Page 119 of Things You Save in a Fire

I stepped away from the door to get a better look.

Then he was hooking a U-turn and driving back up the street toward me.

He stopped a few houses away and flipped off his lights, and before he’d even opened his door, I was moving through the garden and down the road to meet him. Ankle be damned.

I stopped when I got close.

He shut the truck door behind him, turned to face me, and then leaned back against it.

We faced off like that for a minute.

Finally, he said, “Did somebody hurt you, Cassie?”

I felt a flash of alarm, as if I’d been found out. “What?”

“The way you push me away,” he said, “it’s like you think other people are dangerous.”

“Other peoplearedangerous,” I said.

He waited for more, and when it didn’t come, he said, “So. Did somebody hurt you?”

My first idea was to say some tough-guy thing, like, “Please.” But that wasn’t going to work, because there were already tears on my face.

I’d already answered his question. There was no sense in pretending.

So, very slowly, I just nodded.

“Was it a guy?”

I nodded again.

“Was it bad?”

I nodded again.

And then he knew. All the pieces clicked into place for him, and he just knew.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

“You don’t have to talk about it.”

“Good,” I said, wiping my cheeks with my palms.

In my whole life, there was nobody who knew, except maybe my old captain in Austin, and possibly—once they’d seen me beat the crap out of Heath Thompson—my old crew, and then, I guess, by extension, the entire ballroom of the city’s bravest who’d been in attendance that night.

Still, it felt like a milestone.

The rookie didn’t take his eyes off me. “Can I tell you something?”

“Okay.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Everybody hurts everybody,” I said, “eventually.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “I might do stupid things. I might forget to pick up milk at the grocery store, or step on your toe when I’m not looking, or do something I don’t even understand, like I just did tonight. But I’ll never be cruel to you. Not knowingly.”

No sense arguing. I knew that was true.

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