“Hey,” Owen said, trying to grab my arm to turn me around.

I yanked my arm out of his grasp.

“Hey!” he said, trying again. “I’m not finished!”

I yanked away again. “I am.”

And then I took off running, ankle and all. He wanted to leave? Fine. I would leave harder.

But he took off running, too—right behind me. His feet smacked the pavement right behind mine. I sped up—or tried to, though I could tell my ankle wasn’t going to put up with it much longer. Was getting away worth reinjuring myself? Who cared? Good. Fine. Whatever.

That’s when Owen caught me. Reached out and grabbed the back of my T-shirt and broke my momentum—and as soon as he did, it was like snapping a rubber band. I stopped running altogether and turned to face him, right there in the middle of the road, panting.

“What?” I said, more like a yell.

“Cut it out! You’re going to sprain the other one.”

“I don’t care.”

He was panting, too. “Can I just talk to you?”

Here’s what I was doing: shutting down. When I watch that moment in my memory, knowing everything I know now, it seems so crazy to me how angry I was. He was trying to help me. He was making sure I could keep my job. He was giving me the thing I wanted most in the world.

Except the thing I really wanted most was him.

All I can say is, I wasn’t good at feelings. I’d spent my life carefully avoiding them. And now, since moving to Rockport, it had been one tidal wave of them after another—the crush, the kiss, the stalker, my mother … It’s easy to heckle the screen of my memory and say, Just let the man talk! But in the moment, I truly felt like I might drown in emotion—as all the feelings of loss and abandonment unleashed—and so I did the only thing I could think of to rescue myself, the thing I’d always done for all these years to stay safe …

I shut it down.

“No,” I said. “I have to go.”

“I just—”

“Nope,” I said, turning and striding back toward Diana’s front door. “I can’t.”

I expected him to follow me.

But he didn’t.

He let me go.

When I got to the door and pressed against it, gripping the handle, I turned halfway back, ready to tell him to leave again, and I was surprised to find myself all alone.

A second of relief—and then disappointment.

I turned farther, and I saw him walking away.

My shoulders sank.

I watched him unlock his truck and get in. I heard the ignition come on. And then he started driving off.

Good. Great.

But it didn’t feel better to be rid of him. It felt worse.

“Wait,” I whispered, staring after him, watching his taillights.

And then it was almost like he heard me.

His brake lights came on. And just stayed on.

I stepped away from the door to get a better look.

Then he was hooking a U-turn and driving back up the street toward me.

He stopped a few houses away and flipped off his lights, and before he’d even opened his door, I was moving through the garden and down the road to meet him. Ankle be damned.

I stopped when I got close.

He shut the truck door behind him, turned to face me, and then leaned back against it.

We faced off like that for a minute.

Finally, he said, “Did somebody hurt you, Cassie?”

I felt a flash of alarm, as if I’d been found out. “What?”

“The way you push me away,” he said, “it’s like you think other people are dangerous.”

“Other people are dangerous,” I said.

He waited for more, and when it didn’t come, he said, “So. Did somebody hurt you?”

My first idea was to say some tough-guy thing, like, “Please.” But that wasn’t going to work, because there were already tears on my face.

I’d already answered his question. There was no sense in pretending.

So, very slowly, I just nodded.

“Was it a guy?”

I nodded again.

“Was it bad?”

I nodded again.

And then he knew. All the pieces clicked into place for him, and he just knew.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

“You don’t have to talk about it.”

“Good,” I said, wiping my cheeks with my palms.

In my whole life, there was nobody who knew, except maybe my old captain in Austin, and possibly—once they’d seen me beat the crap out of Heath Thompson—my old crew, and then, I guess, by extension, the entire ballroom of the city’s bravest who’d been in attendance that night.

Still, it felt like a milestone.

The rookie didn’t take his eyes off me. “Can I tell you something?”

“Okay.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Everybody hurts everybody,” I said, “eventually.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “I might do stupid things. I might forget to pick up milk at the grocery store, or step on your toe when I’m not looking, or do something I don’t even understand, like I just did tonight. But I’ll never be cruel to you. Not knowingly.”

No sense arguing. I knew that was true.

Then I did a crazy thing. I hugged him.

This wasn’t the first hug I’d initiated lately—I’d given quite a record number to Diana and Josie in the past few days—but it was the first hug I could remember in years that I wanted for myself. Something about the expanse of his chest, so close to where I was standing, looked so solid and reassuring—and like a place I just wanted to be. I leaned in to rest my head against it, and the rest of me just followed.

We leaned against the car like that for a good while. I listened to his heartbeat, and his breathing.

Then, through his chest, I heard his muffled voice. “And there’s one more thing.”

I lifted my head, stepped back a little to see his face.

He took a deep breath, like he wasn’t even sure where he was headed. Then he said, “I am in love with you.”

I don’t know what I was expecting—but I promise this wasn’t it.

He went on. “It’s bad. And that kiss that night—it only made things worse. That’s why I’m quitting—partly, anyway. It’s that bad. It’s made things kind of unbearable for me at the station. I suspect you’ve known all along. It must have made you so angry. You’re there to do a job—and you’ve got this house full of guys who underestimate you like every minute of the day—and the last thing you need is some rookie mooning over you.”

Now he was making me smile. “Mooning?”

“Pretty much.”

“Since when?”

He met my eyes. “Since the first day.”

“The first day?” I asked. “The first day at the station?”

He nodded.

“The day they sprayed you with the hose?”

He nodded again.

Holy shit.

He went on. “Nothing would ever happen. Of course. I wasn’t ever even going to tell you about it. Can you imagine the guys? If they even suspected—even if you didn’t condone it or even know—they’d give you endless shit about it. They’d make the firehouse a living hell. For both of us. Right?”