Her Destiny (Reverie #2)(33)

“I don’t know,” she says with a little shrug.

Damn. Females. They make no sense to me, even the ones I love.

I pull into town not fifteen minutes later and I head straight for the police station, not wanting to waste any time. Now I’m the one left confused. I don’t know what Reverie wants from me and I’m almost afraid to ask because I might not want to hear her answer. The push and pull going on between us is aggravating to say the least.

My conversation with Evan earlier this morning repeats in my head, no matter how hard I try to banish it.

She’s too young.

You’re too young.

She’s still in high school.

She has so much potential.

You live in a different city.

You come from two different worlds.

She has enough to deal with.

And so do you.

Your summer fling was meaningless. You both just got…caught up.

I protested only the last reason because what happened between Reverie and I over the summer was the farthest thing from meaningless. But whatever. Evan’s never been in love. He doesn’t know what it’s like.

“Is this okay?” I ask after I park the truck in front of the station. The rain is still coming down hard, hitting the windshield with rhythmic force, and she peers up at the imposing building in front of us, squinting. “That we came here first?”

“Yeah.” She presses her lips together. “I hope I say the right thing.”

“Just tell them the truth. That’s all they want to hear.”

“That detective wasn’t very nice.”

“He’s just pissed because he’d love to pin Krista’s murder on me.” That they have no other suspects makes me think Krista’s killer might’ve done this before. She hung out with all kinds of shady characters, especially the last few months of her life. It could’ve been anyone.

But it definitely wasn’t me.

“Does he hate you that much?”

“He just doesn’t have any other suspect. What they really hate is having an open murder case that they can’t solve. The town doesn’t like it either, imagining a murderer walking their streets.” Something I have close experience with. I’ve been considered a murderer in not just one but two separate cases.

I really need to get the hell out of this town.

“I can’t say that I blame them. But it’s not right that they seem to always blame you either.” Reverie shivers. “I don’t like how much it makes me sad, being here. It’s so different during the winter. Dark and cold and dreary.”

“Not always.” It’s brighter now that she’s here with me but I don’t say that. She’d probably just roll her eyes and tell me to stop anyway. “But yeah. It’s a different town when summer’s over and the tourists leave.”

“Michael left too, right? Do you still talk to him?” She flashes me a smile. “I miss him. He’s so goofy. He always made me laugh.”

“I do talk to him. We text a lot.” He’s coming home for Thanksgiving and I’ll be glad to see him. “He’s doing good.”

“How about Heather? Is he still with her?”

“Nah. That relationship ended the minute summer was over.” Michael hadn’t been too broken up about it. He’d known what he was dealing with going in—a summer fling, pure and simple.

Her smile fades. “Do you regret last summer and everything that happened?”

She’s changing subjects so quick I can hardly keep up. I scoot closer to her and grab her hands, squeezing them tight. “No. I don’t regret meeting you. I don’t regret spending time with you. I don’t regret any part of you, Reverie. The only thing I regret is what happened to Krista and how that…ruined us.”

We’re silent for a while as we absorb what I said. Krista’s death did ruin us but I wonder if we were doomed to fail from the beginning.

“You and me…we’re not a good idea, are we?” she finally asks.

I release one of her hands and cup her cheek, tilting her head up so our mouths are almost perfectly aligned. “Probably not. But that’s not going to stop me from trying for us again.”

She closes her eyes, the corners of her mouth tilting upward. “You say the sweetest things, I swear.”

I kiss her, keeping it brief because it would be so easy to get carried away. I refuse to make out with her in the parking lot of the police station so I tell her we should make a run for it and get inside as fast as possible. We both jerk up the hoods on our sweatshirts and climb out of the truck, running through the pouring rain as we dodge the various puddles heading toward the front entrance.

It’s a Saturday afternoon and with the shitty weather, no one is really around. The streets in town were pretty much abandoned too because unlike the citizens of southern California, who are driving everywhere at all times, the people in my small town batten down the hatches and stay inside when it storms like this.

I’d rather be anywhere other than this place, which is full of nothing but bad memories. I’ve spent far too much time at a police station—in freaking jail—for someone my age. I tell myself I can’t regret what’s happened to me because spending time here wouldn’t have led me to Reverie but…