Page 57 of The Burning
No. No. No,I repeated in my head.
“I’m ready when you are,” I told him, turning my back to go inside to grab my bag. I heard the door creak, and when I looked up, he was standing next to me in the living room, arm out, expecting my bag.
“I can carry it.”
“I know,” he said, gently grabbing it from me before I could sling the straps on my shoulders.
It was a bit heavy because of my few books, my clothes, and boots. It was nothing for Kael, of course, who could lift me up and put me over his shoulder with zero trouble. The thought made my cheeks hot, so I looked away from him.
“Let’s go?” I asked, surveying the living room to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything.
Kael walked past me. Where the heck was he going? I followed him to the kitchen and across it to the back door. He locked both locks, the top one made a rusty sound as Kael gave me a look that was clear as day.
“I was going to lock that.” My white lie came out defensively.
“I know you sometimes forget. I wasn’t trying to step on your toes. Just habit, I guess.”
Truth was, I had totally forgotten about the back door, and if he hadn’t checked it, it would have stayed open the entire time I was gone. Kael’s soldier mentality came in handy quite often. There was a time when things were good between us when I stopped having to worry about my surroundings. When he was with me, I knew he would always open doors, walk on the outside when we walked together on a sidewalk, check my seatbelt, and make sure the doors were locked, my phone alarm was set to wake up for work, and the oven was turned off after making dinner. The small things that dramatically improved my mental clarity and day overall. He made things so easy . . . until the day he made them unbearable by taking away the comfort and security I had yearned for my entire life. In just a few minutes’ time it was all undone.
“Can we go now?” I was growing angry over things I couldn’t change, and I didn’t want it to affect the drive. There was already enough tension between us.
He nodded, looked around the kitchen and asked me if the lights were all off. I ignored him and he flicked on the porch light just as we exited the house and made our way to his truck. He put my bag in the trunk and slammed it shut. I wasn’t sure if I should get in the backseat or the front, but he walked up and opened the passenger seat door. It wasn’t an Uber, after all.
I buckled in and he asked if I wanted to plug my phone in for music. I shook my head. He didn’t need to hear all the breakup, “sad bops” as Spotify called it, playlists I’d been blaring lately. We drove in silence for a few minutes. He turned the a/c on too high, but I was too uneasy to say anything, so I pulled my sleeves down to cover my hands. Of course, I’d forgotten the damn second hoodie.
“We’re picking up one more soldier on our way. Somehow, I became the taxi. She lives close by, so it won’t take long.”
“She?” I blurted out, my chest instantly aflame.
I tried not to look over at Kael but did anyway. His hand rubbed over his chin like answering was going to be painful. To him or me? I wondered.
“Uh, yeah. Turner. You’ve met her a couple times now.”
“Turner? The one from the mall?”
He nodded. I wanted to slam my head against the hard glass of the window.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
I took a deep breath, trying to remain calm and not overreact. Whose bright idea was it to have me and a woman who clearly liked him, or at least was attracted to him, ride together? The thoughts I labeled as intrusive earlier came rushing back—this had to be a setup. Someone in this group absolutely was getting off on making this as hard for me as possible. My mind split into two parts, one that believed this whole trip was a massive setup, and one that kept telling me that was ludicrous, that no one on this trip was even bothered enough by me or thought enough about me, even in a malicious way, to notice or care that this pairing would make me feel miserable.
According to text-filled posts on Instagram, I was both a self-sabotaging insecure avoidant and a massive narcissist who assumed everything and everyone was considering and plotting around me when they weren’t. Self-diagnosing was easier now because of random unqualified people posting theirif you do these three things you’re A, B, or Clists.
“She was supposed to ride with the Mendozas, too,” Kael finally said.
I put my knees up, my dirty shoes on his seat, and nodded. I didn’t say another word as we drove to pick up the woman whom Kael had known longer than me, who was prettier than me, and who hadn’t had her heart torn apart by him the way I had.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kael
I’ve met many women in my life, from married eighteen-year-olds who were too young and too lonely to be expected to make logical choices, to girls I went to high school with who wanted to do more with their lives, but ultimately couldn’t get out of their situations due to lack of resources or support from their family. Sometimes both. I’ve met women at bars whose eye contact and shiny lip gloss made my cock hard, but, after two minutes of hearing them speak, their minds made me excuse myself to the bathroom and never come back. I’ve met widows who cry at the mention of their dead husbands’ names and drown themselves in cheap vodka because the pain is too heavy.
I’ve known strong women like my ma, who would do anything, literally anything under the goddamn sun for me and my sister. I’ve talked to women born and raised in Afghanistan who, despite their country being blown apart day by day, still had a hope for a better future for their daughters. In a way, sometimes I felt like I was living a double life, one raised by a hard-as-rock but gentle woman, and now one full of rowdy men who don’t talk about their struggles or hardships. Out of all the people I’d met, I’d usually found them easy to handle, and simple to empathize with, read, and understand. Except Karina.
I couldn’t for the fucking life of me understand what she was thinking inside that thick skull of hers and I never knew what she was going to do or say next. She had told me since we met that she was predictable, boring, and that her life was small. Yet there was nothing routine about that woman. She was headstrong but so sensitive. Her sense of self was both bold and fragile. I wasn’t happy about the current situation, either, driving with both Karina and Turner; I knew the tension would be thick.
