Page 48 of Dotted Lines (Runaway 5)

“How’s it going? It looks different in here.”

“Yeah.”

After my shift had ended, Aria and I had spent the afternoon and early evening organizing. The items that were coming with us were stowed in our backpacks, ready for tomorrow. Everything else we’d moved to the front of the truck. The bedding. The books. The clothes. The forgotten pieces that would probably remain in this truck until the end of the junkyard’s days.

“Where’s Aria?” he asked.

“Moving her plants. She’s staging them beside Lou’s.”

“Does she need help?”

I shook my head. “I think she wanted to be alone for a while. She was going to write him a note.”

“Clara, about Vegas.”

“You don’t have to explain. I get it. You’ve done your duty and stayed to watch us. You don’t deserve to be chained to us anymore.”

“Is that how you think I feel? Chained?”

I lifted a shoulder. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Then why?” I asked even though I knew the answer. My voice was too loud and it bounced off the metal walls.

The emotion was bubbling up and I was about to lose it, so I gave him my back, not wanting him to see me cry. I’d had to take three breaks from the dishwasher today to run to the bathroom and cry. When my boss had given me my final pay, I think she’d thought the tears in my eyes had been because I was leaving.

“Because you shouldn’t be chained to me.” His hand came to my shoulder and his thumb circled the bare skin of my neck. “Would you look at me?”

“I can’t.” My voice cracked.

“Clara, you deserve this fresh start. I won’t risk ruining it for you. What if I got caught stealing? What if I got into another fight? What if someone asked when we started having sex and then I got put away for statutory rape?”

My hands fisted at my sides. He could stop stealing. He could stop fighting. “I would never tell.”

“I’m not going to make you lie for me. I won’t ruin you too.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I might. I don’t want to take that chance.”

My throat burned. “Even for me?”

“Especially for you. We all deserve to be set free.”

Yes, he did. Karson deserved to be set free.

No matter what I said, he truly thought of himself as a toxic person. Maybe if I’d seen it sooner, years ago, I could have convinced him of the truth. But after weeks, I couldn’t even persuade him to go exploring with me in Vegas. How was I supposed to convince him that he was not the person his mother had spent sixteen years telling him he was?

I didn’t have sixteen years to fix this. I only had a day.

It was too late. I was too late.

Tears flooded my eyes as I spun around to face him. I’d worked so hard today to keep them at bay and hide my emotions from my coworkers and Aria. But there was no hiding from Karson, not anymore.

He stepped closer and caught the first tear as it dropped down my cheek. “Don’t cry.”

“I don’t want to say goodbye.”