Page 37 of The Burning
“And? Now that destiny has brought us both here, you’re going to stop pretending like you don’t know me? At the hospital, you didn’t seem to.” She blinked. “You barely spoke to me!”
Kathy looked over at us and I ushered Karina to move out of her sight. Man, the last thing I needed was to have everyone in this place all up in my personal life. I’d been coming here alone, only bringing Mendoza a few times since I moved to Benning, so even having Karina here was going to get them all whispering. I wanted to keep my routine here. Hellos and goodbyes. Salutes and the occasional hug from someone who wanted to thank me for my service.
“Look, this isn’t the place for us to hash this out. Neither was the ER.”
Her chin jutted out and she stepped closer to me, hands on her full hips. Always a fight with this one. And her brother. It must run in their blood.
“When is, then? Or were we just never going to talk and pretend it didn’t happen?”
“You love to do that,” I reminded her.
And just as I went to take back the blow, she threw it back at me. “Me? That’syourMO.”
“Well, we have that in common.” I put a little distance between us; I needed a breath to get a handle on myself.
“You’re so annoying,” she huffed, kicking her foot out.
“And you’re not?”
Her cheeks had gone from pink to red. Her eyes were pure chaos and they became laser-focused on destroying me. She was Daenerys fromGame of Thrones, skilled at taking weak men down. I would be next if I didn’t stop this now. She felt I had betrayed her, that I was on the other side now, opposing her, so I was fair game to attack.
“How do you not think what you did was fucked up?” Her voice sounded much less rage-filled than her body language let on. I couldn’t even tell which one was real. Then she added, “Or do you not care anymore?”
“I’m not happy with the way it played out, or all the choices I made, no. But that doesn’t change the fact that I made them, does it?”
She shook her head. “You literally don’t care. This isn’t the time to be quiet, Martin.”
Using my last name, it was clear she wanted to get a reaction out of me.
No way in hell was I going to give her one.
Well, maybe a small one.
I moved closer to her, towering over her.
“You’re not going to believe anything I say and it’s not going to make you forget what I did, or change it, so we’re just wasting time here. You’re going to have to get over your brother’s enlistment before you can even try to forgive me for being a part of it. He’s going to get off the hook because you’re family, but I’ll be punished forever. Someday you’ll thank me, but it will be a long fucking time, I’m sure.”
She scoffed, eyes filled with anger. I was pretty sure this girl fucking hated me.
I whispered so a family walking by didn’t hear me, “I know you.” I breathed onto her, so close to her face that I could see the rise and fall of her breath in her chest.
“Youdon’t, and never will,” she said back to me.
It hurt like hell, but I kept going. She wasn’t completely in the right here and I was done taking blame for every single fuckup between us. If she wasn’t so closed-minded about everything, both Fischer and I would have told her sooner, but we knew better.
“Look, I told you I was worried about him from the jump. He was fucking up, badly, and I knew that, but it wasn’t my place to tell you about just how bad it was. I tried to do what I could, and then he mentioned the Army. He had been trying to join for a while back in whichever Carolina your piece of shit uncle lives in. I know a good recruiter who wouldn’t treat him like complete dog shit, so I introduced them. When I brought you up and asked what you thought about it, your brother asked me not to mention any of it to you until he could explain everything himself. He’s your brother, your twin at that, so I stepped out of it. I don’t get in the way of family shit, Karina, and you two have enough shit to work out. It wasn’t my place.”
I wondered what she would say. There was a tiny, tiny possibility that she would realize I wasn’t the villain in her story. She’d have to change the entire narrative she had created over the last few weeks, but it was possible she could be rational.
Instead of being rational, she jutted her chin up, crossed her arms around her body to protect herself further, and said, in the most assured voice I’d ever heard, “You lied to me. Not just about that, but since I met you, you’ve been lying to me about my dad, about your past, about my brother. You’re a narcissist and a liar.”
I looked around us so slyly that Karina barely noticed. We were already getting some attention. A few people were flat-out standing there staring at us, saying things that I couldn’t hear. I stayed close to her so that our voices wouldn’t travel. The conversation was beyond fucking inappropriate to have right there, right then, and I got distracted by the man who was paying Kathy for his stuff. He was visibly growing impatient as Kathy’s pen scratched the old-school receipt pad. She changed pens and continued to handwrite the bill and tap her finger against the calculator buttons.
“I didn’t lie,” I finally said. “It’s not a lie if I had your best interest in mind when telling it.”
“Yes, it is. It doesn’t work like that. You don’t get to decide what I can and can’t handle.” She took a deep breath. “God, I’m so sick of people fucking doing that.”
“Let’s agree to disagree and finish this when people aren’t staring at us?”
