by Katie Ruggle
“Why are you acting like you’ve never seen this movie before?” He bit into his brownie. Unlike Daisy, he preferred to have his dessert straight, without ice cream and hot fudge. “We must’ve watched this fifty times.”
She shrugged. “I always forget how useless Taylor is until her stupid screams remind me. I mean, look.” Daisy pointed at the screen. “Those three guys have their backs to her. No one’s paying attention to her. She could take those guys out easily.”
“Easy for you, maybe,” Chris said mildly. “But you have skills.”
“Mad skills,” she agreed, making him laugh. “Even if she’s clueless, though, she should at least try something. Call for help, even. I know she has that stupid bejeweled cell phone in her pocket, since she was just texting her friend in the last scene.”
“Don’t judge until you’ve been there,” he said, focusing on the still-screaming woman on the screen. “You never know how you’ll react until you’re in the middle of a life-threatening situation. Your brain and body do some crazy stuff in crisis mode—most of it not helpful.”
“I know.” Putting her bowl on the coffee table, she tucked herself into the corner of the couch and hugged her knees. Although she was sure Chris hadn’t meant them to hurt, his words gutted her with their accuracy. When it had mattered, when she could’ve acted and saved her mom, she’d been just like Taylor—useless. Maybe that was why she hated the character so much.
Daisy stared at the screen as the attackers fled and Taylor threw herself on her boyfriend’s limp body. Normally, this was the point where Daisy mocked the woman’s lack of first-aid skills and ranted to Chris about how her clutching the semiconscious man had probably just aggravated a spinal injury, but Daisy wasn’t seeing the movie anymore. She was sixteen and huddled in the corner of Miller’s Convenience Store, trying to hide behind a display of individually wrapped Little Debbie snack cakes.
“Dais.” Chris must have moved, since he was right next to her. Cupping her face with both of his hands, he tipped her head so she had to look at him. “I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”
“No. You’re right. I just sat there and did nothing to help her.” It was too hard to keep eye contact when Chris looked at her like that, with so much kindness and sympathy that she didn’t deserve. Her gaze shifted to his left eyebrow. “I even screamed at exactly the wrong time. I wasn’t just useless like Taylor; I was destructive.”
Despite her effort to avoid his eyes, he moved his head slightly so she couldn’t help but meet them. His fingers tightened, not quite enough to hurt. “Your mom was just shot in front of you. I think you’re allowed to scream.” His voice was rough, as if something was caught in his throat.
“No.” Since he wasn’t letting her dodge his gaze, she closed her eyes completely. She’d held these words inside of her for eight years and, now that she’d started letting them out, she couldn’t seem to stop. “It was a second before he pulled the trigger. I startled him. I screamed, and he shot, and she fell. That’s how it went.”
“No. No, that’s not how it went. Daisy, look at me.” Although she really didn’t want to open her eyes, it was hard for her to deny him anything, especially when he was being so serious, so intense. She met his gaze. “I was there, Dais. I was there, and that’s not how things went down.”
A remote part of her brain was touched that Chris would lie to try to make her feel better, but she couldn’t duck the responsibility of what she’d done. “It was, Chris. I see it happen every night.”
“Oh, Dais.” It was Chris’s turn to close his eyes, and when he opened them again, his expression was fierce. “You’re not the only one watching the reruns. I was the first deputy on scene after the call went out.”
“Did someone outside see what was going on?” she asked. “I always wondered how you got there so fast.”
He frowned. “Didn’t anyone tell you what happened?”
She tugged on his wrists, and he released her. It felt good to be touching him, though, so she shifted her hands and tangled her fingers with his. “I never wanted to discuss it—or even think about it. Besides, people probably figured I already knew, since I was there.” There in the corner, screaming at just the wrong time.
