AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Wait, wait—” I slip my fingers around her elbow, but she quickly tugs free. “Caleb, stop.”
I swing in front of her to block her.
“What do you want?” she asks.
Her eyes stay low like a cowering animal, outright refusing to look at me, and I bleed inside. There’s nothing I want more than to hold her right now but the spiked armor she’s got on won’t make that easy.
“I want you to know that you can talk to me,” I say. “Anytime you want. I’m here.”
Caleb shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk, Box.”
“Then, what do you need?”
She finally looks up and I see that darkness overwhelming the green in her eyes. “I need you to leave me alone.”
“I can’t do that,” I say, digging my heels into the sand. “We need to stick together. Now more than ever. I don’t know who this Paxton guy is, but I don’t think he is who he says he is—”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“The team is gone, Boxcar,” she says, her voice a dead tone. “You’re free to go home. I’m not your bodyguard anymore. Let’s just be thankful we made it this far at all and move on.”
“Caleb…” I sigh. “You don’t want that.”
“It doesn’t really matter what I want.”
“It matters to me,” I whisper. “I’d like to think that what I want matters to you, too.”
Her eyes drop again. “No.”
“You’re lying.”
“What difference does it make?” she snaps. “We go home and what happens?”
“We look out for each other.”
“I don’t need anyone to look out for me.”
I grit my teeth. “Don’t shut me out, Caleb.”
“You were never in, Boxcar,” she says. “Excuse me.”
“Caleb—”
She steps around me, but I don’t have the patience to chase her down again.
Goddammit, Caleb.
I’m not sure why I’m so surprised. Caleb’s personal bubble is fortified with titanium, but I thought maybe we’d grown past that. Apparently not. I’m still just Boxcar, the boy who follows her around like a lovesick puppy and that’s what I always will be even after everything we’ve been through.
Maybe there’s a silver lining to all of this. I’m finally going home. No more drifting for scraps of food or places to sleep. I’ve got an all-expenses-paid flight back to American soil. Back to Tennessee where I belong. Not that there’s much waiting for me when I get there except for my parents but they decided a long time ago that they didn’t want me around.
And Caleb? She’ll go back to Oklahoma. Her mother will probably be happy to see her — happy that she came home alive, unlike her father. They’ll reminisce and catch-up. Maybe she’ll ask Caleb if there were any cute guys deployed with her. Caleb will surely roll her eyes and dismiss it but, if I’m lucky, she’ll think of me.
Sure. I guess we’ll call that a silver lining.
Chapter 21
