Wild Reckless (Harper Boys #1)(93)

After what feels like a minute, he leans back, his hands folded behind his neck. “James needed more of that shit your mom gave him. We don’t have insurance, so I bought it off the street. House knows a guy,” he says, his head leaning to the side again, but his eyes still fixed on me.

His answer stabs me in the heart, and I feel horrible for doubting him. The silence takes over again, choking me, and my chest burns. I don’t know how to fix this, how to fix any of this.

“You get what you came for?” he asks finally, and I let the silence take over again, my mouth unable to work, and my mind unable to build words to say. The way Owen’s looking at me—it’s as though I fit into his collection of disappointments, and I don’t know how this happened, and it’s breaking me in front of him. The muscles in my legs are firing with the want to move, trying to help my heart escape this place before I show him what he’s done, how easily he’s destroyed me.

But I can’t move.

As much as he’s hurting me right now, he also owns me. And I let the tear slide down my face slowly without wiping it away. I let Owen see—I let him see inside.

“Why did you take me to see your grandpa today?” I ask, the same question I asked earlier, the one he never fully answered.

Our eyes lock, and I choke down the desire to blink away the water building in mine, giving Owen everything I have left. I wait. And I wait. The fire snapping, the sound of my breathing heavy in my own ears, the thumping of the music a room away, fading to a dull drumming pattern. I’m in a tunnel, Owen the only thing I see, and inside I’m screaming for him to give in, to feel something, to let himself feel anything other than wronged and cursed. Owen shrugs finally, his lip lifting the tiniest hint.

He’s mocking me.

With one look, he breaks me, and the tears threatening to fall find the heat of my cheeks. My eyes flutter, almost feeling sleepy from the hammering of emotions tearing into me. I stand to my feet, listening to that voice inside that has been begging me to leave since the moment I slid into House’s truck. My feet take three steps away from Owen, pausing while I shut my eyes. I ball my hands into fists and push them against my face. Stop crying, stop crying, stop crying… I can hear my own voice in my head, and even in my thoughts, I am torn and in pieces. I turn slowly, filling my lungs with one final inhale. I find Owen’s eyes quickly, everything behind them empty—lost.

“And here I thought it was because you loved me,” I confess, my chest caving in quickly, threatening to cut me off from saying the rest. I let it tumble out with my last breath. “Just as much as I love you.”

I let my words hit him, my body still, my thumbnails digging into the palms of my hands—a subconscious effort to create pain anywhere else, to pull this feeling away from my heart. Owen never even moves.

Before the next wave crashes over me, I turn away, stepping over the sweaters and shoes thrown on the floor. I catch House’s eyes on me from the kitchen, his mouth smirking, like he’s satisfied at my failure to pull Owen back to the light. I pick up my pace, not wanting anyone else to notice me, to see how pathetic I am.

I barely open the door as I slip outside, and when I do, I’m hit with a wall of wind, air so cold it practically slices through me. I pull Owen’s coat tightly around me, hating that it’s his, that I need it, but thankful for it. I take lunging steps out into the driveway, through the gravel, past House’s truck first, then Owen’s, until my feet find the pavement of the small two-lane road that brought me here. I can see my breath, and the threat of more snow is very real. I know I can’t walk home. It would very likely kill me. But I can’t stay here.

I won’t.

I pull my phone from my pocket, the few dollars I folded along with it coming out and falling to the ground. “Shit!” I say to myself, bending down and feeling for them, my hands stinging. I grip them clumsily, but stay low, squatting, while I scroll to Willow’s number, knowing there’s a really good chance she won’t pick up. My thumb hovers over her number for a few seconds before my phone lights up, ringing with a call.

Owen.

I stare at the phone, not knowing what to do, then after three rings, his call disappears. Panic swallows me whole, and I drop my money again, my fingers fumbling to call him back when I look up and see him walking swiftly toward me. It takes him three steps more to reach me, his hands clutching my arms. At first I think he’s angry, and I flinch at his touch. But he brings me to his chest, the weight of his body working to shelter me. His hand cradles my head against him, and he only holds me harder when I begin to cry, my body shaking hard with each shudder.

My core is starting to shiver from the cold, and Owen scoops me into his arms, holding me against him as he strides quickly to his truck, opening the passenger side and setting me inside, closing the door quickly, and running to the other side. He gets in fast, starting the engine and moving the heat to high, then slides across the middle of the bench seat toward me, his hands cradling my face, his fingers rough, and cold.

“I brought you because I love you,” he says, his words coming out in a rush, his eyes piercing mine, the darkness fighting with the light. “I wanted you to meet him because he’s important to me…and so are you…because I love you. I hurt you…because I love you…because I’m f*cked up, my family’s f*cked up, and my problems ruin everyone they touch. I don’t know how to stop them, how to separate the good things from all the shit in my life. I ruin everyone I touch. People leave me…they leave me—” Owen’s breath catches, stuttering, his eyes turning redder as he talks. “People in my life…they die, and if they aren’t dead yet, they look for ways to kill themselves. And all I can do is watch.”