Her explanation didn’t seem to placate him. “I’m sorry, Dais. I should’ve told you a long time ago, but you always used to walk away when I tried to bring it up, and I…well, I hated talking about it, too. I didn’t realize you were blaming yourself all these years. The clerk pushed the emergency button under the counter, and Dispatch sent out the call that an alarm had been triggered at Miller’s Convenience Store. I was only a block away, so I was the first deputy on scene. Almost all of those types of calls end up being false alarms, but I’d only been working as a deputy for six months, so my heart started beating fast. I’d been on my own for just three weeks after finishing my probationary training period, and I hadn’t had time to get bitter and jaded yet.”
As he paused, she watched the muscles in his jaw work. Listening to him tell the story made her feel disconnected from it, as if everything that had happened that day had ruined someone else’s life, not her own. It was completely different from her nightmares, which allowed her to say fairly calmly, “I can’t imagine you ever getting bitter and jaded.”
Chris smiled, but it was faint and disappeared quickly. “Miller always had those promo posters hanging in the windows, so I couldn’t see what was going on inside. I had my gun out, and I was worried that would scare people in the store if it was just a false alarm. As soon as I entered, though, I saw him, saw them both…him and your mom.”
“You yelled, ‘Sheriff’s department! Drop your weapon!’ over and over.” She squeezed his hands. “I was so relieved to hear that. I hadn’t thought that help would ever come, and then there you were.”
His lips pressed together until they almost disappeared. “I didn’t see you at first. All I could see was a man with a gun pointed at a woman’s skull. She looked so scared.”
“Yeah, she did.” The story had become hers again, and tears rushed to fill her eyes. Daisy clenched her teeth to try to hold them back, but there were too many, and they flowed over her cheeks and dripped off her jaw. Chris’s eyes focused on her face, bringing him back from that convenience store eight years ago, and he tugged his hands free from her grip.
“I’m sorry, Dais.” He wiped at her cheeks with the backs of his fingers, but tears just kept coming.
“Not your fault,” she said, hating the hiccup that interrupted her words.
Apparently giving up on drying her face, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into him. Daisy rested her forehead against his shoulder and tried to concentrate on how good Chris smelled, like wood smoke and brownies, rather than remembering the acrid tang of urine when she’d wet herself in fear. Even dumb and useless movie-Taylor hadn’t peed her pants like a baby.
“It was, though.” It took a moment for Daisy to figure out what he was referring to. When she finally did, she shook her head against his shirt. Before she could protest, he continued. “When I was in law-enforcement training, we were required to take a basic firearms class. It was the same drills, over and over, and I got bored. Instead of aiming for center mass like we were supposed to, I’d pick some other body part, like the forehead or the crotch, and I’d see how tight I could make the pattern.”
Since she wasn’t sure how to respond to that, Daisy stayed quiet, waiting for him to continue.
“Your mom was small, smaller than you, even,” he eventually said. “He had his arm around her neck and had pulled her up on her toes, and the top of her head still only reached his collarbone.”
As she listened, Daisy grabbed his shirt with both hands, wadding the material in her fists. She’d been focused on the gun, her mother’s sobs, her own terror. That’s what came back to her night after night. The details he’d remembered were different, c
hanging the scene in her head for the first time in eight years. Daisy wasn’t sure if that made it more terrifying or less, but she did know that she had to hold on to something, and Chris’s shirt was the closest grabable thing.
“I aimed at his head. It’s funny that you remember me yelling at him to drop his weapon, since I didn’t even realize I was saying it. It was really quiet for me—quiet and slow and clear. He looked at me, and I saw him decide. I saw it in his eyes that he was going to kill this woman. I saw that, recognized it, and I still hesitated.”
Daisy stopped breathing, her fingers clenching so tightly around the flannel fabric that her hands went numb.
“He pulled the trigger, and she just…dropped. Her expression was so surprised. It wasn’t until then that I shot him. I waited until it was too late, and then I finally acted—no.” Chris blew out a hard breath. “I reacted. And action beats reaction every time.”
