Free Save Me If You Can by Christina C Jones Page B

she didn’t judge him, she just… loved him, and that was a hard – impossible – thing to let go.
    And that’s why Savi was at the door now.
    In the confusion after the attack, they hadn’t had the opportunity to talk. There hadn’t been any quiet, but now there was. Savi had slipped into the room and just stood there, not verbalizing anything, but the weight of her silence said so much. Her emotions were thick in the air, and every trembling breath she took, trying her best not to cry was like a knife through his heart.
    “You are so goddamn selfish,” she whispered, finally, taking a step toward his bed. “Harrison I have ached for you. Wondering where you were, if you were okay… if you were alive. If you had somebody to love, and take care of you now. It was hard as hell, but I figured out how to live with not knowing. So find out that you knew… all this time, that I left the CIA, that I’ve been here, in the US, living a normal life… and you… you couldn’t even bother to leave a note in the mailbox, letting me know that hey… ‘I’m okay.’ I… how dare you?!” Her bottom lip was trembling by the time she stopped, and she pulled it between her teeth, biting down on it, hard, to hold back a sob.
    Goddamn it.
    “Savannah, I couldn’t —”
    “ Don’t you say that shit again !” she yelled, closing the distance between herself and the bed. “Don’t you give me that cliché bullshit, about… what? You didn’t want me to wait for you? You didn’t want me to think about you, wanted me to let go, so I could just forget? Well guess what, asshole – that isn’t what happened!”
    “ No , Savannah. That’s not why. I wanted to…” – he stopped, taking a deep breath himself to swallow his own emotion before he continued – “If I’d done that… I risked letting someone know what you meant to me. It’s one thing to pay somebody to find you, or watch you. It’s something else entirely to fucking pass secret notes. It puts things in a whole new light, a light I couldn’t afford to shine on you. At any time, I’m taking a chance on being followed, so it’s not like I could sneak and meet up, or leave a note myself, without somebody seeing it. You think this shit was easy , Savi?!”
    She sucked her teeth. “I think it was better than wondering.”
    “It wasn’t.” Ignoring the sharp pain in his leg, Harrison sat up, looking Savi right in the eyes. “I promise you. Seeing you happy, sad, seeing you garden, and shop, and have lunch like you couldn’t kill a room full of people… like you were just a regular girl. Seeing you get married, seeing you mourn your husband when he died. Not being able to touch you, laugh with you, comfort you… make love to you. It was not easy. ”
    Silence lingered between them for several long seconds, only broken by Savi’s stifled sobs. “When they were talking to you,” she said finally, sniffling, “in that interview… you said it like it was nothing. You made it seem like it was no big deal to you.”
    “Because I was trying to protect you. I don’t know what you’ve revealed about us, but nobody will know anything unless you clear it. I will not betray you, or our history, like that.”
    “It hurt ,” she said, shaking her head. “Like a machete to the neck.”
    “And I’m so, so sorry for that. Because that’s the last thing I would ever want to do to you.” He swallowed hard, past the lump in his throat, wishing there was something, anything he could do to ease the pain she was so obviously feeling. She’d dropped her head, had her arms wrapped around herself like she was cold, her shoulders trembling as she sobbed. “Savannah…”
    She shook her head, then lifted it, wiping her face with her hands as she turned for the door. In that moment, Harrison didn’t give a shit about the pain. He was out of the bed, hobbling to her side, and she turned around at the sound of him moving, her face twisted in horror.
    “Harrison,