Free Supernormal by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway Page A

what might have been anger.  She made herself stop, swallow it down, until she could breathe again.  “Cam—I’m sorry.  I…have issues.”
    “Yeah, you do.”  Which made her laugh.  It felt strange in her chest.  “It’s okay.”
    “No, it’s not .  If you’re—if you’re really—”
    “I am.”
    “—then you saw—”  He’d seen.  Ashley swallowed hard, fighting for calm.  Or something like it.
    “I saw what you might do.  What you didn’t do.”
    Her hands clenched, so tight her nails cut into her palms.  “You have no idea—”
    “Yes, I do.  I saw you twice now, and twice now I saw you stop.”  He turned his face to the ocean, watching the waves crash in.  “I see a lot of ‘almost’s.’  A lot of ‘meant to’s’ and ‘maybe’s’ and ‘want to’s.’  I’ve gotten good at filtering a lot of that out, but still.  It’s part of the job.  For every choice we make, there’s one we didn’t make.  Or two, or ten.”  He looked back at her, and his eyes were hard.  “So I do know what I’m talking about, Miss Garrett, when I say what we mean to do, or want to do, or think about doing—it doesn’t matter.  What matters is what we do.”
    “I did hurt you,” she replied.  “I didn’t mean to, and I didn’t want to, and I am sorry, but I did.  I’m sorry,” Ashley said again, feeling it in every bone.  “It’s…not easy for me to be gentle.  It’s easy for me to hurt people.”
    “Get in line.”  For the first time, he sounded angry.
    “It’s not the same thing.”  It wasn’t.  She forced herself to look at his throat again.  In the silver light, the makeup stood out even more.  It made her angry.  She clung to that anger; it was better than fear, better than shame.  “You have no idea—”
    “Yes, I do,” he said, and the matter-of-fact way he said it was brutal.
    “I put a man in a coma.”  She said it to hurt him.  Whatever this truce was that they had going on, he wasn’t supposed to be on her side.  “He’s not ever going to wake up, and if he does he’s not ever going to walk again, because I broke his spine.  I ran at him too fast, we landed wrong, and… ”  And she still heard the snap sometimes in her sleep.  “It was easy.”
    “Did he deserve it?”
    That wasn’t what she expected.  It hurt more.  “No.”
    “Then why?”
    She could’ve told him the story, but she didn’t want to remember.  Not tonight, not ever.  She shouldn’t have brought it up.  So Ashley just told him the truth.  “He was in my way.”
    It took her a moment to realize they’d stopped moving.  That she was just standing there, the icy water rolling over her bare feet, trailing wet sand through her toes as it pulled back out.  And he was standing there, waiting for her.  When she finally managed to look up, to look him in the face, he was watching her.  “Go ahead,” she said.  “Say it.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    It was not what she was expecting.  The way he said it, quiet and real, it hooked into her chest and almost brought her to her knees.  Ashley blinked and had to swallow, hard.  “So am I.”  She swallowed again.  “It’s…”  It’s not the worst thing I’ve done.  But she didn’t say that.  She barely knew him.  She didn’t trust him.  She didn’t want to tell him that.  “It’s getting late.  We should go back.”
     
     
     

Ch. 9
     
    Danny had given Cam a complicated merry-go-round of directions, but in the end finding his house was as simple as following Tyler after church.  Tyler was carrying a party-sized bag of Tostitos, and a jam jar of…
    “Salsa,” Tyler said, when he caught Cam staring.  “My grandma makes it.  You’re going to want to take it slow, though, it’s not for beginners.  Danny’s cousin Roger blew his eardrums out last Fourth of July.”  He nodded a question at the foil-wrapped package Cam was holding.
    “Cookies.”
    Tyler’s eyes went alert.