“No. No, no, no.” When she realized she was chanting the word over and over, she clamped her teeth together. Even though hearing about it, talking about it, was as painful as having her guts scooped out with an ice-cream spoon, Daisy didn’t want to stop. She had to know, had to have those details, and she was positive Chris would stop talking about it if she got hysterical on him. She forced herself to breathe. “It was me. I screamed. It was my fault.”
“It wasn’t you, Dais.” His hand stroked over the back of her head. One or both of them was shaking. “He decided, and I knew, but I didn’t shoot him until it was too late to save her. And I never heard you scream.”
It was overwhelming—too many new details that didn’t mesh with the old memories, the ones she’d always assumed were right. She thought she should reassure Chris, should tell him it wasn’t his fault, but words weren’t lining up in her head right. Instead of saying anything, she just leaned her head on his shoulder and clutched his shirt. For the moment, breathing was all she could manage.
Chapter 12
Daisy didn’t know how long they sat there before she relaxed her grip on Chris’s shirt and turned her head to the side. Enough time had gone by for the movie to finish and start looping through the opening sequence.
“I’m going to donate that movie to the library.” Her voice sounded rusty. “I might not be able to blame Taylor for being useless without being a hypocrite, but she still pisses me off.”
His chest moved with a laugh that was more of a hard exhale. “I’ll take it with me and drop it off.”
He shifted, and she forced her fingers to release him completely. She felt too raw to meet his gaze, so she studied the mess of melted ice cream and brownie goo left in her bowl.
“Did you…” Chris cleared his throat. “Do you want me to leave?”
“Leave?” Her eyes snapped to his. “No. Definitely not. I was trying to think of a not-awkward way of asking if you’d stay tonight.” At his shocked expression, she shook her head, hating the blush that invaded her cheeks. “Not, like, in a dirty way. And now I’m talking like I’m Tyler’s age. Sorry.” Taking a deep breath, she started again. “There’s a lot happening in my brain right now, so I know I won’t sleep. If I’m here by myself, I’m going to end up in the training room, beating up on poor Max until I pass out. You don’t have to stay up or anything. I just don’t want to be alone.”
His expression unreadable, he eyed her for a long time.
Daisy finally couldn’t hold back the prattle. “Don’t feel obligated to stay, though. Max will eventually forgive me for pulverizing his internal organs. I’m used to staying awake.”
“I’ll stay.” He was still looking at her oddly, though.
“What?”
“What what?”
“You’re acting weird.”
He gave a short bark of laughter. “Sorry. I’ll try to normalize.”
“I’d rather you just tell me what the problem is.”
“It’s not a problem, really.” He stood and gathered the abandoned desserts, as if he needed to move. “I’m just surprised you want me here, that’s all.”
“Why is that surprising?” She followed him into the kitchen. “I like having you around. Well, most of the time. You do have those occasional annoying moments, but they’re rare, and I’m forgiving.”
Dropping the bowls on the counter, he turned toward her so quickly that Daisy took a step back. “Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Forgiving.”
“Yes.” The word came out slowly and a little warily.
“I guess you’d have to be.” That time, his laugh had no humor in it.
“You’re being weird again.”
“Sorry.” He stared at her. “Do you think you could forgive me?”
“For what?”
Bracing his hands on the counter to either side of him, he stared at the tile floor. Finally raising his eyes to meet hers, he said quietly, “Hesitating.”
It took her a moment to figure out what he was saying. When realization struck, her whole body jerked with shock. Her mouth opened, but there was no air for speech.
“Never mind.” He turned away from her, but Daisy lunged forward, grabbing his arm to spin him around.
“Chris…” Even though the words in her brain weren’t any more ordered than they had been earlier, she knew she couldn’t stay silent. “It wasn’t your fault.”
His blank expression didn’t change. “I had the shot, but I didn’t take it.”
“He decided, you said,” she argued. “He’d made the decision to kill my mom.”
