Page 46 of Control (Everyday Heroes 3.50)
“Thanks.”
“Hey, it wasn’t that long ago. It’ll get better. Then something will trigger the memory and it’ll come back. Then it will get better again.” He pauses and his voice softens. “Are you okay now?”
“Yes. Thanks. Sorry to bug you.”
The call ends, and I stand with my head hanging forward, my back to Reznor, and hate everything in this moment but him. I attempt to collect myself but know it’s no use.
I just made a complete ass out of myself.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I say as I turn around and hand him his phone, but refuse to meet his eyes. “I...you took me by surprise and then my mind started running with it and—no excuses, I fucked up.”
“Hey. Shh,” he murmurs as he reaches out and lifts my chin so I’m forced to look at him.
But the smug expression I expected to see is nowhere in sight. The sarcastic response I thought would be next is non-existent. I’m met with a soft smile and compassion flooding through those brown eyes of his.
And all I want to do is step into his arms and let him comfort me.
But that’s a scary thought for me. Needing him. Wanting to need him.
“Look, I’m sorry, Des. I didn’t mean to—”
“I don’t need to be coddled. I’m fine. He’s gone—whoever he is, and so the whole thing is over with.” I roll my eyes and try to add more conviction to my words than I really feel. “I only took the class to get Grant off my back.”
“Uh-huh,” he says with a look that tells me he’s not buying what I’m selling. “And your assumption that I was your perp had nothing to do with being scared of your own shadow.”
“Sorry.” I shake my head from his touch, and step back trying to collect my thoughts. “I need to go home. I just need…”
To trust my own judgment? To not accuse others because I’m paranoid? To settle back into my quirky world that seems to have fallen to the wayside since that night? Alone.
“Don’t go home,” he murmurs.
“It’s probably for the best.”
We stand in the waning light of the fall evening, cars coming and going out of the high school parking lot, and stare at each other, uncertainty about what’s going on here more than paramount between us.
“I want to take you somewhere.”
“Reznor—”
“Just trust me.”
“I don’t think—”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it? Thinking?” he asks with a wink and a convincing smile. “I’m not taking no for an answer.”
Ah yes, I forgot...I have to practice saying yes.
Chapter Nineteen
Desi
“What the heck?” I say through a laugh as we pull into the empty lot in Melville—the next town over. The area has been transformed with a makeshift structure taking up the most of it. Black Visqueen lines the exterior walls with caution tape as its accent. A strobe light can be seen at the entrance, as can a person dressed in a clown costume taking tickets of mostly high school-aged kids. “Reznor?” I ask as he pulls into a parking spot.
“Trust me.”
I don’t even get a chance to respond before he’s out of his truck and circling the hood to open the door for me.
“A haunted house?”
