AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Then, what is it about? I’m not stupid. I know that I was an asshole. I told you that I know that and yet, you keep beating the same damn, dead horse we’ve been kicking around all day.”
“You haven’t once said you’re sorry,” I insisted, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Well, neither have you,” he replied.
I went to speak, but stopped short, causing a cruel sneer to curl around the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah, that’s because you’re not,” he insisted, before standing up and walking over to the other side of the camp. “Try to get some sleep, princess, because I’m going to the ranger’s station tomorrow, whether you’re with me or not.”
I huffed and narrowed my eyes. I was angry, more now because he had called me out and I couldn’t retort.
The reason that I hadn’t apologized was because I was trying to get him to admit something about himself. I was trying to get him to open up and I thought if I gave the truth a little extra-insolent flair, he might get fired up enough to abandon his resolve. I thought I might be able to break down his walls and make him see what I was trying to get him to tell me.
However, unfortunately, my idea had backfired.
“Hey! Wait a minute!” I called across the campsite, “Does that mean that you meant everything you said to me? I just thought you were trying to be hurtful.”
There was silence, at first, and I thought he was going to ignore me, but when he did respond, I couldn’t figure out exactly how he thought his answer would be the least bit helpful.
“I told you, Carrie, I’m an asshole.”
Yeah, I know that… I thought, but did you mean what you said?
Settling on the notion that was going to be his parting words to me that evening, I didn’t bother to respond. I simply huffed, loud enough so that he had a chance of hearing it and curled up on the bed of leaves, hoping to get some sleep.
Chapter 16:
Johnathan
Hearing Carrie sigh from across the campsite made me wonder if she knew what I meant by my last comment.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to apologize, and I knew why she had said what she did. I knew that I had screwed up when I reacted to her true claims by trying to respond in an equally insulting way but tonight, I couldn’t bring myself to apologize.
After all, I wasn’t even sure if I should even try to make things right. I couldn’t imagine what good it would do.
In my experience, I’m sorry always led to something more and I wasn’t ready for any of that shit. I don’t know about most people, but I know that pouring my heart out to some stranger, only to have her leave wasn’t exactly the therapeutic outlet I needed; and that’s if I was even looking.
Right now, I didn’t want therapy. I didn’t even want to get better, because I figured the journey, if a better mental state was even possible, was going to be far more painful than simply cutting our losses.
Granted, for me, cutting losses meant everything, since she was the only human I had even considered wanting to get to know in a long time, but for her, it wasn’t all that bad. It was a mistake, at most. She could go back to her life and be perfectly fine. If I tried to be the sensitive, apologetic man she seemed to want, I felt I would be apologizing more than I would be doing anything else.
I didn?
??t want to hurt her. I simply wanted to part ways, before I ended up ruining her life.
However, as I lay across the campsite from her, I still couldn’t help the knowledge of how attracted I was to her. After everything that had happened, the allure I felt went far beyond the idea that I was still responsible for her, safety, or even that of her beauty. Of course, I wanted to see that she was safe, but I knew that I would never forgive myself if something were to happen to her.
I didn’t want to follow her today, because I didn’t want to be in her life anymore than I was already, but now that I had, I was glad to be here with her.
Even though we were arguing, and I was the one being stubborn, I was content, in a way. Whatever we had, being close to her, in any capacity felt right.
I liked doing things for her. As much as I complained and teased her about not making a camp for herself, I was pleased to have the excuse to make my presence known. I was happy to help her, and I wanted to always be the one to help her.
Yet, that intense sense of commitment to her was only a portion of what I was feeling. The other part of me still wanted to leave her as quickly as possible, though I know that I would never actually do it.
Even if I tried, apparently, Jake wouldn’t let me do it.
So, after heavily contemplating all of this, my mind wandered into the idea of what it will really mean when Carrie returns to her normal life.
