bus going?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Past me is on a bus heading home. It took me all day to get back because of how many stops and transfers it made. Then I spent another two hours walking to our house, passing the Oakland bridge just after five.
But I don’t want him to go that direction. I don’t know what will happen if I cross paths with myself. This is safer. He’s here. He’s away from Mallory, and that’s how I’m going to keep it.
“So that’s it? You’re just not going to answer my questions?”
I quiet down, sinking into the seat and wishing it would swallow me whole. I don’t say a word.
“You’re still stubborn,” he mumbles.
“Who cares?” I say it like it’s less of a question and more of a statement. I’m talking into a void, not expecting to hear anything back.
“I do.” His words are so soft I almost don’t hear them.
My hands grow clammy, balled into fists. I look at him, wanting to see the trace of a lie.
There is none.
But I want there to be one.
“You don’t mean that,” I say.
He shifts his weight. “Like you’d know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Forget it.” He shakes his head. “We’re stuck together so let’s try not to fight.”
I cross my arms, stewing in frustration. He’s the one who started this fight and he won’t even finish it. How is that fair? “You don’t care. You hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Yes, you do.” I don’t know why I’m drawing this out when it doesn’t matter right now. He’s cooperating, so why am I bringing this up? Why do I have an insatiable need to argue with him? Or maybe it’s because I need to prove to myself I made the right decision all those years ago.
His chest rises and falls. A beat of silence as I wait for his reply.
“I hate who you became,” he whispers. “It’s not who you are.”
The car shrinks in on me, and I stop breathing. I didn’t become anything. I was always this person. The person who couldn’t help but make mistakes at every turn. That’s who I am. It’s the reason I’m so hard to love.