I scoffed to myself. I had told him to stick me in a cage at one point, hadn’t I?
Just turn around and go home, Anna. Why is he going to want to see you right now? Go home, deal with your father, and you’ll see Evan tomorrow, you over-dramatic pain in the butt.
“Anna?”
I jumped and stopped pacing. Evan was jogging down his driveway toward me. While I’d been lost in my head, the entire front lawn had lit up like a damn Christmas display, and I was amazed that I hadn’t seen it.
Well, there goes the idea of leaving.
“Everything okay? How’d you get here?” he asked as he reached me, looking over the top of my head.
“I, uh . . .” I licked my lips and looked down, finally noticing that my legs were tingling. “I ran.”
“You ran . . .”—I shrugged—“from your house.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Anna, that’s five miles.”
“Oh.” I laughed nervously before directing my gaze over his shoulder.
“What happened?”
“I don’t . . . I really don’t know.” I marveled at the realization that I really didn’t know what had happened after he’d left. My father and I had gotten into a fight, but how had it escalated to me leaving? “My dad and I had a fight and I left.”
“Okay,” he said, pulling me into his arms. “A bad fight?”
I snorted against his chest and buried my nose into his shirt.
“Are there any fights that could be classified as good, Evan?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” He tightened his arms around me and rubbed my back.
Something seemed to click, and I groaned, backing away from him. Not only was I a disgusting, sweaty mess, but I was also sure that I’d probably disrupted whatever he and his family might’ve been doing.
“You’re probably busy, aren’t you? Or eating dinner . . . or doing something else that I interrupted, and I just . . . I’m sorry. I’ll just go, okay?”
“Did I say I was busy?” he asked, grabbing my hand and pulling me back to him. “You’re fine.”
“How’d you even know I was here?”
“Mom went on this security kick about a year ago and insisted that we get a camera installed at the end of the driveway for some stupid reason. There’s such a high crime rate in Collins Point, you know?”
I snorted again and relaxed enough to wrap my arms around his waist, closing my eyes and burying my face in his chest again. He didn’t seem to mind my sweat, and I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I needed comfort, and if he was willing to provide it for me, I wasn’t turning him away.
“Do you want to come in and relax for a little while?” he asked after a few minutes.
“I don’t think . . . your family . . .”
“Knows all about you.” He grabbed my shoulders and gently pushed me back from him. “They want to meet you. Mom was even saying that we should have you over for dinner sometime next week.”
I blinked at him.
“I’m not a secret and I refuse to be yours,” he whispered.
I stared at him as my eyes watered before embracing him.
“Was that . . . did I . . . was that not something I should’ve said?”
“You remembered,” I cried, curling my hands into the back of his shirt.
“Well . . . yes.”
“I . . . I didn’t think . . . I . . .”
“Okay, come inside, Anna.”
“Not like this!” I cried. “I can’t meet your family like this.”
“All right,” he said, rubbing my back. “Well . . . let’s go sit down, okay? There’s a bench right over here.”
“Okay.” I moved away from him, sniffling and letting him lead me to a stone bench by the porch. I plopped down onto it and did my best to calm down, drying the last of my tears with my shirt. He sat next to me and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pulling me against him. I leaned against his body.
“I’m sorry,” I said after a few minutes.
He kissed the top of my head and placed one hand on my thigh, trailing his other hand through my hair. “Don’t be.”
“I didn’t mean to come here. I just . . . I just left, and I ended up here, and I’m sure I ruined your entire night with this and—”
“Stop,” he said, interrupting me. “It’s fine, Anna.”
“What are we, Evan?” I asked after a few moments of silence.
“I told my family that you were my girlfriend,” he said. “I thought that’s what the whole purpose of the conversation this afternoon was about.”
“I wasn’t sure. We never said . . .”
“Is that what you want with me?”
“Yeah.”
“All right then.” He kissed the top of my head again. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
“I thought we just did.”
“You know what I mean.”
I sighed and closed my eyes.
“He hasn’t been the same since Mom died.” I opened my eyes and looked down at his lap. “He hasn’t been involved with anything I’ve done since then, and I kind of just exploded on him tonight about it. It just . . .” I chuckled halfheartedly.
“I’m anything but invisible at school, and I come home to . . . silence and disconnection, and then he tells me that I can’t be alone with you without giving me any real reason. I couldn’t . . .” I turned, burying my nose in his shoulder and squeezing my eyes shut. “I just couldn’t deal with it.”
“It’s been a rough week.”
I snorted, and he laughed and wrapped his arms around me.
“Understatement of the year.”
“Maybe even the century,” he agreed.
I sighed. “I should probably get home.”
“Come inside real quick,” he said. “Meet my family. I’ll drive you home.”
“You don’t have to—”
“You’re not running five miles back