“If I’d made the shot before he did—”
“She’d probably still be dead!” Her voice had gotten loud, so she brought it down a few decibels. “His finger was on the trigger. I remember. I was staring at it, praying that he didn’t pull it. If you’d put a bullet in his head that half-second earlier, what would’ve happened? I don’t know what a body’s reaction to being shot would be, but if his hand had tightened, even a little bit, he would’ve killed her anyway.”
“We don’t know that!” Now he was yelling. “We don’t know what would’ve happened!”
“No.” For some reason, his frenzy was making it easier for her to be calm. “We don’t. If I hadn’t screamed, if you’d shot a tiny bit sooner, if another deputy had needed a bag of potato chips and happened to be in the store, if my mom would’ve misplaced her car keys and been five minutes later getting there… I’ve thought all of these things. Every time I rewrite it in my mind, though, it doesn’t help. My mom’s still dead, and I’m too messed up in the head to leave the house.”
Breathing hard, he stared at her. His face was pulled tight, his eyes almost wild, and he looked like a stranger. Deciding she needed to fix that, Daisy closed the gap between them and took his face in her hands, just like he’d done for her earlier.
“I’m alive because you shot him. You’re alive because you shot him. The other deputies who arrived to back you up are alive because you shot him. I know you wish you could’ve saved my mom, too, but it didn’t work out that way. You need to make your peace with that, or you’ll end up as crazy as I am.”
“You’re not crazy.”
Her laugh was more of a sob. “Oh, Chris. I do love you.” The words were out, raw and honest. His reaction when she’d tried to kiss him was bad enough, but now, if he rejected her… It was too horrible to think about. But no matter what he said or did, it wouldn’t change the truth about her feelings. She did love him. She’d loved him since that awful day, and she’d keep loving him for the rest of her life. A sense of resigned peace filled her, and she slid her arms around his middle. It was a long time before he relaxed enough to hug her back.
“I love you, too, Dais.” His hold on her tightened. “You’re my best friend.”
Joy flooded her for just a moment before the truth soured her happiness. Chris was right—they were friends. No matter h
ow much she might wish for more, friends were all they ever could be. Shoving away the melancholy cloud that settled over her at the thought, she hugged him tighter. If friendship was all he could offer, she’d hold onto that with both hands. He was her best friend, too, and that was precious and wonderful. Daisy wasn’t about to ruin that by sulking because Chris didn’t have a romantic interest in her. She could do the just-friends thing, she decided, even as her heart twisted painfully in protest.
With a sigh, she disentangled herself from Chris’s hold. “My brain is tired. Can we watch something stupid and mindless?”
“Sure.” He sounded relieved, which made Daisy duck her head to hide a smile.
“Or we could talk about our feelings for another couple of hours.” She tried to make her tone as earnest as possible as she sent him a sideways glance. “Then we could braid each other’s hair and talk about cute boys.”
His expression of horror faded as his eyes narrowed, and he lunged for her. With a squeal of laughter, Daisy ducked under his arm and dashed for the living room. She’d almost made it to the couch when he caught her and lifted her off her feet. Chris spun her around before tossing her into the air. Weightless for a moment, she landed on the couch with a grunt.
When she saw Chris start to hurdle the couch, she hurried to pull her legs clear of his landing zone, but he skipped the cushions completely and landed on his feet in front of the sofa. He examined her DVD collection for a while, and Daisy studied him. After their gut-ripping conversation, she felt surprisingly lighter. There was a possibility that she hadn’t caused her mom’s death, and that was a huge relief.
“How about this one?” He held up a goofy comedy with no redeeming intellectual qualities at all.
Daisy grinned. “Perfect.”
* * *
Her eyes still closed against the invasive early morning light, Daisy shifted and held back a groan. Waking wasn’t as uncomfortable as it had been after the night on the training room floor, but her muscles protested the awkward sleeping position. Her neck, especially, was twisted in an uncomfortable way, with her temple resting on something too hard to be even the worst of pillows.
