Page 86 of Dash

“Why would you think that?”

We’re standing less than a foot apart, but the chasm between us is so wide I don’t know how to cross it.

“You’re pulling back. You’re different, like you don’t want to be around me, but then sometimes I feel like you cling to me so tight you don’t want to let me go. I don’t know where I stand with you.”

She glances up the street, ignoring the people around us. Her eyes close for a second, as if she’s trying to centre herself, and that freaks me out.

“Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”

Talk is not the word anyone wants to fucking hear in a relationship. Talk means I’m going to emotionally rip your heart out and stick it in a blender.

But I nod. Because whatever she says at least then I know what I’m working with. “Yeah. Okay.”

But neither of us move. Her bottom lip slides between her teeth, something she does when she’s nervous, and now I’m really fucking unravelling. I have no idea what the hell is going through her head. I haven’t been able to read her for a while now.

“I don’t want to break up,” she says, and those barbs in my chest pull back.

“Good,” I say. “I don’t want to either.

Her lashes are wet. “I’m sorry I’m a mess right now.”

Maybe I shouldn’t, not with this wall between us, but I take her face in my hands. She’s the only thing standing between me and losing my sanity. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m scared to.”

That confession is worse than any injury I’ve ever fucking had. She might as well have peeled my fucking skin off my ribs.

“If I’ve made you afraid to open up to me, then I’ve done something fucking wrong,” I say to her. “Whatever it is just tell me so I can fix it.” I press my forehead to hers, still holding her face between my hands. Her warmth, her softness is a balm I soak in case this is the last time she lets me take it.

Her breath hitches, her hands over mine. “It’s going to change everything,” she warns, and again that pit in my stomach opens.

“Then we’ll deal with it. Together.”

A van driving up the street catches my attention. I’m not sure what it is, maybe it’s the way it slows too much, the way it crawls up the kerb. But I glimpse metal as something pokes through the window.

“I didn’t know how to tell you. But, Dash, I’m?—”

I shove her down as the first shot rings out. She lets out a cry that slices through my chest, but all I’m focused on is saving her life.

Screams erupt around us, and I cover her with my body as more shots ring out. Glass from the car we’re hiding behind explodes, raining down on me, and I curl tighter around her.

It sounds like a war zone. The screams of panic ringing in my ears, my own breaths laboured and heavy.

It doesn’t last more than a beat in time, but it feels like an eternity before the shooting stops.

I don’t move.

Am I hit?

Is she?

I can feel Dayna trembling under me. Fuck. I lift off her body, my heart thundering.

I need to call for backup. I need to get her out of here. The panic fuses to my bones when she doesn’t move on her own.

“Dayna?! Fuck, Dayna are you hit?”

She doesn’t answer, her eyes squeezed shut. She’s breathing weirdly, her palms are pressed over her stomach like she’s hiding a wound.

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