The Girls I've Been(82)

I nod, but hold a finger to my lips. Lee’s still in the kitchen, eating the oatmeal I made. She’s actually going to work today.

“Let’s go for a drive,” I tell him.

He takes us out past the edge of town to one of the lookout points on the winding climb toward the clouds. I get out without asking when he parks, before pulling down the tailgate and clambering into the bed.

He settles on one side and I sit down on the other, my back against the wheel hub.

“They’re buzzing about Ashley again,” he says. “I’d hoped it would take longer.”

“No actual description or location, though. He’s keeping the real information close.”

“What are we going to do?” he asks me.

The truck bed yawns between us, an ever-widening chasm, and only he has the rope to toss to me. When I told him who I was, I told him everything. Which meant telling him my fail-safe that even Lee doesn’t know about.

He tried to talk me out of going down the rabbit hole once, and when he realized he couldn’t, he started to help. But I’m worried that this—to fight back in this way—will be too much. This is risking so much more. This is risking him and her and all of us.

Maybe I should go, and when I say it out loud, he does the only thing he can.

“What the fuck, Nora?” he asks, and his incredulity snaps me out of my self-loathing just enough. “Do you really want to spend your life running?”

“Aren’t we all running from something?”

“That might sound profound on a mug or a photo of a winding road, but come on.”

That’s the thing about Wes: He tolerated my bullshit longer than anyone. And now that he can identify said bullshit, he’ll never tolerate it again.

“You told me you weren’t running,” he says quietly. “You told Iris. She won’t understand that unless you say promise, your truths can get a little shaky.”

“Hey,” I start to protest, but it dies off my lips, vanishing in the air. He’s right that I didn’t say promise. Just in case. And he caught it. Iris didn’t know she had to, yet. Wes would probably fill her in during their next Nora Lied to Me club meeting.

“I’m not running,” I tell him again. “I promise.”

There’s a warmth in his eyes that he doesn’t hide but doesn’t want me to see, so I ignore it and continue. “As long as Lee doesn’t find out, I have a plan for the fail-safe that is risky and probably doomed to failure, but it’s the only one I can think of with a remote chance I don’t end up dead.”

“Tell me.”

I do. I tell him everything I’ve been thinking, and when I’m done, he’s silent. I don’t know if it’s shock or contemplation.

“We knew this was coming,” I say, when the quiet’s too much and his face is too much and it’s just all too fucking much.

“The FBI—” he starts to say, and then stops when I shake my head. He sighs and yanks a hand through his hair, the frustration bleeding off him. It’s an old argument.

“I don’t know what else to do.”

I expect more quiet from him, but instead I get agreement. “Neither do I.”

“I don’t want to do it.” I need him to know that as much as I need to just admit it out loud. I’m not some badass here; I am scared. I’m facing what I’ve hidden from since I was twelve. The consequences are coming too fast . . . and I see no choice but to charge forward to meet them.

“I know.” He tilts his head up to the sky, the sunlight washing him golden. “Are you going to tell Iris?”

“If I don’t, you will.”

His eyes crinkle. “You girls,” he says.

“Bane of your existence?” I suggest, a mix of honey and acid that makes his mouth quirk.

“Family I always wanted,” he answers, because there’s no acid in him; there’s just sweetness and maybe a little sarcasm when the situation calls for it, but it doesn’t right now.

I know I’ll start doing something like cry if I respond with how I feel, so I kick his foot with my boot and say, “Sap,” to give both of us an out, and he takes it gladly, tapping my foot back, because both of us are good at veering around emotional land mines.

“She won’t like it. Iris. She’ll want to come with you.”

For a second all I can do is look at the patch on his jeans that Iris sewed, this little burst of yellow from the fabric she used against the denim. “I have to go alone.”

“I know. But she wants to protect you,” Wes says. “It’ll take her a while to realize that you do the protecting.”

“Do you think that’s bad?” I can’t help but ask.

“No,” he says. “I just used to think it was my job. Now I think it’s the most honest thing about you.”

“I didn’t need your protection,” I say softly.

“I know.”

“No, Wes.” I do not reach out. I do not tangle our fingers together. But my voice, the depth of it, it makes him shift in his seat. “I didn’t need it. Because you were the first guy I’d ever met who I didn’t need any protection from.”

I guess I’ve never put it that way before, because his eyes go suspiciously bright, and I love him for it. I have loved him in more ways than anyone else in my life. I loved him gleefully as a friend because it was all discovery, and I fell in love with him before I even knew how, and now we’ve survived together past that, into Franken-friends. Family.